The dual structure of club and country that lay at the very foundation of Association Football's beginnings in England (and Scotland) of the 1870s and 1880s; and the sport's centralized "Catholic" global organization and jurisdiction as of 1904, have given FIFA a monopolistic position that lords over the game's very being. While technically and officially not the game's rule giver -- that has always remained IFAB, the International Football Association Board, close to but nominally independent of FIFA -- FIFA has successfully run the game's every facet via its powerful federations that exist in 209 state-like entities on earth (more than the United Nations has member countries). The lecture will highlight how this constellation led to the famed "Soccer Wars" in the United States of the 1920s, thereby halting, indeed reversing, soccer's immense popularity at the time that far surpassed the fledgling National Football League's though still did not attain levels that rivaled college football, let alone baseball, boxing and horse racing, the culturally hegemonic sports in the United States of that era.
