On October 23, 2023, La Poste will issue a stamp bearing the image of Jules RIMET, creator of the Football World Cup, to mark the 150th anniversary of his birth.
Jules Rimet was born on October 24, 1873, in Haute-Saône. Founder of the Red Star Club in 1897, first president of the French Football Federation in 1919, president of FIFA (International Federation of Association Football) from 1929 to 1954, he is the creator of the Football World Cup.
By imagining what will become the most popular event on the planet, this jurist is pursuing a dream: making football a “means of understanding and friendship between all the young people of the world”. Jules Rimet also campaigns to professionalize football. In the spirit of this humanist nourished by social Catholicism, this professionalization should allow young people from modest backgrounds to earn their living by shining in the field.
Jules Rimet finally gives himself another objective. A great lover of poetry and literature, he is convinced that sport and culture must combine on a daily basis. At Red Star, he created a poetry magazine and summoned the best writers to a literary section. The goal is not just to produce beautiful pages on sport. The presence of writers should help young footballers to flourish off the field and prepare for life. “Work the body, awaken the mind,” he repeated.
Organizer of the first five World Cups – in Uruguay (1930), Italy (1934), France (1938), Brazil (1950), Switzerland (1954) – he never stopped asserting his philosophy “sporting”: the game, not as an end, but as a field of brotherhood and peace between peoples; professionalism, not as a commodification of sport, but as the shortest path to performance and individual emancipation, without distinction of social class. Jules Rimet died on October 15, 1956, in Suresnes.
