FIFA
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International Federation of Association
This article is about the international association football organisation. For
Football
the video games, see FIFA (video game series).
(FIFA)
FIFA headquarters
The International Federation of Association
Football (French: Fédération Internationale de Football Association),
commonly known by the acronym FIFA (usual English pronunciation: /ˈfiːfə/), is
Motto For the Game. For the World.
the international governing body of association football,futsal and beach
football. Its headquarters are located in Zurich, Switzerland, and its
Formation 21 May 1904
current president is Sepp Blatter. FIFA is responsible for the organisation
Type Federation of national associations and governance of football's major international tournaments, most notably
the FIFA World Cup, held since 1930. Nineteen editions of the FIFA World
Headquarters Zurich, Switzerland Cup have been held so far. The next edition is to be held in Brazil in 2014.
FIFA has 208 member associations, three more than the International
Membership 208 national associations
Olympic Committee and five fewer than the International Association of
Athletics Federations.
Official languages English, French, German,Spanish[1]
[edit]History
President Sepp Blatter
Main article: History of FIFA
The need for a single body to oversee the game became apparent at the
Vice President Ali bin Al Hussein
beginning of the 20th century with the increasing popularity of international
Website www.FIFA.com
fixtures. FIFA was founded in Paris on 21 May 1904; the French name and
acronym remain, even outside French-speaking countries. The founding
members were the national associations of Belgium, Denmark, France, The Netherlands, Spain (represented
by Madrid Football Club, Spanish federation was created in 1913), Sweden and Switzerland. Also, that same day, the
German Association declared its intention of affiliating through a telegram.
The first president of FIFA was Robert Guérin. Guérin was replaced in 1906 by Daniel Burley Woolfall from England,
by then a member association. The next tournament staged, the football competition for the 1908 Olympics in
London was more successful, despite the presence of professional footballers, contrary to the founding principles of
FIFA.
Membership of FIFA expanded beyond Europe with the application of South Africa in 1908, Argentina and Chile in
1912, and Canada and the United States in 1913.
During World War I, with many players sent off to war and the possibility of travel for international fixtures severely
limited, there were few international fixtures, and the organisation's survival was in doubt. Post-war, following the
death of Woolfall, the organisation was run by Dutchman Carl Hirschmann. It was saved from extinction, but at the
cost of the withdrawal of the Home Nations (of the United Kingdom), who cited an unwillingness to participate in
international competitions with their recent World War enemies. The Home Nations later resumed their membership.
The FIFA collection is held by the National Football Museum in England.
[edit]Structure
Map of the World with the six confederations.
Main article: List of FIFA Member Associations
FIFA is an association established under the Laws of Switzerland. Its headquarters are in Zurich.
FIFA's supreme body is the FIFA Congress, an assembly made up of representatives from each affiliated member
association. The Congress assembles in ordinary session once every year and, additionally, extraordinary sessions
have been held once a year since 1998. Only the Congress can pass changes to FIFA's statutes.
Congress elects the President of FIFA, its General Secretary and the other members of FIFA's Executive Committee.
The President and General Secretary are the main officeholders of FIFA, and are in charge of its daily administration,
carried out by the General Secretariat, with its staff of approximately 280 members.
FIFA's Executive Committee, chaired by the President, is the main decision-making body of the organisation in the
intervals of Congress. FIFA's worldwide organisational structure also consists of several other bodies, under authority
of the Executive Committee or created by Congress as standing committees. Among those bodies are the Finance
Committee, the Disciplinary
Beside from its worldwide institutions (presidency, Executive Committee,
Congress, etc.) there are six confederations recognised by FIFA which oversee
the game in the different continents and regions of the world. National
associations, and not the continental confederations, are members of FIFA. The
continental confederations are provided for in FIFA's statutes. National
associations must claim membership to both FIFA and the confederation in which
their nation is geographically resident for their teams to qualify for entry to FIFA's
competitions (with a few geographic exceptions listed below):
AFC – Asian Football Confederation in Asia and Australia
CAF – Confédération Africaine de Football in Africa
CONCACAF – Confederation of North, Central American and
Caribbean Association Football in North and Central America
CONMEBOL – Confederación Sudamericana de Fútbol in South
America
OFC – Oceania Football Confederation in Oceania
UEFA – Union of European Football Associations in Europe
Nations straddling the traditional boundary between
Europe and Asia have generally had their choice of
confederation. As a result, a number of transcontinental
nations including Russia, Turkey, Cyprus, Armenia, Aze
rbaijan and Georgia have chosen to become part of
UEFA despite the bulk of their land area being in
Asia. Israel, although lying entirely within Asia, joined
UEFA in 1994, after decades of its football teams being
boycotted by many AFC countries. Kazakhstan moved
from the AFC to UEFA in 2002. Australia was the latest
to move from the OFC to AFC in January 2006.
Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana have always
been CONCACAF members despite their location in
South America.
In total, FIFA recognises 208 national associations and
their associated men's national teams as well as 129
women's national teams; see the list of national football
teams and their respective country codes. FIFA has
more member states than the United Nations, as FIFA
recognises several non-sovereign entities as distinct
nations, such as the four Home Nations within the
United Kingdom or politically disputed territories such as
Palestine.[2] The FIFA World Rankings are updated
monthly and rank each team based on their
performance in international competitions, qualifiers,
and friendly matches. There is also a world ranking for
women's football, updated four times a year.
[edit]Recognitions and awards
FIFA awards, each year, the title of FIFA World Player of the
Year to the top men's and women's players of the year, as
part of its annual awards ceremony which also recognises
team and international football achievements.
In 1994 FIFA published the FIFA World Cup All-Time Team.
In 2002 FIFA announced the FIFA Dream Team, an all-time
all-star team chosen by fans in a poll.
As part of its centennial celebrations in 2004, FIFA
organised a "Match of the Century"
between France and Brazil
[edit]Governance and game development
Main article: Laws of the Game (association football)
The laws that govern football, known officially as the Laws of
the Game, are not solely the responsibility of FIFA; they are
maintained by a body called the International Football
Association Board (IFAB). FIFA has members on its board
(four representatives); the other four are provided by the
football associations of the United
Kingdom: England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland,
who jointly established IFAB in 1882 and are recognised for
the creation and history of the game. Changes to the Laws
of the Game must be agreed by at least six of the eight
delegates.
[edit]Discipline of national associations
FIFA frequently takes active roles in the running of the sport
and developing the game around the world. One of its
sanctions is to suspend teams and associated members
from international competition when a government interferes
in the running of FIFA's associate member organisations or if
the associate is not functioning properly.
A 2007 FIFA ruling that a player can be registered with a
maximum of three clubs, and appear in official matches for a
maximum of two, in a year measured from July 1 to June 30
has led to controversy, especially in those countries whose
seasons cross that date barrier, as in the case of two former
Ireland internationals. As a direct result of this controversy,
FIFA modified this ruling the following year to accommodate
transfers between leagues with out-of-phase seasons.
[edit]FIFA Anthem
Main article: FIFA Anthem
Since the 1994 FIFA World Cup, like the UEFA Champions
League, FIFA has adopted an anthem composed by the
German composer Franz Lambert. The FIFA Anthem is
played at the beginning of official FIFA sanctioned matches
and tournaments such as international friendlies, the FIFA
World Cup, FIFA Women's World Cup, FIFA U-20 World
Cup, FIFA U-17 World Cup, FIFA U-20 Women's World
Cup, FIFA Women's U-17 World Cup, FIFA Futsal World
Cup, FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup, and FIFA Club World
Cup.[3]
[edit]Criticism
[edit]Allegations of corruption and legislative
interference
In May 2006 British investigative reporter Andrew Jennings'
book Foul! The Secret World of FIFA: Bribes, Vote-Rigging
and Ticket Scandals (Harper Collins) caused controversy
within the football world by detailing an alleged international
cash-for-contracts scandal following the collapse of FIFA's
marketing partner ISL, and revealed how some football
officials have been urged to secretly repay the sweeteners
they received. The book also alleged that vote-rigging had
occurred in the fight for Sepp Blatter's continued control of
FIFA.
Shortly after the release of Foul! a BBC television exposé by
Jennings and BBC producer Roger Corke for the BBC news
programme Panorama was broadcast. In this hour-long
programme, screened on June 11, 2006, Jennings and
the Panorama team agree that Sepp Blatter was being
investigated by Swiss police over his role in a secret deal to
repay more than £1m worth of bribes pocketed by football
officials.
All testimonies offered in the Panorama expose were
provided through a disguised voice, appearance, or both,
save one; Mel Brennan, formerly a lecturer at Towson
University in the United States (and from 2001–2003 Head
of Special Projects for CONCACAF, a liaison to the e-FIFA
project and a 2002 FIFA World Cup delegate), became the
first high-level football insider to go public with substantial
allegations of greed, corruption, nonfeasance and
malfeasance by CONCACAF and FIFA leadership. During
the Panorama exposé, Brennan—the highest-level African-
American in the history of world football governance—
Jennings and many others exposed allegedly inappropriate
allocations of money at CONCACAF, and drew connections
between ostensible CONCACAF criminality and similar
behaviours at FIFA. Since then, and in the light of fresh
allegations of bribery and corruption and opaque action by
FIFA in late 2010,[4] both Jennings and Brennan remain
highly critical of FIFA, with Brennan calling directly for an
alternative to FIFA to be considered by the stakeholders of
the sport throughout the world.[5]
In a further Panorama documentary broadcast on BBC
One on 29 November 2010, Jennings alleged that three
senior FIFA officials, Nicolas Leoz, Issa
Hayatou and Ricardo Teixeira, had been paid huge bribes by
FIFA's marketing partner ISL between 1989 and 1999, which
FIFA had failed to investigate. He claimed they appeared on
a list of 175 bribes paid by ISL, totalling about $100 million.
A former ISL executive said that there were suspicions within
ISL that the company was only awarded the marketing
contract for successive World Cups by paying bribes to FIFA
officials. The programme also alleged that another current
official, Jack Warner, has been repeatedly involved in
reselling World Cup tickets to touts; Sepp Blatter said that
FIFA had not investigated the allegation because it had not
been told about it via 'official channels'.
The programme also criticized FIFA for allegedly requiring
World Cup host bidding nations to agree to implement
special laws for the World Cup, including blanket tax
exemption for FIFA and sponsors, and limitation of workers'
rights. It alleged that governments of bidding nations are
required to keep the details of the required laws confidential
during the bidding process; but that they were revealed by
the Dutch government, which refused to agree to them, as a
result of which it was told by FIFA that its bid could be
adversely affected. According to the programme, following
Jennings' earlier investigations he was banned from all FIFA
press conferences, for reasons he says have not been made
clear; and the accused officials failed to answer questions
about his latest allegations, either verbally or by letter.
British Prime Minister David Cameron and Andy Anson,
head of England's World Cup bid, criticized the timing of the
broadcast, three days before FIFA's decision on the host for
the 2018 FIFA World Cup, on the grounds that it might
damage the UK's bid; the voters included officials accused
by the programme.[6][7]
FIFA's choice to award the 2018 World Cup to Russia and
the 2022 World Cup to Qatar, has been widely criticised by
English-speaking media.[8][9][10][11][12] It has been alleged that
some FIFA inside sources insist that the Russian kickbacks
of cash and gifts given to FIFA executive members were
enough to secure the Russian 2018 bid weeks before the
result was announced.[13] Sepp Blatter was widely criticised
in the media for giving a warning about the "evils of the
media" in a speech to FIFA executive committee members
shortly before they voted on the hosting of the 2018 world
cup, a reference to the Sunday Times exposés [14] and the
Panorama investigation.[15]
[edit]Video replay
FIFA does not permit video evidence during matches,
although it is permitted for subsequent disciplinary sanctions.
[16]
The 1970 meeting of the International Football
Association Board "agreed to request the television
authorities to refrain from any slow-motion play-back which
reflected, or might reflect, adversely on any decision of the
referee".[17] In 2008, FIFA President Sepp Blatter said: "Let it
be as it is and let's leave [football] with errors. The television
companies will have the right to say [the referee] was right or
wrong, but still the referee makes the decision — a man, not
a machine."[18]
It has been said that instant replay is needed given the
difficulty of tracking the activities of 22 players on such a
large field,[19] and it has been proposed that instant replay be
used in penalty incidents, fouls which lead to bookings or red
cards and whether the ball has crossed the goal line, since
those events are more likely than others to be game
changing.[20]
Critics also point out that instant replay is already in use in
other sports, including rugby union, cricket, American
football, Canadian football, basketball, baseball, tennis,
and ice hockey.[19][21][22][23][24] As one notable proponent of
video replay, Portugal coach Carlos Queiroz has been
quoted as saying that the "credibility of the game" is at stake.
[25]
An incident during a second-round game in the 2010 FIFA
World Cup between England and Germany, where a shot
by Frank Lampard, which would have leveled the scores at
2–2, crossed the line but was not seen to do so by the match
officials, led FIFA officials to declare that they will re-
examine the use of goal-line technology.[26] Germany
defeated England by a score of 4-1.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIFA#History
