This photograph, taken on October 12, 2025, shows a bas-relief portrait in metal of Standard Athletic Club's first president, Philip Tomalin (top L), who was asked by Pierre de Coubertin the father of the modern Olympics to organise an international cricket tournament for the 1900 Paris Games, at the Standard Athletic Club headquarters in Meudon-la-Forêt. The club's story began 136 years ago when "some English boys and young fellows" met at The Horse Shoe bar in Rue Copernic, near the Arc de Triomphe, and formed the club. An account believed to be by one of the club's founding members, Alfred Hunter, tells of how the Brits "used to kick a football about on the open space opposite the (Grand) Lac" in the Bois de Boulogne, west of Paris, during the "rather severe" winter of 1889-90. That gave them the idea to form a club, which instantly made its name. And unlike almost all the other early pioneers of football in Paris, and France, it still exists. Of the six teams that contested the first USFSA French football championship in 1894, Standard is the only one to have survived. (Photo by Barnaby CHESTERMAN / AFP via Getty Images)

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