Searching for FIFA Founder Jules Rimet
The life of FIFA’s founder shows that global soccer’s governing organization’s willingness to embrace brutal regimes was baked in from the start.
One beautiful autumn morning I cycled from my flat in Paris to a municipal cemetery in the suburb of Bagneux. I was looking for the grave of Jules Rimet. Bagneux was a surprisingly unglamorous place for him to be buried; when he died in 1956, he had served as FIFA’s president for thirty-three years, and the World Cup trophy had already been named after him.
Although I was armed with a map of the cemetery’s celebrity graves, it took me half an hour to find the Rimet family’s. Nobody seemed to have tended it in years. The flat tombstone with its stone cross was overgrown with moss.
There was a sprig of withered leaves that someone must have left months before. Only one inscription in the stone was still legible: “Simon Rimet, 1911–2002. ” Perhaps the family had died out.
The sole sign of the man I had come for was a small gold plaque inscribed, “Jules RIMET, 24/10/1873 – 15/10/1956. ” It didn’t mention anything he had done in life. Only the golden colour evoked the gold of the Jules Rimet Cup – the original World Cup trophy, which has vanished even more fully than its creator.
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