[1][2] The cup was named in honor of the donator of the trophy, Frédéric Vanden Abeele, the Antwerp football director, who organized this match after the huge success of the first edition of the Coupe Van der Straeten Ponthoz in 1900.

However, the organizers encountered difficulties because the project did not arouse the enthusiasm of the clubs, so an alternative was then proposed: pitting the selections of the best players from the Belgian championship against foreign opponents.

[1] In order to prepare as best as possible, the "Vanden Abeele squad" played a preparatory match against a team made up of officers of Hounslow's Royal Fusiliers on 23 March in Brussels.

Some of the players initially selected for the Belgian side on 6 March are curiously absent and replaced in the team for unknown reasons, probably due to injury or professional unavailability.

[1] Naturally, the hosts, whose team was announced as an All-Belgium XI and included four Englishmen resident in Belgium, had little trouble claiming the Coupe Vanden Abeele after an 8–0 victory.

As a result of the games not being sanctioned by the Royal Dutch Football Association (KNVB), only players from the second division were available to Van Hasselt, so Belgium also won those three editions, although with more leveled scores (1–0, 2–1 and 6–4).