| L'Auto-vélo 25 mai 1924 |
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THE OLYMPIC TOURNAMENT starts today 22 NATIONS ARE REPRESENTED INFANT DON GONZALO, son of the King of Spain, is already a football fanatic. Here he is kicking off a big match. TODAY’S PROGRAM At the Colombes Stadium: At Pershing Stadium: At the Bergeyre Stadium: The round ball! Today is the first act of the epic which must attest to the colossal and magnificent rise of Sport-King, of universal sport. All of us, friends of the ball, fought long and hard to try to convince those who did not want to believe in its success. And it is our revenge for misunderstandings, this first world football tournament, a child prodigy of previous Olympic competitions. These are the events which, more eloquent than we could be, will demonstrate that alongside all individual sports, a method of physical improvement of individuals, there is football, a team sport, a method of social education of communities. “Moral elegance,” Mr. Jules Rimet once said. Yes, moral elegance, freely consented discipline, sacrifice of the self for the best performance of the whole. 1924 will mark a date, not only in the history of football, but in sporting history, in History itself, quite simply. Moving from individual sport to team sport is a stage of civilization… And it is precisely football which, while requiring a minimum physical condition, allows intelligence to dominate born athletes. It is football which gives players assembled into a homogeneous whole the possibility of defeating the most brilliant individuals, if they are poorly united in a team. It is, finally, the National Spirit which constitutes the most powerful cement for this conglomerate that an “eleven” must be. All this allows us to be proud today, not only of the success of the Number (participants and spectators), but above all of all the high significance that must be attached to such a triumph of the sport of the round ball, of which the clear future. dazzles us with Hopes. Gautier-Chaumet. |
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| retour - back 25 mai 1924 |