Who is Henri Delaunay and What is His Name Doing on our Trophy?

My favorite part of Wikipedia’s bio of Henry Delaunay is this:

“After playing for the Paris team Étoile des Deux Lacs, he became a referee. He retired following an incident during a match between AF Garenne-Doves and ES Benevolence, when he swallowed his whistle and broke two teeth on being struck full face by the ball.”

It shows up in both the English and the French versions, so it must have been a defining moment of his life. Of course, neither article has a working link to a source, so it could be an urban legend.

Why are we interested in Delaunay? Take a look at the Euro trophy, above. In English it says,

“Europe Cup
Cup Henry Delaunay
European Championship”

When a team hefts the European Cup, it has his name on it. So who is this guy?

Passionate football fan, intense lover of the international game, and overshadowed in life by World Cup god Jules Rimet. Finally given the recognition he deserves two years after his death. I believe that about sums it up.

Dalaunay is considered by many to be the father of the Euros. Even though the first Euro competition would not take place until 1960, after Delaunay’s 1955 death, he was one of those promoting the idea for a European championship as early as 1927. It wasn’t implemented at the time because the World Cup was just getting off the ground, and the worry was that having a European championship would dilute its appeal.

He was very interested and involved in developing and standardizing the game around the world, and in developing competitions among nations. He spent time as Secretary General of the Comité Français Interfédéral (CFI), the predecessor of the French Football Federation, and along with Jules Rimet, (known by many as the father of the World Cup), was very involved in the development of FIFA.

He was French but was fluent in English and spent a lot of time working in England and absorbing the English game. In June of 1929, he joined a German and an Italian to take part in the first meeting of what would later become the organization responsible for arbitration of the rules of the sport.

And yet his work was often overshadowed by Rimet’s.

Nevertheless, it is the influence of Jules Rimet which was remembered: if Delaunay acted as technician of the football things, it was the political action of Rimet which was regarded as essential when it came to a question of convincing, in spring, a very reticent federal Conseil of the FFF to send the team from France to Montevideo and to thus ensure the presence of a large European country in the southern hemisphere.

According to the above author, at least, Rimet got France to the take part in the World Cup in Uruguay in 1930, thus making it a world event, so he was the one best remembered for founding the World Cup.

This didn’t sit well with Delaunay’s son, who eventually wrote a letter

wanting “to in no case appear tendentious and even less critical”. It asked only that they “not overlook the name of Henri Delaunay, secretary-general founder of the FFF, when the Federation [looked at] of the origins of the World cup”.

And so, in 1958, two years after Delaunay’s death, UEFA met in Stockholm and decided that every four years there would be a trophy for the new Euro competition named the “European Cup of Nations/Cup Henri Delaunay.”

And this, winners of 2008, is why you’ll see the man’s name on your trophy.