Rodolphe William Seeldrayers (December 16, 1876 – October 7, 1955) was a Belgian
football
Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...
administrator who was the
fourth President of
FIFA
FIFA (; stands for ''Fédération Internationale de Football Association'' ( French), meaning International Association Football Federation ) is the international governing body of association football, beach football and futsal. It was found ...
, serving from 1954 to 1955. He was actively involved in the official associations of Belgium sports.
Early life
Born in 1876 in
Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf ( , , ; often in English sources; Low Franconian and Ripuarian: ''Düsseldörp'' ; archaic nl, Dusseldorp ) is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in th ...
, Germany,
Seeldrayers studied
law
Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior,Robertson, ''Crimes against humanity'', 90. with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been vario ...
at the
Université Libre de Bruxelles (''Free University of Brussels''), where he began his sporting activities. At 19 he was one of the founders of the ''Union royale belge des Sociétés de football association'' (URBSFA), or ''Royal Belgian Union of the Football Association Societies'', for which he was the
treasurer
A treasurer is the person responsible for running the treasury of an organization. The significant core functions of a corporate treasurer include cash and liquidity management, risk management, and corporate finance.
Government
The treasury o ...
for four years and a member of the Executive Counsel for 25 years. He was later elected as a member of honour. In 1914, the Union used his talents as an
orator
An orator, or oratist, is a public speaker, especially one who is eloquent or skilled.
Etymology
Recorded in English c. 1374, with a meaning of "one who pleads or argues for a cause", from Anglo-French ''oratour'', Old French ''orateur'' (14th ...
and named him a delegate to FIFA, of which he was made vice-president in 1927.
In 1899 Seeldrayers began a career as a
sports journalist
Sports journalism is a form of writing that reports on matters pertaining to sporting topics and competitions. Sports journalism started in the early 1800s when it was targeted to the social elite and transitioned into an integral part of the n ...
with the magazine "''La vie sportive''" (''Sporting Life''), writing a column under the pen name ''Spectator''. Ten years later, he founded the National Committee for Physical Education which merged with the Belgian Olympic Committee. He became head of the committee beginning in 1946, succeeding Prince Albert de Ligne.
The Olympics and FIFA
In 1920, he was technical secretary of the
Olympic Games
The modern Olympic Games or Olympics (french: link=no, Jeux olympiques) are the leading international sporting events featuring summer and winter sports competitions in which thousands of athletes from around the world participate in a var ...
at Antwerp, and a member of the appeals jury for
football
Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...
at the Olympics several times. He was most notable in this role at the
1936 Summer Olympics
The 1936 Summer Olympics (German: ''Olympische Sommerspiele 1936''), officially known as the Games of the XI Olympiad (German: ''Spiele der XI. Olympiade'') and commonly known as Berlin 1936 or the Nazi Olympics, were an international multi-sp ...
in Berlin, when during the Peru vs. Austria game spectators invaded the pitch which provoked an appeals jury consultation. The
Austrian Football Association
The Austrian Football Association (german: Österreichischer Fußball-Bund; ÖFB) is the governing body of football in Austria. It organises the football league, Austrian Bundesliga, the Austrian Cup and the Austria national football team, as w ...
sent a complaint to the appeals committee which decided, after deliberation, to re-play the match "behind closed doors". Peru disagreed and their entire Olympic squad left the Games complaining of the "crafty Berlin decision". He also received the official Czechoslovak complaint following the abandoned 1920 Olympic Final, which had been refereed by
John Lewis
John Robert Lewis (February 21, 1940 – July 17, 2020) was an American politician and civil rights activist who served in the United States House of Representatives for from 1987 until his death in 2020. He participated in the 1960 Nashville ...
.
An inveterate founder of clubs and associations, the following organizations are to Seeldrayers' credit: the
Waterloo Golf-Club (1923), the
Ixelles
( French, ) or (Dutch, ), is one of the 19 municipalities of the Brussels-Capital Region, Belgium. Located to the south-east of Brussels' city centre, it is geographically bisected by the City of Brussels. It is also bordered by the muni ...
Football Club (which would be part of the merger with the
Racing Club of Brussels), and the Anglo-Belgian Cricket Sporting Club. Selldrayers seemed to be well received in English circles: up-to-date and to the point in matters of sport, he spoke the English language. At the same time, he continued his journalistic activities and began a new collaboration with the publication ''Sports Echo'' (''L'Écho des Sports''). He ended this aspect of his career in 1935 while still continuing to publish articles and making his opinions known in the columns of the Bulletins of the International Olympic Committee.
World War II slowed but did not stop his activities. As a member of the
Belgian Olympic Committee
The Belgian Olympic and Interfederal Committee ( nl, Belgisch Olympisch en Interfederaal Comité, french: Comité Olympique et Interfédéral Belge), abbreviated BOIC or COIB, is the National Olympic Committee for Belgium. The administrative s ...
during the Occupation, he stood up for the independence of Belgian sport. At the end of the war, he was one of the members of the
International Olympic Committee
The International Olympic Committee (IOC; french: link=no, Comité international olympique, ''CIO'') is a non-governmental sports organisation based in Lausanne, Switzerland. It is constituted in the form of an association under the Swiss ...
for the first post-war Games, in 1946.
A great mutual respect existed between Seeldrayers and the then president of FIFA, universally respected Frenchman
Jules Rimet
Jules Rimet (; 14 October 1873 – 16 October 1956) was a French football administrator who was the 3rd President of FIFA, serving from 1921 to 1954. He is FIFA's longest-serving president, in office for 33 years. He also served as the presid ...
. This translated on the part of the Belgian, into a motion introduced on July 25, 1946, at a FIFA congress, to change the name of the
World Cup
A world cup is a global sporting competition in which the participant entities – usually international teams or individuals representing their countries – compete for the title of world champion. The event most associated with the concept i ...
to the "Jules Rimet Cup".
For many years, the question of amateurism posed a problem. With the economic development of sports, the phenomenon of professionalism began to bring into question the fundamentals of the conception of the Olympic Games, as P. de
Coubertin
Charles Pierre de Frédy, Baron de Coubertin (; born Pierre de Frédy; ...
wanted them to be. Debates raged and a Commission on Amateurism was created, supported by the International Olympic Committee, which Seeldrayers took part in. In the end, the commission submitted its final report in 1947, at the session in Stockholm. It included a definition of amateurism and required future participants in the Olympic Games to sign a declaration affirming they were true amateurs, and proposed the creation of a permanent commission. This was composed of three members of the International Olympic Committee, and a delegate of each international federation.
At the beginning of 1955,
Jules Rimet
Jules Rimet (; 14 October 1873 – 16 October 1956) was a French football administrator who was the 3rd President of FIFA, serving from 1921 to 1954. He is FIFA's longest-serving president, in office for 33 years. He also served as the presid ...
resigned from FIFA and passed his authority to his vice-president, R. W. Seeldrayers. This handing down of power, as well as the matches of the
World Cup
A world cup is a global sporting competition in which the participant entities – usually international teams or individuals representing their countries – compete for the title of world champion. The event most associated with the concept i ...
of 1954, were shown on television for the first time. Under his presidency, the Federation counted 85 members and celebrated its fiftieth anniversary.
Under his presidency of FIFA, Seeldrayers faced another problem: FIFA was reproached for having given permission for "false" amateurs to participate in a Helsinki tournament, even though a definition of amateurism had been introduced in its by-laws by Seeldrayers himself, vice president of the federation at the time. The problem was complex, with the decision on which games will participate in major sports events at stake. It was also a time when regimes used sports as a means of propaganda.
Aware of the significance of this problem, Seeldrayers remained faithful to his view of the sport. For him, "from a point of view strictly Olympic, sport is only possible, theoretically, when practiced by amateurs." His opinion didn't prevent him from respecting professional players who followed the spirit of the game with loyalty, sincerity, and fair-play. And even though he clearly saw the use of sports in communist propaganda, he understood and approved that phenomenon to a certain extent. In his opinion, sports were a key element of social organization. They must be integrated into the school curriculum on the same level that any other subject and are capital to youths' education. Seeldrayers considered the criticisms flawed, and over time, his opinion didn't improve. He believed that it was the duty of the press to teach the spectator.
R.W. Seeldrayers died a year after his election as president of FIFA, on October 7, 1955, due to illness, and received a semi-official funeral, following a governmental decision. He was posthumously elected a member of the
IOC (International Olympic Committee). It was then decided that this title would not be given posthumously again.
Sportsmanship
Seeldrayers was a very accomplished sportsman, evidenced by the many sports in which he competed. He had a preference for
team sports
A team sport includes any sport where individuals are organized into opposing teams which compete to win or cooperate to entertain their audience. Team members act together towards a shared objective. This can be done in a number of ways s ...
. This agreed with his concept of sports, since according to Seeldrayers, sports must be the playing field of an
apprenticeship
Apprenticeship is a system for training a new generation of practitioners of a Tradesman, trade or profession with on-the-job training and often some accompanying study (classroom work and reading). Apprenticeships can also enable practitioners ...
in the necessary values of
life
Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for growth, reaction to stimuli, metabolism, energ ...
and
community
A community is a social unit (a group of living things) with commonality such as place, norms, religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place situated in a given geographical area (e.g. a country, village, tow ...
.
Influence
Eight fields of Belgian sports benefited from Seeldrayers' attentions:
athletics
Athletics may refer to:
Sports
* Sport of athletics, a collection of sporting events that involve competitive running, jumping, throwing, and walking
** Track and field, a sub-category of the above sport
* Athletics (physical culture), competiti ...
,
football
Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...
,
aviation
Aviation includes the activities surrounding mechanical flight and the aircraft industry. ''Aircraft'' includes fixed-wing and rotary-wing types, morphable wings, wing-less lifting bodies, as well as lighter-than-air craft such as hot air ...
,
cricket
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striki ...
,
field hockey
Field hockey is a team sport structured in standard hockey format, in which each team plays with ten outfield players and a goalkeeper. Teams must drive a round hockey ball by hitting it with a hockey stick towards the rival team's shooting ci ...
,
golf
Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible.
Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standardized playing area, and coping wi ...
and, in a small measure,
tennis
Tennis is a racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent ( singles) or between two teams of two players each ( doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket that is strung with cord to strike a hollow rubber ball ...
and
swimming
Swimming is the self-propulsion of a person through water, or other liquid, usually for recreation, sport, exercise, or survival. Locomotion is achieved through coordinated movement of the limbs and the body to achieve hydrodynamic thrust that r ...
— athletics and football being his main focus. He was the Belgian 110 metre hurdles champion in 1897, and he competed as a hurdler for ten years. He was the Belgium Division of Honour champion with the
Racing
In sport, racing is a competition of speed, in which competitors try to complete a given task in the shortest amount of time. Typically this involves traversing some distance, but it can be any other task involving speed to reach a specific goa ...
-Club of Brussels' team in 1900, and captain of the
university
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, t ...
team of Brussels in 1898 and 1899. All in all, he competed for 26 years.
As for other fields, their practice lasted an average of ten years and always at an elevated level of accomplishment, winning, at least, a championship: he had five years in the Regatta Club (''Cercle des régates'') of Brussels and the "Sunburn" team (''Coup de Soleil''), ten years of cricket in ''le Racing'' and the "Anglo-Belgian Club" of Brussels, and was three times champion of Belgium. In 1924 he was captain of the national team which defeated France in Paris. For ten years he played hockey for the Racing-Club of Brussels, and in 1903, for the national team against France in Paris. He played golf from 1919 onward in the Waterloo Golf Club where he was captain for ten years.
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Seeldrayers, Rodolphe
1876 births
1955 deaths
Presidents of FIFA
Sportspeople from Düsseldorf
Belgian male hurdlers
Belgian male field hockey players
Belgian footballers
Belgian sports journalists
Association footballers not categorized by position