Jules Rimet

Red Star, his history, because you said we need to fill in.

Paris Red Star were formed by Jules Rimet.

Really? Really, really.

And that, of course, is the journalist that inspired the World Cup.

Olympic football still excluded professionals, and those arguments would eventually help FIFA want a championship of its own.

Enter Jules Rimet.

Already president of the French Federation, he was placed in acting charge of FIFA in 1920.

Here in Antwerp, he floated his idea for an international tournament every four years, a world championship.

Britain had left FIFA.

Amateurism remained unresolved.

Jules Rimet was only acting FIFA leader, and in Antwerp, he was already talking about the championship that would become the World Cup.

And third, Belgium's greatest football triumph lasted 39 minutes, two goals, one sending off, one walkout, one rejected protest.

Yes, yes.

The old Jules Rimet trophy.

I mean, goodness, it was an ugly trophy, though, wasn't it?

No, what?

And that was just the beginning.

Four years later, in 1934, Mussolini himself nobbled the referees in Rome to guarantee Italy's first lifting of the Jules Rimet trophy, or so it was claimed.

And nearly a century on, the theories haven't gone away.

If anything, they've multiplied.

I cared.

But for me, you know, I feel, I feel these, these guys were great, and if Hungary had a World Cup, you know, in, in their, on their names, they were there and they were written on the Jules Rimet trophy, then um, maybe football would remember them slightly different.

Maybe the world would remember them slightly differently.

They are, to many, forgotten apart from, you know, nerds like us and, and more importantly, um, Jonathan Wilsons and, and whoever it may be.

That's where it was formed.

And then it was run by a fella by the name of, you know, the guy who really took it to the next level was a man by the name of Jules Rimet.

And so the trophy, the original FIFA trophy was actually named after him, the Jules Rimet Cup.

England didn't even start in the World Cup until the 50s.

Okay.