The Colonialist

the barrel, but a bad barrel itself. It's a question that might be best answered by looking at FIFA's six President, Sir Stanley Rouse, a man with many laudable qualities except the one he and the lords of soccer needed most, the ability to see beyond the world as it was and see the world as it could be if international soccer was made a fair game for all. I'm Connor Powell.

This is episode five. The colonialist. Bobby Moore's white shorts were caked with mud, his red number six long Sleep England's jersey dripped with sweat as he led his team up the steep staircase at London's Wembley Stadium to the Royal Box. Bobby Moore leading them up to the Royal Box to receive the Jewelry may Cup and the Windows medals. Standing there in a light mustard yellow coat and matching hat was the young British monarch Queen Elizabeth the second,

as was FIFA's president, an Englishman named Stanley Rouse. After one of those dainty royal handshakes, Queen Elizabeth passed the World Cup trophy, named after FIFA's third president, Jules Romay, to England's exhausted but ecstatic captain. Before kissing FIFA's golden trophy, as was the tradition, More raised it above his head in triumph. Winning the nineteen sixty six World Cup over West Germany on its home soil remains the proudest moment

in English soccer history. For mini soccer fans around the world, that nineteen sixty six tournament is the golden Age of World Cup soccer, an era before commercialism took root, when the game itself, not politics or profit, was front and center. This golden era, like most of its kind, is a myth, an incomplete and often inaccurate story old men tell themselves

to avoid an honest historical accounting. Two years before More raised that precious trophy, FIFA's leadership made a series of decisions that caused the entire African continent and it's fifteen World Cup eligible nations to boycott the nineteen sixty six tournament. Think about that an entire continent skipped the World Cup.

That's quite a footnote for the history books. The seeds of this boycott were planted years before, and while FIFA was not then the criminal organization that we've come to know in our previous episodes, run by the likes of Set Bladder, Chuck Blazer, and Jack Warner, it was very

much a Eurocentric colonialists and straight up racist institution. In this episode and the next few, I want to tell you about FIFA's history, one that looks beyond the polished golden air packaging that you find on FIFA's website and share a reeler history that includes the bigotry and racism that robbed an entire continent of even a chance at World Cup glory, and the embrace of ruthless authoritarian regimes that put profits ahead of everything the game stands for.

These are the golden years. The President's as Stanley Ross and officials are FIFA. The International Football Federation met at the London Hotel to make the draw for the World Cup competition. It was a very English affair, shiny silver trophy cups with decorative winged handles line the front of the podium in the smoke filled ballroom of London's Royal Garden Hotel. There are four trophies, one for each of the four groups that will play in the first round

of the upcoming World Cup. A sea of old men with mostly white faces stared intensely at the FIFA officials sitting on the stage. A fifth trophy, also silver plated but covered with a handkerchief, is full of sixteen slips of paper. Each slip of paper has the name of a national team, and after a shake or two, piece of paper is pulled out, the name of the country has read aloud and the slip of paper has dropped into one of the four corresponding trophies. That's how the

first round matches of the sixteen teams are decided. England, in the opening match on July eleventh at Wembley, one by one, FIFA's president Stanley Rouse, that was his voice there read out the names of the teams competing in the nineteen sixty six World Cup. It's a quaint scene that had been repeated in one form or another seven times previously, ever since FIFA had become the lords of Soccer and held it's inaugural championship tournament in nineteen thirty

in Uruguay. Unlike today, where FIFA's big decisions have become star studded affairs, early events were more like high tea and far less flashy as British soccer historians do. Horseville told me the draw for the World Cup, for example, it's very business like. It's sort of two platforms of men, names drawn out. It's noted down on paper, it's popped on a board and not setting. Everything's finishing. So let's go back to FIFA's very start in nineteen o four.

The organization was far more rudimentary than it is today. It was all about staging matches. It was the end of the nineteenth century and soccer's popularity was surging around the globe, particularly in Europe and South America. The oldest international football matches England versus Scotland. The second oldest is Argentina versus Uruguay. You know, so it was a very much two continent sport. There was a big problem. The

rules of soccer vary from country to country. Even town to town matches were regularly played under one set of rules. During the first half of the game and another in the second half. Promoters have begun to stage international competitions, and for soccer to survive, i even thrive, the rules

needed to be unified. So I'm May one. Four representatives from seven national federations France, Belgium, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland and the Netherlands met in the back room of a Parisian sports club to codify the rules of international soccer. You'll notice the slate doesn't include any South American countries. In nineteen o four, many of those countries were treated as more colonies aligned with Europe than as fully independent nations.

Will be then the footboard associates FIFA. FIFA's own portrayal of the moment is captured in a ridiculous self produced propaganda film called United Passions, released in America at the height of FIFA's two thousand and fifteen corruption scandal. The film grows less than a thousand dollars in the US on its opening weekend. The film celebrates the signing of the FIFA Charter, treated it as something akin to the signing of the Magna Carta or the Declaration of Independence.

The humorous is just well pronounced, but back to our history lesson. Within a few years of its formation, FIFA added England, Germany, South Africa, Argentina and Chile to its club. This made the soccer organization, at least on paper, global. In reality, FIFA's beating heart remained European, and its administrators did little to integrate the South Americans, who really had

no role in managing world soccer. During FIFA's first seventy years, all eleven of its permanent presidents in general secretaries came from Europe. South American soccer and its issues rarely, if ever, made it onto FIFA's agenda. It was a very Eurocentric organization, so with that came this philosophy of colone realism imperialism. With the exception of Switzerland, all of FIFA's founding members were former or current colonial powers. FIFA's early administrators came

from that world, grew up in that world. Nineteenth century colonialism and Christian superiority were to them given, and they often viewed non European countries, particularly they're current and former colonies with disdain. Some, like General Secretary Carl Anton Wilhelm Hirschman, even resisted FIFA's South American expansion on the grounds it

would dilute the organization's European and enlightened character. Even presidents who supported FIFA's early expansion from Jewels were made to Arthur Drury to Stanley Ross still believe soccer radiated from Europe. They viewed these non European countries as less civilized and incapable of leadership and global affairs. Most shamefully, Fee of his founders believe these countries would only come into the twentieth century if they followed the steady hand and firm

rules of European institutions. Nowhere was this reality more evident than in World Cup draws, where the lords of soccer often excluded non white countries. Here, again, Stu horse Field, when you have European presidents who come from nations who have colonized African states, there is always going to become flat. There is always going to be this issue of race

and repression. So in the spring of nineteen sixty six, as Sir Stanley Rouse read out the names of the sixteen nations invited to compete in the World Cup, I wanted to put this sequence of matches now on the board on the lift ten were from Europe, five or from Latin America, and one was from Asia. None were from Africa. It might have been called a World Cup, but it was more like a European Championship with a few friendly nations invited to the party. Which it's just

the way FIFA's European leadership liked it. Keep in mind it was now nineteen sixty six, not eighteen sixty six. The Beatles were closer to their end than their beginning. The Summer of Love was just two years away. The US Civil Rights Bill had just been passed. FIFA, in all of its humors, was continuing to expand with the idea that its vision would rule the world. But the world was starting to see things differently. Small plumes of black smoke rose into the air. It's March nine sixty

and the Sharpville township of South Africa. Men, women, and children, young and old are seeing hymns as they burned their government issued identification cards. The white police ordered the black demonstrators to stop and back away from the police station's flimsy chain length defense. They protesters ignored the parking commands and continued protesting. The Aparthei regime's newest racial decree that required black South Africans to always carry their ideas or

face arrest. The peaceful protests turns ugly when a squadron of US built Fight SI saber jets buzzed the crowd to scare protesters away. That's when the rocks begin to fly, raining down on the one and fifty or so white police officers. Police get the command to load their weapons, then can be ordered a fire. Gunshots ripped through the backs of unarmed protesters as they fled. The Charville massacre as the march murders are now known, left sixty nine

people dead and hundreds more injured. It all so put an international spotlight on the South African government and it's horrific apartheid system. Historian Peter A. Legie wrote about the events of that day in his book African Soccer Escapes, How a Continent changed the world's game well apart It was a harsh form of government sanctioned racism and segregation, carried out by a white minority in a country where

they never represented more than twent of the population. If the white Afrikaans government was embarrassed or remorseful about the vicious and racist attack, they didn't show it now they doubled down a little more than a week after the Sharpville massacre, the Interior Minister Yon the Clerk, said the segregation of South African sports would continue, especially in the increasingly popular game of soccer. Not only were mixed race teams outlawed in South Africa, but so were mixed race

teams from other nations. This would be a big test for FIFA. The Agusty era was thick and oppressive when FIFA gathered for its nineteen sixty World Congress, but the scorching Mediterranean son wasn't the only thing causing delegates from FIFA's now sixty nine member nations the sweat that summer. Only three years before, Egypt, Ethiopia, Sudan and South Africa, the only four independent nations in Africa, united to form

the Confederation of African Football or CALF. CALF gave the continent a permanent say inside FIFA, and while some in FIFA's leadership saw the formation of CALF as a healthy sign of soccer's global reach, the expansion was a political

conundrum for FIFA's old guard. Here Again, as historian Peter A. Legie, Egyptians, Ethio Opens and Sudanese demanded that South Africa field they racially integrated team at that inaugural African Nations Cup in Cartoum, but the White Association refused to do so, basically hiding behind an excuse that they couldn't do anything about government policy. Citing its policy of racial and tolerance. These three African countries voted to expel South Africa from CALF shortly after

its formation. Now in Rome, with the Sharpville massacre still fresh in the mind of its delegates, the same three African nations demanded FIFA boot South Africa from the global soccer community. It was an inherently racist football organization that would not tolerate mixed race teams. It would not tolerate

competition between black teams or white teams. FIFA was formed by Europeans for the sole purpose of governing international soccer, so the idea of FIFA expelling one of their own for political reasons was unthinkable to most of FIFA's Eurocentric members, especially since such a move would force those same nations to look directly at their own colonial pass FIFA was terribly concerned about the political ramifications of this Within the organization,

Many of the non European, non white delegates felt the organization had to act. Doing nothing risk undermining FIFA's policy of non discrimination towards players of all races. Under the sweltering Roman sky, FIFA's Congress voted fifty two to ten to adopt a resolution declaring soccer matches open to all people, regardless of race or religion. They stopped short of kicking

South Africa out directly. Instead, they said in the nation that continued to practice racial discrimination would be expelled from FIFA within a year. It was a courageous policy forced on the founders by FIFA's newest members, and it had real consequences, as Allegedy explains, by a late nineteen six one, time was up. South Africa turned down the opportunity to introduce racially integrated football, and FIFA suspended South African September

of sixty one. The suspension meant that the apartheid regime would be banned from the World Cup and from any other international soccer competitions, a devastating blow to a sporting nation that had not yet faced international pressure for its apartheid system, and this was a symbolic victory at a very difficult time for deliberation movements in South Africa. When FIFA, this major global body, sanctioned white South Africa, it instilled hope at a very much needed time for most black

South Africans. It was historic. FIFA had set itself apart from most international organizations for its willingness to tackle a difficult human rights challenge. This was really the first major incident in international football of expulsion due to racial discrimination,

but the moment was fleeting. Just three days later, the very same group that booted South Africa out elected the conservative Englishman Stanley Rouse, a staunch defender of South Africa, as its president, and in so doing set up more than a decade of conflict. Stanley Rouse rarely gave an inch to anyone. At six ft three inches tall, the former English referee, school teacher and soccer official was a

mountain of a man on and off the pitch. Stodgy and self righteous, he believed the rules of soccer, like the rules governing civilized society, were sacro sainct. There was right, there was wrong, there was black and there was white. Here again as Stu Horsfield, he was very intelligent without being a great Denies are in a great thinker. He was very stable, incredibly stable person. FIFA sixth president was once asked by a journalist if he had ever been

offered a bribe. Rolse sneered at the question and the implication that a man of his moral grounding could be corrupted by money. He insisted that any attempt to bribe him would be a foolish endeavor, and he vowed that anyone who tried would be expelled from the sport. He was so incorruptible. He said, anyone who wanted to be on a FIFA committee should pay for their own train ticket or airfare to Zurich, now the home of FIFA,

and earned their spot. The only thing more rigid more immovable than Rouse's Victorian principles were his steadfast imperialist beliefs. Rouse believed in the superiority of the British Empire. He also believed, as only someone so set in their ways can, that his views were beyond politics. They were fundamental. As such, he said sports and politics should never mix, nor should

sports be used to promote a political agenda. As a very well educated young man, he was also all his time a man who believed in the amateury thoughts and the sport shouldn't be a battleground for politics. Rouse once described an African referee training program as missionary work, which I guess means Rouse wasn't against mixing sports, religion and politics if his own conservative, Christian and colonialist beliefs were

being upheld. So it might not surprise you to learn that Rouse was a vocal supporter of and regularly expressed sympathy for South Africa's brutal apartheid regime and it's all white soccer association. When Rousse was elected FIFA president just three days after the organization suspended South Africa, he immediately

went to work to undo the ban. He was constantly trying to find ways to get a party in South Africa readmitted, and this really angered many members of FIFA as well as, of course, the anti apartheid movement as a whole. In January of nineteen sixty three, Rouse led a delegation to South Africa too. I guess the word is investigate the situation. You'll hear the details in just a moment, but let me give you the top line.

RALS met with the government sanctions all white pro apartheid Football Association of South Africa and he met with a breakaway football delegation, the racially mixed South African Soccer Federation. He took the side of the white guys here again his Stu Horse film the South African Soccer Federation, who set themselves up as an alternative governing body whose mandate was to represent all of South Africa, so white South Africans, black South Africans, mixed Ray South Africans, but Stanna Rousse

refused to recognize them. FIFA's president returned home them with a glowing report of the Football Association of South Africa and recommended FIFA's Executive Council reinstate the old white group. They produced a truly astounding report that concluded that there was no racial discrimination in South Africa, and as a result, FIFA lifted temporarily this suspension on a part to in South Africa. This was rather incredible, Indeed, the reaction of

many members was outreache. The African continent just saw that as another indicated that while Stanley Rouse was in charge, FIFA would be an inherently racist organization. When Stanley Rouse's playing touchdown in Egypt in January of n Cairo's once rudimentary airport was nearing the end of a six year construction project, two new runways and a spacious modern terminal, or just weeks away from opening. It was to be a symbol of just how far Egypt and Africa had

advanced since independence. But if the continent was looking to the future, FIFA's president arrived carrying the baggage of its colonial past. Rouse had just finished his investigation into South Africa, and after FIFA's Executive Committee officially reinstated South Africa under Rouse's direction, he stopped in Cairo for the Confederation of

African Football's General Assembly. Much like the airport, CALF was going through a remarkable transformation, growing from just four member nations in ninety seven to more than thirty a few years later. As it grew in size, Peter Leggie says, and also grew in confidence. As more African nations wonder independence. In the late fifties and especially in the sixties, this relationship ship between FIFA and Africa became more and more contentious.

The meeting between Rouse and the African delegates was every bit as tense and confrontational as you would expect. During his opening speech, Rylse City had seen no evidence of discrimination in South Africa, and in a very paternalistic tone, the Englishman suggested fiefa's African members would just have to accept the Executive Committee's decision. Now, South Africa was just

one point of contention in that meeting. Despite adding dozens of new nations the FIFA's membership rollins since World War Two, the World Cup remained anything but a global tournament. At the nineteen fifty eight in nineteen sixty two World Cups, the only sides that qualified for the competition were from Latin America and Europe. There were no African or Asian

teams represented. This only added to the strong sense that the World Cup was essentially a European soccer festival that, as I said earlier, allowed a few Latin American friends that crash the party. Calf lobby Rouse and FIFA's Executive Committee to give at least one automatic spot to the

now sizeable African delegation. When FIFA announced that the top African and the top Asian team would be forced to compete in a winner take all playoff to secure the one non European, non Latin American spot in the nineteen sixty six World Cup, Calf decided the only way to force FIFA to take their concerns seriously was the withdrawal in mass from the global tournament. In other words, stage of boycott. So Africa just boycotts in the entire World

Cup qualification process and didn't end to the tournament. Some seventy nations tried to earn a spot in the nineteen sixty six World Cup, none of course, were from Africa, but the continent was represented at least in terms of talent. While England won the tournament on its home soil and Bobby Moore hoisted the Jewels were made trophy before eighty thou ecstatic English fans. The top goal scorer of the tournament played for Portugal and was born in Mozambique, then

a Portuguese colony. Even though the African nations boycott of the nineteen sixty six World Cup qualifying process, kaf did achieve a big victory off the field. Seventy eight of FIFA's one hundred members voted to overturn Stanley Rouse's recommendation and once again suspend, though they didn't expel South Africa from World soccer play. Rouse had overruled FIFA's membership, and

now three years later FIFA's members had overruled Rouse. It was a monumental slap in the face to South Africa's apartheid regime and to Rouse and by Africa had won a guaranteed spot in that year's World Cup and those turbulent times. The world was changing and Rouse and his ilk were stuck in the past, and he would soon ace once again the collective wrath of the African continent. It was a gray, rainy Dane Frankfurt when Stanley Rouse

woke and walked to breakfast. For almost thirteen years, the aristocratic Englishman had been the most powerful man in world soccer. In his mind, his re election was a foregone conclusion. Yeah, sure, there had been some disagreements between FIFA's old guarden its newer members on his watch, but what Rouse thought were isolated disagreements over South Africa and automatic spots at the World Cup were clear evidence to his detractors of FIFA's

inherent racism and ingrain colonial structure. They wanted change. Still, as Roose sat drinking his English breakfast tea on the morning of June, he saw a little reason to think there was anything to worry about other than a light rein in the day's forecast. Here's the story in John Sugden, author of the book Football, Corruption and Lies. When it came to the seventeen four election, he thought he could put his feet up and rely on the Africans and

the agents. He thought he could rely on the support because he'd been so loyal to them in his own mind. As FIFA's members gathered in West Germany for its presidential election, the winds of change were blowing, and Rouse was oblivious. Here's Stue Horsfield. It was still convinced that this almost colonial attitude of we looked after you since you've come into the FIFA family. He still assumed that that was

enough to secure the vote. He didn't acknowledge the mobilization of African nations, of Asian nations and the fact that they had had enough, that had enough of what they'd seen as an inherently racist organization. Frustrated with Rousse's colonial complacency, the Confederation of African Football, which had now grown to thirty seven nations, had thrown their support behind the wealthy

and outspoken Brazilian sports administrator Jiao Havalanche. The fifty eight year old former Olympic swimmer positioned himself as a champion of the southern and to be blunt browner game of soccer. As the Brazilian sports official Silvio Pacheco wrote at the time about Jaojavelange, his candidacy is not for South America,

his candidacy is for the entire world. If Rouss was celebrated in the patrician dining rooms of London, Paris and Zurich, Havlanch would align himself with the players on the dirt pitches of Cairo, Kinshasa and Kingston. Before arriving in Frankfurt for the nine election, Havlanch toured the world with the Brazilian superstar Pale, visiting a remarkable eighty different countries. During this whistle stop tour, Havalanche courted supporters by attacking FIFA's

European dominance. He vowed to expand the World Cup from sixteen to four teams and increase the number of automatic spots for Asians and Africans, an expansion Rousse opposed at a fear of deluting the tournament's European nature, and most crucially, Havalanche promised unlike Rouse to permanently ban South Africa from FIFA because of While Stanley Roush refused to acknowledge and refused to see, Havalanche very much takes advantage and can see the opportunity that's there if he can call the

African vote and if he can mobilize the African and Asian nations. Now. As attractive as these policies were the FIFA's newer members, getting them to vote was an entirely different matter. Havlange very little scruples, very good at manipulating the situations to himself. In many of the newer national delegations were poor and they lacked the money to travel

to far flung Frankfurt for a FIFA congress. So Havalanch, who was born the wealthy son of an arms dealer and made millions during a very successful business career, used his own personal wealth to fly in Key voters before the nineteen seventy four election. This just wasn't done within the stuffy and aristocratic FIFA, remember rals saying new members should buy their own tickets and Rousse they didn't have the money anyways to carry out such a crass strategy.

Habland would later talk openly about the helping hand he gave would be supporters. By the time FIFA's members sat down to vote, Rouse's miscalculation was on full display. He didn't stand a chance. Havalans defeated the uncompromised Englishman sixty eight votes to fifty two and became fifa seventh president. Stew horse Field pinpoints where Rouse led his eye off the ball because of Stanley Rouse's refusal to change, in his refusal to accept politics, having a place in the

sport that he loves ultimately becomes his own doing. Once the election was confirmed, Havalanche kiss Rouse on the cheek, presented the former president with a bouquet of flowers. Rouse would later comment that the bouquet felt more like a burial wreath. Under Havlange, a new era would begin, one of exploding revenues and commercialization and globalization. When he took control of FIFA seventy four, it was still a modest

operation with virtually nothing in the bank. By the time the Brazilian retired in FIFA had four billion dollars in reserves, and it become a two hundred and fifty million dollar a year business. But the man who built FIFA into a multibillion dollar marketing machine. Would also be implicated in a string of scandals involving millions of dollars in bribes and shady kickbacks, and worse, Avalanche had a nasty habit of cozing up to gangsters and dictators and choosing profit

over human rights. That's coming up next on The Lords of Soccer. The Lords of Soccer, Al FIFA Stole the Beautiful Game is an Inside Voices media production in conjunction with I Heart Radio. The series was written and executive produced by Gary Scott and me Connor Powell. Logan Heftel and Katie mcmurran provided the sound design with assistance from j. C. Swaddick and Jake blue Note. Alec Cowen is our associate

producer and Jeffrey Katz was our story editor. Our fact checker is Alexa O'Brien and thanks to Miles Gray, who produced the series for I Heart Radio. If you have any comments or questions, please reach out. You can find us on Twitter. I'm at Connor m Powell and Gary is at Gary Robert Scott and if you have any stories about FIFA let us know. If you like what you hear, please give us a shout out at the hashtag lords of soccer