Sir Stanley Ford Rous (April 25, 1895 in
MutfordMutford is a small village and civil parish outside Carlton Colville, Lowestoft in Suffolk, England. It consists of a crossroads, at which there is a village store with a Post Office, and a residential street, on which the village hall is situated....
,
SuffolkSuffolk is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in East Anglia, England. It has borders with Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south. The North Sea lies to the east...
– July 18, 1986) was an
EnglishEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
footballAssociation football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of eleven players using a spherical ball...
refereeA referee presides over a game of association football. The referee has "full authority to enforce the Laws of the Game in connection with the match to which he has been appointed" , and the referee's decisions regarding facts connected with play are final, so far as the result of the game is...
and administrator.
Originally a sports
teacherIn education, a teacher is a person who educates others. A teacher who educates an individual student may also be described as a personal tutor....
at Watford Boys Grammar School (ironically being responsible for the school changing its main sport from association football to
rugby unionRugby union is a full contact team sport, a form of football which originated in England in the early 19th century. One of the codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand. It is played with an oval-shaped ball, outdoors on a level field, usually with a grass surface, 100 m...
), Rous played football at
amateurAn amateur is generally considered a person attached to a particular pursuit, study, or science, without formal training or pay. An amateur receives little or irregular income from their activities, and differs from a professional who makes a living from the pursuit and typically has some formal...
level as goalkeeper, as well as becoming a
FIFAThe International Federation of Association Football, commonly known by its French acronym, FIFA , is the international governing body of association football. Its headquarters are in Zürich, Switzerland, and its current president is Sepp Blatter...
referee, officiating in a total of 36 international matches.
Sir Stanley Ford Rous (April 25, 1895 in
MutfordMutford is a small village and civil parish outside Carlton Colville, Lowestoft in Suffolk, England. It consists of a crossroads, at which there is a village store with a Post Office, and a residential street, on which the village hall is situated....
,
SuffolkSuffolk is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in East Anglia, England. It has borders with Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south. The North Sea lies to the east...
– July 18, 1986) was an
EnglishEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
footballAssociation football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of eleven players using a spherical ball...
refereeA referee presides over a game of association football. The referee has "full authority to enforce the Laws of the Game in connection with the match to which he has been appointed" , and the referee's decisions regarding facts connected with play are final, so far as the result of the game is...
and administrator.
Career
Originally a sports
teacherIn education, a teacher is a person who educates others. A teacher who educates an individual student may also be described as a personal tutor....
at Watford Boys Grammar School (ironically being responsible for the school changing its main sport from association football to
rugby unionRugby union is a full contact team sport, a form of football which originated in England in the early 19th century. One of the codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand. It is played with an oval-shaped ball, outdoors on a level field, usually with a grass surface, 100 m...
), Rous played football at
amateurAn amateur is generally considered a person attached to a particular pursuit, study, or science, without formal training or pay. An amateur receives little or irregular income from their activities, and differs from a professional who makes a living from the pursuit and typically has some formal...
level as goalkeeper, as well as becoming a
FIFAThe International Federation of Association Football, commonly known by its French acronym, FIFA , is the international governing body of association football. Its headquarters are in Zürich, Switzerland, and its current president is Sepp Blatter...
referee, officiating in a total of 36 international matches. He was also a life long friend of the Footballer and one of the founding members of FIFA,
Dr. Ivo SchrickerDr. Ivo Wolfgang Eduard Schricker was in the late 19th century a pioneer of German football...
(1877-1962).
He began refereeing Football League matches in 1927, consisting mainly of appointments to
Second DivisionFrom 1892 until 1992, the Football League Second Division was the second highest division overall in English football.This ended with the creation of the FA Premier League, prior to the start of the 1992-93 season, which caused an administrative split between The Football League and the teams...
matches, and games in the
Third Division NorthThe Third Division North of The Football League was a level in English association football, which ran parallel to Third Division South from 1921 to 1958....
and
SouthThe Football League Third Division South was a level of English professional football which ran in parallel to Third Division North from 1921 to 1958....
which operated at the time.
The first International match he was put in charge of was
BelgiumThe Belgium national football team is the national football team of Belgium and is controlled by the Belgian Football Association.-History:...
against Holland in the
BosuilstadionBosuilstadion is a football stadium in Antwerp, Belgium. Built in 1923, it is the home of Royal Antwerp FC and has a capacity of 16,649....
,
Antwerp||-||-||-||}Antwerp is a city and municipality in Belgium and the capital of the Antwerp province in Flanders, one of Belgium's three regions. Antwerp's total population is 472,071 and its total area is , giving a population density of 2,308 inhabitants per km²...
, on March 13 1927. The home side won this friendly tie 2-0.
He was appointed to referee the
1934 FA Cup FinalThe 1934 FA Cup Final was won by Manchester City in a 2-1 win over Portsmouth. The cup is most remembered for a young Frank Swift's heroics in goal and the predictions of City forward Fred Tilson. The match was also refereed by future FIFA president Stanley Rous, in his penultimate game as an...
on April 28 at Wembley, where Manchester City defeated Portsmouth by 2 goals to 1. The following day, after travelling to Belgium to control an International match, Stanley Rous retired from refereeing.
He then moved into the sphere of football administration. He served as secretary of
the Football AssociationThe Football Association, also known as simply The FA, is the governing body of association football in England and the Crown Dependencies of Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man. It was formed in 1863, and is the oldest national football association...
from 1934 to 1962, and president of
FIFAThe International Federation of Association Football, commonly known by its French acronym, FIFA , is the international governing body of association football. Its headquarters are in Zürich, Switzerland, and its current president is Sepp Blatter...
from 1961 to 1974. During his time as FIFA President, Rous witnessed the crowning of England as Champions of the World in 1966. Rous became infamous with policies within FIFA which has more of a Eurocentric approach , as he did little to nothing to appease the growing concern in African Football's debate over World Cup spots within FIFA, the growing resentment at a set of power relations that effectively marginalized African football. CAF officials, most notably Ydnekatchew Tessema, the confederation's president at the time, increasingly gave voice to their frustrations and resentment, and this led to a lobby aimed at ending Europe's administrative domination over world football. Rhamadan Ali, a noted Tanzanian sports journalist and former international footballer, recalls the feelings of the African confederation toward the FIFA president at that time: "The AFC (CAF) was fed up with Sir Stanley Rous' FIFA and wanted a new man at the top who was more receptive to the interests of African football" (Ali 1984:10). Africa's difficulty though was that, acting alone, CAF could not have hoped to challenge Rous for the presidency of FIFA. The emergence and ascendancy of FIFA's only non-European president was firmly implanted in this complex set of circumstances.
Upon his retirement as president, on June 11, 1974, he was nominated Honorary President of FIFA.
Rous made a major contribution to the game by rewriting the
Laws of the GameThe Laws of the Game are the rules governing a game of association football. They are written and maintained by the International Football Association Board .-Current Laws of the Game:...
in 1938, making them simpler and easier to understand. He was also the first to employ the
diagonal system of controlThe diagonal system of control is the system of positioning used by match officials in association football...
for referees as a standard practice. According to
BelgianThe Kingdom of Belgium is a country in northwest Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts its headquarters, as well as those of other major international organizations, including NATO...
referee
John LangenusJohn L. Langenus was a Belgian football referee, who officiated for FIFA in three World Cup competitions, including the first ever Final match in 1930.-Life and career:...
, who had been in charge of the 1930 World Cup Final, he had seen referees from his country making a similar attempt at scientific positioning on the field of play.
The short-lived
Rous CupThe Rous Cup was a short-lived football competition in the second half of the 1980s, contested between England, Scotland and, in later years, a guest team from South America.-Overview:...
was named after him, as was the Rous Stand at Watford FC's
Vicarage RoadVicarage Road, a stadium in Watford, Hertfordshire, England, is the home of the football club Watford and their tenants, the Saracens rugby union club. A four stand all-seater stadium, its capacity is 19,920....
ground. He was life president of
QPRQueens Park Rangers Football Club are an English professional football club, based in Shepherd's Bush, Hammersmith and Fulham, West London...
.
He died in
GuildfordGuildford is the county town of Surrey, England, as well as the seat for the borough of Guildford and the administrative headquarters of the South East England region...
in 1986, at the age of 91.