What is an international match? French football clubs and the earliest ‘international matches’

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe article attempts to show the origins of international football in France in the 1890s, well before the founding of FIFA. It is a different type of international football that did not correspond to the exclusive model of ‘international matches’ as used in later official histories. Sources for this article are mainly newspapers of the time, including a rather neglected source, the European Edition of the New York Herald, whose coverage of the earliest days of football in Paris was aimed at the cosmopolitan, mobile trans-national elite, and also at a Parisian audience interested in modern sport. The proprietor, J.G. Bennett, was particularly interested in international affairs, including international sporting encounters. Appended to the article is a list of matches of the period, played in France and abroad, which were referred to as ‘international’ in the France-based press. The article examines the sporting context of the 1890s, including the two important ‘British’ clubs, Standard A.C. and White Rovers, the gradual development of friendly international football matches in France and organised competitions, motivations for early matches on both the French side and the English, and the importance of socialisation and social networks. The article concludes that the Paris clubs’ early international involvement through holiday-time friendlies against foreign clubs to satisfy a need to measure their progress against the founders of the game were, by 1899, being replaced by matches against top provincial clubs and by a desire to move towards a genuinely national club championship. This development may be understood as a national championship being seen as a better way of improving the standard of play and consolidating the sport than through international club encounters.