The International Federation of Association Football (Federation Internationale de Football Association in French), commonly known by its French acronym, FIFA, is the international governing body of association football, also known as soccer. Its headquarters currently are in Basel, Switzerland.
History
Foundation
FIFA was founded in Paris, France on the 21st May 1904 with the eleven FA at the time of the foundation. The founding members were the national association of England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Uruguay, Argentina, Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, Belgium and France. The early attempts at creating a tournament was a success with the British FA's accepting the first proposal of bringing the teams together in a World Cup event. This gave birth to the FIFA World Cup with the first tournament being held in Paris in 1906. Daniel Burley Woolfall took over as president as he made strides to unite the rules in football. The expansion of the FIFA federations were spreading.
Inter-war years
With international football rare during WW1, and FIFA nearly collapsed after Woolfall death. It was Hirschman who on his own kept FIFA alive and in 1919 he converted an assembly in Brussels. However, the British associations (representing England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales) withdrew in protest against the inclusion of countries from the Central Powers. They re-joined in the early '20s, but withdrew in 1929, after Uruguay got hosting rights to the 1930 FIFA World Cup. This sparked them creating a football competition in the British Empire Games which to this day still goes on. In 1920, Jules Rimet of France was elected Chairman, becoming President in 1921.
FIFA then took control of the football competition at the Olympics games branding as 'World Football Championship for Amateurs'. But the popularity of the event started to lose importance with the 1932 competition seeing crowds of only up to 500-1000 people.