The 1st was played in 1872 and was contested by England and Scotland. This sudden boom of organized football accompanied by staggering crowds of spectators brought with it certain problems with which other countries were not confronted until much later on. Professionalism was one of them. The 1st moves in this direction came in 1879, when Darwin, a small Lancashire club, twice managed to draw against the supposedly invincible Old Etonians in the FA Cup, before the famous team of London amateurs finally scraped through to win at the 3rd attempt. 2 Darwin players, the Scots John Love and Fergus Suter, are reported as being the 1st players ever to receive payment for their football talent.

 This practice grew rapidly and the Football Association found itself obliged to legalize professionalism as early as 1885. This development predated the formation of any national association outside of Great Britain (namely, in the Netherlands and Denmark) by exactly 4 years.

After the English Football Association, the next oldest are the Scottish FA (1873), the FA of Wales (1875) and the Irish FA (1880). Strictly speaking, at the time of the 1st international match, England had no other partner association against which to play. When Scotland played England in Glasgow on 30 November 1872, the Scottish FA did not even exist - it was not founded for another 3 months. The team England played that day was actually the oldest Scottish club team, Queen's Park.

The spread of football outside of the British Isles, mainly due to the British influence abroad, started slow, but it soon gathered momentum and spread rapidly to all parts of the globe. The next countries to form football associations after the Netherlands and Denmark in 1889 were New Zealand (1891), Argentina (1893), Chile (1895), Switzerland, Belgium (1895), Italy (1898), Germany, Uruguay (both in 1900), Hungary (1901) and Finland (1907). When FIFA was founded in Paris in May 1904 it had seven founder members: France, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain (represented by the Madrid FC), Sweden and Switzerland. The German Football Federation cabled its intention to join on the same day.

This international football community grew steadily, although it sometimes met with obstacles and setbacks. In 1912, twenty national associations were already affiliated to the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA). By 1925, the number had increased to thirty-nine, in 1930 - the year of the 1st World Cup - it was forty-six, in 1938, fifty-two and in 1950, after the interval caused by the Second World War, the number had reached sixty-eight. Today, FIFA comprises 204 member associations from all 4 corners of the globe. They comprise around 305,000 clubs - over 223,000 of which in Europe alone -, and more than 1,548,000 teams with around 246 million people who regularly play football.

By Dr. Wilfried Gerhardt