Rodolphe Seeldrayers

Rodolphe William Seeldrayers (16 December 1876 – 7 October 1955) was a Belgian football administrator who was the fourth President of FIFA, serving from 1954 to 1955. He was actively involved in the official associations of Belgium sports. Early life Born in 1876 in Düsseldorf, Germany, Seeldrayers studied law at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (Free University of Brussels), where he began his sporting activities. At 19 he was one of the founders of the Union royale belge des Sociétés de football association (URBSFA), or Royal Belgian Union of the Football Association Societies, for which he was the treasurer for four years and a member of the Executive Counsel for 25 years. He was later elected as a member of honour. In 1914, the Union used his talents as an orator and named him a delegate to FIFA, of which he was made vice-president in 1927. In 1899 Seeldrayers began a career as a sports journalist with the magazine "La vie sportive" (Sporting Life), writing a column under the pen name Spectator. Ten years later, he founded the National Committee for Physical Education which merged with the Belgian Olympic Committee. He became head of the committee beginning in 1946, succeeding Prince Albert de Ligne. The Olympics and FIFA In 1920, he was technical secretary of the Olympic Games at Antwerp, and a member of the appeals jury for football at the Olympics several times. He was most notable in this role at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, when during the Peru vs. Austria game spectators invaded the pitch which provoked an appeals jury consultation. The Austrian Football Association sent a complaint to the appeals committee which decided, after deliberation, to re-play the match "behind closed doors". Peru disagreed and their entire Olympic squad left the Games complaining of the "crafty Berlin decision". He also received the official Czechoslovak complaint following the abandoned 1920 Olympic Final, which had been refereed by John Lewis.