Ernest Weber (1877 – 1945) was a French author and sports journalist, who was one of the most important figures in the amateur beginnings of football in Paris, co-founding several historic clubs in the French capital in the 1890s, such as Club Français in 1892 and Red Star in 1897, the latter with Jules Rimet, the future president of FIFA. As the star journalist of the French newspaper L'Auto in the early 20th century, he played a prominent role in promoting football in the country, but he is best known for being a very influential figure in the locker room of the French national team in its first years of existence. He was the author of one of only two chronicles relating France's inaugural match in 1904, the other being Robert Guérin, founder of FIFA.

Early and personal life Ernest Weber was born in Montmartre in 1877, but spent the better part of his childhood at , where his grandmother lived. He was the father of Jean Weber, a member of the Comédie-Française.

Playing career Club Français Even though the official founders of Club Français were Eugène Fraysse and Charles Bernat, L'Auto stated in 1938 that "Arriving from England, where they had studied, 4 Frenchmen: Bernat, Fraysse, Mestre and Weber; in October 1892, the Club Français was born", which was the first club reserved exclusively for the French, hence the club's name. This means that he co-founded a club at the age of 15, which was common at the time, with Bernat being only a year older than him. Having been a former teammate of Fraysse, Weber described him years later as a "loud-mouthed, abrupt, violent", but also an exciting leader of men and a great team captain.

Despite not being a regular starter, Weber was a member of the CF squad that won the 1896 USFSA Championship, recalling years later that they had hoped for this victory to mean that "Standard AC had finally found its master", but "we soon had to become disillusioned" because Standard then won the 1897 title. On 1 November 1896, he started for CF in a match against Standard AC. Weber was still playing at Club Français in 1897, and even though the club was constantly changing fields, CF's position remained solid, even institutional, because many of its members were sitting on the USFSA Football Commission or ensuring media coverage like Weber or André Saint-Ignan.

Later career Despite being three years younger than Jules Rimet, it was Weber who introduced football to the future president of FIFA, along with Charles de Saint-Cyr, a fellow journalist and former member of the Racing Club de France. On 21 February 1897, the 23-year-old Rimet gathered his circle of close friends at the sports café on rue de Grenelle in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, which included Weber and Saint-Cyr, along with his brother Modeste and his brother-in-law Jean de Pessac, and together, they founded the multi-sports club Red Star, with football gradually taking over all the activities offered. Despite still being in his early 20s, Weber seems to have never played for Red Star.

Three years later, Weber attended the final of the 1900 Coupe Manier on 23 December, which was contested by Club Français and UA I arrondissement in Joinville-le-Pont, with his former club playing the entire first half with 10 men because of a last-minute absence. During half-time, however, Gaston Peltier managed to find a former CF player among the many spectators, Weber, who was described in the press as "ancient" not because of his age, since he was still only 23, but because he had not played a single match for at least three years, since 1897. His long period of inactivity had naturally hindered his skills, thus only being able to play as goalkeeper, which forced Lucien Huteau to play the second half in the right wing; Club Français claimed the title with a 1–0 victory.

Sports journalism Weber wrote for several French newspapers, such as La Vie au grand air in the late 1890s, L'Auto (1904–08), and L'Intransigeant (1908–?). During the inaugural Tour de France in 1903, which was organized by L'Auto (the forerunner of L'Équipe), its circulation leapt from 25,000 to 65,000 copies sold per day, thus becoming one of the biggest daily newspaper in the country and the reference for sports news in France. Weber took advantage of such a platform to establish himself as one of the most influential figures in the world of French football at the time.

SEFA

Following the success of a match between a "mixed" French team and the English club Corinthian, a club specializing in European tours, a handful of patrons, including Weber, created an entity to repeat the effort, the so-called Société d’Encouragement Football Association (SEFA), an external body independent of the USFSA, the then sports governing body in France. Thanks to Weber, SEFA secured the financial support of L'Auto to welcome the English professional club Southampton for two international matches on 13 and 14 March 1904 at the Parc des Princes; it was then that USFSA's chairman, Robert Guérin, under the risk of giving up control of France's international matches to a parallel organisation, proposed to the Council of the USFSA to form the French national team itself, and therefore, the two French teams that faced Southampton were assembled by the USFSA and by FSAPF, instead of the SEFA, whose selectors included Weber and Jack Wood, a renowned football referee.

In the following month, on 16 April, SEFA assembled a French team to face Corinthians, which was welcomed to Paris by a reception committee that was made up of the most notable figures in French football at the time, including Weber, Gilon (SEFA), William Sleator (The White Rovers), Walter Hewson (Cook et Cie house), Philip Tomalin, Alfred Tunmer, Jack Wood, Shepherd (Williams house), Georges Duhamel, the Paris Committee of the USFSA, United SC, and the newspapers L'Auto and La Vie au grand air. In the preview of this match, Weber explained that SEFA's white shirt would be confused with the white of the Corinthians, so the French instead wore a black and gold striped shirt provided by the Williams house.

Influence at the inaugural match In addition to Club Français, some sources have stated that Weber also played as a forward at United SC, a club of English and Swiss immigrants; however, this Weber was a different person, because on 1 May 1904, while the player was helping United SC, the champions of the USFSA, to a 5–1 win over Étoile des deux lacs, the champions of the FGSPF, the journalist was in Brussels, as the correspondent for L'Auto in the inaugural match of the French national team against Belgium, so he could write the technical summary of the game, which was published the next day. For many years, this short article from Weber was commonly accepted as the only source of reference relating France's debut, until another report was found in 2020, in a non-sports daily newspaper, La Presse, under the signature "OFF-SIDE", which was the pseudonym of Robert Guérin, founder of FIFA. Guérin referred to this match as France's "official" debut, as part of the creation of FIFA, hence why Guérin did not allow SEFA to intervene in this match; however, France's inaugural team included seven of the players who faced Corinthians in April, most of which had been selected by Weber and Wood, so even though Guérin chose the players without their help, he still validated some of their previous choices.

In his chronicle, Weber had to arrange fake names for both Louis Mesnier (Didi) and Fernand Canelle (Fernand) in order to make their presence more discreet, because even though the army had granted them 48-hour leaves, those leaves did not include crossing borders. Furthermore, Weber also had to manage last-minute withdrawals; for instance, he temporarily concealed the news about the withdrawals of Pierre Allemane and Charles Wilkes, releasing this information only on the following day, so as "not to worry our internationals", thus demonstrating his predilection for psychologic tactics. Despite the withdrawals, the French squad arrived in Brussels with 12 men, and after much discussion between the players, Guérin, and Weber, it all came down to a coin toss between Jacques Davy and Emile Fontaine, which was won by the former, while the latter was never able to become an international. Before the match, Weber and Guérin boosted the morale of the players, instilling in them the desire to save national honour, because "we have, in fact, to defend our colours"; the match ended in a 3–3 draw, and Weber was amazed that both teams enjoyed it.

Assistant manager of the French national team Weber was once again the correspondent for L'Auto in the second and third match of France's history, both in 1905, against Switzerland in February at the Parc des Princes, in which he stated that "Association football, a sport little known to the general public, has just asserted itself once again", and against Belgium in May, again in Brussels, in which he heavily criticized the pitch, which had been affected by heavy rain, describing it as "more of a swamp than a football ground" and that "on such a ground, one should rather play water polo than football.

Following Guérin's withdrawal in early 1906, the helm of the national team was given to André Billy and André Espir, and when they made their debut in a friendly against Belgium on 22 April, they asked Weber for help, since he was the only one from that trio who had watched the previous two Franco-Belgian meetings, thus having a valuable input, and indeed, Weber had noted that Belgian's full-back Edgard Poelmans constantly delivered precise passes to his forwards, so he had the idea of intercepting them, an excellent avant-garde idea that never came to fruition because the captain of the French team, Pierre Allemane, forgot to give France's winger Raymond Jouve the instructions he had received from either Weber or Espir: to mark and hinder Poelmans; France lost 0–5. If this had been done, Jouve would have become the first international player theoretically responsible for applying individual gegenpressing, a first in terms of tactics.

In France's next match against Belgium on 21 April 1907, at Uccle, he praised the debutant Georges Bon for pressing the opponents despite being a forward, because back then the forwards did not carry out defensive work. Two weeks prior, the national coach André Billy had postponed his infamous Nord-Paris meeting, which served as annual test match for the French national team, in order to focus on Belgium, a decision criticized by Weber, who wrote in L'Auto that "the Belgium-France match has already been played three times without any stake, and still became a classic, so the Paris-Nord match might become one as well". At the end of that month, Weber and Billy had another quarrel after the former criticized the performance of the club that the latter presided (Olympique Lillois) in the final of the 1907 Coupe Dewar on 28 April, which is probably why Billy never again allowed Weber to be present in the locker room of the national team.

Criticism of Bayrou and Gallia