the quarterfinals in the recent 1994 World Cup competition in the United States. Spain, indeed, was one of the six nations, the others being Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland, whose national soccer federations came together in 1904 to form the FIFA. This organization remains the international governing body of soccer (Tyler, 1978, p. 13). At the other end of the spectrum, more or less informal games of soccer are a common pasttime of Spanish children, the counterpart of the American sandlot baseball or touch-football game (Manning, 1963, p. 39). So far as team sports are concerned, we can say that Spain has been a part of "Europe" for as long as modern professional and semiprofessional sports have existed.
As the date of establishment of the FIFA, a year after the first World Series, suggests, the organization and professionalization of sports is a relatively recent development. Informal games loosely similar to soccer or football
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