Soccer World Cups in December, then with 48 finalists and in three different countries and, for the 2030 edition, a tournament spread across three continents, with six hosts and a flavor of a circus show, with the eternal search for the most difficult yet. Or perhaps better said, adapted to the new football motto: even more income. FIFA has supposedly managed to satisfy Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay, three of the thirteen competitors in the historic first tournament of 1930, without losing the strongest candidacy, also triple, with Spain, Portugal and Morocco. An unstoppable economic-sports framework that leads us to remember how it all began and, fundamentally, who was the promoter of the great national team soccer tournament that now greases the entire machinery.

Born on October 24, 1873, 150 years ago, the Frenchman Jules Rimet studied at a private Catholic school and became fond of football on the streets of Paris. In 1897, with his brother Modeste, they founded Red Star FC, currently in the French National League, equivalent to a third level. From there Rimet arrived at the creation of the French Federation, in 1919, where he defended the professionalization of footballers, considering that it was the appropriate path for the integration of workers, employees and in general the less favored classes.

Finally, in 1921, he became president of FIFA, which was then, as a result of the First World War, a dead body. Neither the powerful British federations – which demanded the exclusion of the losers of the Great War – nor countries with the football prestige of Uruguay and Brazil, were part of FIFA, reduced to around twenty members.

Rimet observed the success of the Olympic football tournaments, where Pierre de Coubertin’s amateurism rules reigned, and launched the proposal for a World Cup open to all. It was approved at the Amsterdam congress in 1928, the Uruguayan headquarters was chosen at the Barcelona congress the following year, and it was held in 1930, despite the fact that only four European teams (France, Belgium, Yugoslavia and Romania ) dared to take the long trip by boat. The Spanish Federation, which had aspired to host the tournament, was one of those that later backed out and did not sign up for the transoceanic adventure. Rimet traveled to Montevideo on the SS Conte Verde, with three European teams, the final referee, John Langenus, and carefully protecting the new trophy, the precious golden statuette that years later was named after him, in his suitcase.

In addition to the 1929 visit, Rimet was in Barcelona on other occasions. In 1948 he supervised the creation of the Latin Cup and attended a Spain-Ireland (2-1) match in Montjuïc, where he shared a box of honor with another illustrious visitor, Dr. Alexander Fleming, discoverer of penicillin. A year later he attended the semifinal of the I Latin Cup in Las Corts, between Barcelona and Stade de Reims (5-0).

On the 1948 visit he completed the ritual and was interviewed by Manolo del Arco, who did not know the character. They told him that he was the president of FIFA and he took out a pencil and notebook. Rimet explained that in his younger years he played in any position (“then one was the same as a defender, a forward or whatever”) and that he was preparing the London congress. The final dialogue is worth it…

– What is the issue motivating the meeting?

– The world Cup.

– Is there anything decided?

– Which from next year will be called the Jules Rimet Cup.

– Jules Rimet? Because?

– Jules Rimet is me.

– Ah!… excuse me.