In an extract from his new book Aux Armes! Sport and the French – an English perspective, Insideworldfootball columnist David Owen highlights the birth place of the march towards the all-conquering World Cup.
The 1924 Paris Olympics, in Europe’s most captivating capital city, cemented the air of permanency the International Olympic Committee had begun to acquire having survived the Great War. The Games allowed Pierre de Coubertin, the Modern Olympic founder, to bask in the increasingly bright glow cast by his creation; this after having been sidelined by the French State 24 years earlier when the Olympics were first staged in the city of his birth. The Games also imbued the city that had become a magnet for artists and avant garde thinkers with more and better sports facilities.
And Paris 1924 was where the sport of association football began its long, irresistible march to global domination.
The new Colombes stadium – built on the site of an existing sports ground that had once been a racecourse – could not accommodate all those who flocked to the suburbs for the final of the 22-team competition. (This was destined to remain the biggest international football tournament by number of participating countries until 1952.)
In the words of the New York Times, the stadium “was filled to its capacity of 60,000 persons, while several thousand more clamoured futilely on the outside for admission”. This was particularly impressive as the finalists were two relatively small countries – Uruguay, who would go on to dominate international football for the rest of the decade, and Switzerland. The South Americans had earlier disposed of the host nation in front of another big Colombes crowd by the emphatic margin of five goals to one.
At almost 1.8 million francs, football accounted for just under one-third of ticket receipts generated by the Games. Athletics – just under 1.6 million francs for the competition later given the big-screen treatment…
Source link : https://www.insideworldfootball.com/2024/07/25/1924-2024-olympic-football-aux-armes/
Author : Paul Nicholson
Publish date : 2024-07-25 09:00:06
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