Robert Guérin is hailed as the founder of FIFA, having hosted the meeting in May 1904 that brought football nations together in common cause. He then served as its President for two years and is rightly celebrated as a sporting pioneer.
   Yet there is an amazing mystery behind the man, as his true identity has been hidden for over a hundred years: Robert was his surname, not his first name, while Guérin was a suffix he adopted in adult life.
   I would like to introduce you to Maurice Robert. That was the real name of FIFA's first President.

When he was born in Reims in 1876, his full name was registered as Clément Auguste Maurice Robert. He was the son of Jean-Marie Robert, a cloth manufacturer and merchant, and his wife Louise.
   Little is known about the first two decades of his life but he must have learned English - a skill which was essential in years to come - as in 1898 Maurice Robert was accepted into the Society for the Propagation of Foreign Languages. By then he was working in commerce and living in Paris, in a narrow street in Montmartre that was to remain his home for the rest of his life.
   He joined Union Sportive Parisienne, a multi-sports club founded in 1896, but was not much of a player and became its secretary between 1900 and 1904. He was therefore mentioned regularly in the press as the club's contact for fixtures, which reveals that he was known as Maurice Robert until the end of 1900, then early in 1901 he changed his surname to Robert-Guérin.

Although his reason for change is not clear, the root of this addition can be found in his family tree: his grandfather Jean-Pierre Robert had married Reine-Antoinette Guérin, and the family firm of Robert-Guérin had exhibited its merino fabrics at the Great Exhibition of 1851.
   Maurice Robert-Guérin became more involved in sport and joined the USFSA, a national governing body for many sports, where he was in turn its treasurer and secretary, working from its base at 229 rue Saint Honoré in Paris. His first love at the time was football, refereeing several high profile matches, but he was also involved in a range of activities which no doubt helped him to make his way as a sports journalist.
   The story of the founding of FIFA is well known and Robert-Guérin recalled the spirit of the times for FIFA's 25th anniversary: 'It was not difficult to foresee in 1903 that football was going to become more popular all over the world. I decided to found the International Federation of Association Football, with the collaboration of very good friends.
   'I was rather surprised that the initiative was not taken up by England, where football was triumphing. I though that, by rights, the chairmanship belonged to the Football Association of England.'
   He went to London to meet Frederick Wall, the FA secretary, who listened but merely replied that he would refer the matter to the FA board. Robert-Guérin waited patiently for months but heard nothing, so he asked again and was invited back to London where, this time, he met Lord Kinnaird who was friendly but non-committal. 'It was like cutting water with a knife,' he recalled.
   Faced with English prevarication, 28-year-old Robert-Guérin felt he had no option but go ahead without them, and called the meeting at which FIFA was established on 21 May 1904. Reluctantly he accepted the role of President, which was not a role he cherished but he remained at the helm of the fledgling organisation for two years until Englishman Daniel Woolfall was persuaded to take over in 1906.

Meanwhile, as president of the association football section of the USFSA, he was effectively the manager of the France national team for its first 12 matches, from their 1904 debut against Belgium up to the disastrous 1908 Olympic Games in London.
​   His time included defeats of 15-0 and 12-0 to England amateurs, and ultimately the humiliating 17-1 crushing by Denmark at the Olympics.

In 1907 he married, and as his formal name had never been changed he signed the document as Maurice Robert. His wife was an Englishwoman called Edith Harris, who already had a two-year-old daughter called Rosetta. The marriage certificate specifically includes Rosetta so that she was legitimised and took the surname Robert. It is not clear whether Maurice was the father.
   For the rest of his professional life, he was known as Robert Guérin, with the ambiguity of Robert being a first name or part of a double-barrelled surname. I cannot find any instance of him using Maurice as a journalist, and he appears always to have described himself simply as Robert-Guérin, sometimes with a hyphen, sometimes not.
   In his private life, however, his surname remained simply Robert. After Edith died in 1926 he remarried the following year to Andrée Brunel and again he signed the certificate as Maurice Robert.
   Having given up sports administration in 1908, he worked for most of his life as sports editor of Le Matin, and although he continued to report on football he developed a passion and expertise in aviation, writing for several specialist magazines. He was highly respected in his field, and was made a Chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur in 1922, then promoted to Officer in 1934.

Despite his prestigious reputation, Robert-Guérin appears to have kept a fairly low public profile. I was amazed when researching this article that only one photo of him appears to be available, and he left little in the way of personal reminiscences. 
   After Le Matin folded in 1944 (with its reputation sullied for taking a pro-German stance during the occupation) he was left impoverished, and that led to the only time he is known to have used another version of his name. A few years ago some of his personal letters came up at auction and they were apparently signed Clément Robert-Guérin. Written in the late 1940s, they revealed he was in difficult financial circumstances and losing his sight.

​Clément Auguste Maurice Robert, also Robert-Guérin

Born 28 April 1876 at 16 boulevard du Temple, Reims.

Married (1) 11 July 1907 to Edith Emma Harris.
Married (2) 27 January 1927 to Andrée Brunel
​
Died 14 February 1952 at 17 rue Germain Pilon, Montmartre, Paris.

There is a curious anomaly in the creation of FIFA in 1904. Seven countries are listed as founding members: France, Belgium, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Denmark and Switzerland. Yet Germany, which agreed to join and sent a message of support, is not.
   It has long puzzled me why Germany are not also considered as founders. It is even more confusing as Sweden and Spain are included in the list, although they did not attend the opening meetings either. What is more, Spain did not have a national association until the Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) was founded in 1909.
   A detailed examination of the circumstances suggests there may be scope to challenge FIFA's assertion that it was established by just those seven nations, and that Germany should also be recognised.
   In May 1904, a number of football federations were invited to Paris by French football administrator Maurice Robert-Guérin, who drafted a cooperation agreement (described as a treaty), and the original articles of the FIFA Statutes. These were ratified in the course of the historic three-day Congress which was attended by just eight men, from whom the first FIFA committee was chosen.
   The French governing body of sport, the Union des Sociétés Françaises de Sports Athlétiques (USFSA), hosted the meeting at their offices at 229 rue St Honoré in central Paris. Somewhat surprisingly, despite FIFA's prominence in world sport, there is no plaque or indication that such an important event took place there; there are shops at street level, with offices and apartments above. At the entrance to the courtyard there is a Paris History info panel, but it only commemorates a medieval convent which stood on the site.

The opening session of the FIFA Congress on 21 May 1904 was chaired by Alphonse Fringnet, the 60-year-old vice-president of USFSA but he took little further part in the deliberations. More importantly the event was a personal triumph for Robert-Guérin, the chair of the USFSA's football section, who had been the driving force in creating the international body and bringing together the fledgling football nations. By the end of the Congress he was elected its first president, aged just 28.
   Sitting alongside Robert-Guérin was André Espir, secretary of the USFSA, who took the minutes. There were two representatives of the Belgian sports body, the Union Belge des Sociétés de Sports (UBSSA), Louis Muhlinghaus and Max Kahn. Also in attendance were Ludvig Sylow of the Dansk Boldspil Union (DBU), Cornelis 'Carl' A W Hirschman of the Nederlandsche Voetbal Bond (NVB) and Victor E Schneider of the Association Suisse de Football (ASF). They were all relatively young men, four of them in their twenties.
   By prior agreement, Sylow represented by proxy the interests of Sweden’s Svenska Bollspells Förbundet (SBF) while Espir performed the same function for the Madrid Football Club (now Real Madrid), who had sent a letter of apology from Spain.
   However, there was no German representation, despite Germany being invited as one of the strongest European football nations. The Congress had been arranged at fairly short notice, and this is where fate conspired against the Deutscher Fussball Bund (DFB) as it coincided with their own annual congress and elections, held in Kassel. Nonetheless, they wanted to send a delegate to Paris and nominated Dr Gustav Manning, who had been a founding member of the DFB in 1900 although he was no longer on its board.
   Manning was unable to travel - there is a suggestion that he missed a ferry connection, perhaps from England - and DFB president Dr Ernst Karding sent a telegram in time for the opening FIFA meeting to say that Manning would be replaced by Philipp Heineken. However, he too failed to make it to Paris, for reasons unknown.
   When Dr Karding realised that there would be no German delegate present, on Monday he sent a further telegram which confirmed the DFB's support and its agreement in principle to the statutes, a decision that had just been made in Kassel. The minutes stated 'Germany subscribes to the Congress' [French original: 'L'Allemagne adhère au Congrès']. Yet despite this, Germany has never been recognised as a founder of FIFA.
   On the other hand, Madrid Football Club's letter requesting a proxy somehow carried more weight than a national federation sending a clear message of intent, and Spain has always been credited as a founder.
   Now, over a century later, there is a case for FIFA retrospectively acknowledging Germany's role in its creation. Of course, the question has to be asked: does it matter? I believe it does, as it is important to celebrate our sporting heritage and give due recognition to football's pioneers.

Click here to read a full transcript of the minutes, translated into English.

The missing delegates

What of the two German delegates who failed to reach Paris? They both have fascinating stories, in particular Dr Manning. By an extraordinary twist of fate, he did make it onto the FIFA executive committee – over 40 years later, and for a different country!

Manning was born in the London suburb of Lewisham to German parents in 1873 as Gustav Rudolph Leo Mannheimer, and when his father applied for British citizenship in 1876 the family name was anglicised to Manning. In the 1880s they moved back to Germany, where his enthusiasm for football made him one of the founders of FC Freiburg, and he was also the first secretary of the DFB in 1900. Meanwhile, he had qualified as a doctor in 1898 and worked at a clinic in Strasbourg (which was, at that time, in Germany).
   In 1905, a year after he should have attended the first FIFA congress, he emigrated to the USA and anglicised his name even further as Dr G (or Gus) Randolph Manning. He continued to be heavily involved in soccer and in 1913 he was the driving force behind the foundation of the United States Football Association and was elected its first president. He also developed his medical career and was an eminent gastroenterologist in New York, while serving in the US Army reserves.
   His commitment to football remained constant and in 1948, a mere 44 years after he should have attended that meeting in Paris, he was the first American to be elected to the FIFA Executive Committee. He attended the 1950 FIFA Congress, and died in 1953. Manning is buried in Arlington Cemetery and has been inducted into the US Soccer Hall of Fame.
   Philipp Heineken (no connection with the beer industry) also led a wandering life. He was born in 1873 in New York, where his father was a jewellery maker. The family returned to Germany after his father died and he became a football enthusiast in Bad Cannstatt, a suburb of Stuttgart, initially playing rugby. He helped the spread of football by translating the rules of the different codes from English into German, launched a football magazine and published one of the first German football yearbooks. As a student he was one of the founders of FV Stuttgart (which later merged with Cannstatt to form VfB Stuttgart). He was a vice-president of the DFB and sat on the German Olympic Committee, frequently travelling abroad.
   Then in 1910 he walked out on his wife and daughter and headed back to New York, working as an electrical engineer, living on his own. But after the Second World War he suddenly turned up at his daughter’s door and they were reconciled. He remained in Stuttgart and died there in 1959.
 
FIFA's seven founding fathers

Maurice Robert-Guérin (1876-1952) 
André D Espir (1879-c1950) 
Louis Muhlinghaus (1870-1915)
Max Kahn (1871-1959)
Ludvig Sylow (1861-1933)
Cornelis 'Carl' A W Hirschman (1877-1951)
Victor E Schneider (1876-1948).

As I am currently in Paris, working at Euro 2016, I took the opportunity to visit a fascinating exhibition in the French National Archives which examines the role of the state when it comes to major football events.
   Le Foot, une affaire d'État, is not in the easiest of locations to find, being staged in the northern suburb of Pierrefitte-sur-Seine, right at the end of Metro line 13. However, the journey is worthwhile (although I had to make it twice, as the first time the building was closed due to industrial action).
   As you might expect, there is a strong focus on the major tournaments hosted by France, including the World Cups of 1938 and 1998, and the Euros of 1984 and this summer. It is not just a celebration of the football - albeit there is a constant film loop of France's triumph in the 1998 final - but an opportunity to show how the bidding process and the staging of the tournament involved the French government.  Among the rare souvenirs are posters and tickets from 1938.

   There are also some surprising elements to the treatment of these tournaments, not least a display devoted to the fight against hooligans at the 1998 tournament, which includes copies of faxes sent by the National Criminal Intelligence Unit with pictures of suspected English thugs. Their personal details have been obscured, but the instruction to 'shred when no longer required' has clearly been ignored.

   Several displays are devoted to the construction and management of the great stadia in Paris, all of which are still in use, starting with the Stade de Colombes, moving on to the Parc des Princes, and now the Stade de France.
   It is not just a dry account of state finance and construction, however. There are touching personal accounts of the struggle for acceptance by footballing immigrants to France - a story which continues to have echoes today -  such as the impact of Algerian independence. 
   Football in wartime also throws up some little known tales, not least an incident which was new to me: in the autumn of 1939, after war broke out, Frenchman and FIFA president Jules Rimet attended a FIFA meeting in Switzerland at which two Germans were present. On his return to France he was arrested for having contact with the enemy, and the notes of his interrogation reveal that he was in tears at the accusation and offered to resign. In the end, the affair was resolved and he remained in post, but it does shed light on the tensions at the time.
   It is not a comprehensive history of French football - for example there is nothing on the game's origins in France, and little on club football - but I strongly recommend it.
   Le Foot, une affaire d'État runs until 18 September 2016 (with various closures in August), and admission is free. There is also an accompanying book, price 10 euros.
   Follow this link for further details: http://www.archives-nationales.culture.gouv.fr/fr/web/guest/le-foot-une-affaire-d-etat