Founded in 1904, the Fédération internationale de football association is the world's foremost sport governing body. Located in Zurich, Switzerland and working across the globe, FIFA is responsible for regulating the world of football (or soccer). While it's a given that most people associate FIFA with the World Cup, there are many other tournaments that it oversees.
While the term "soccer" is not part of the official FIFA name, linguistically creative students at Oxford derived it from rugby football when separating the sports of "rugger" and "association". From there, Walter Camp is credited with altering the rules of rugby to create what is now known as modern North American football, which eventually became dubbed as soccer in the United States.
Today, FIFA's organizational statutes outline that it is committed to growing the game internationally and providing efforts to ensure football is accessible for everyone and advocating for integrity in the sport. Although it didn't come up with the official Laws of the Game, FIFA is responsible for ensuring they are applied and enforced throughout all competitions.
In the midst of scandal, Gianni Infantino was elected as president of FIFA to replace the disgraced Sepp Blatter in 2016. Since then, he has been working to rid the sport of corruption and refocus on the interests of its players. Despite these successes, questions still remain about what exactly does FIFA stand for. The most important thing is that it is the highest authority in the sport of association football, otherwise known as soccer.
