[3] He was then quick to join the FGSPF, then presided by the good doctor Paul Michaux, a surgeon at the Paris hospitals,[1] who decided to hire Simon as his assistant in 1898, aged only 16.

[6] On 15 July 1905, the federation was relocated to its first premises at 5 Place Saint-Thomas-d’Aquin,[6] with Léon Lamoureux assuming administrative responsibilities on 14 November, working in tandem with Simon, who then became sports secretary general of the FGSPF in its 1905 congress.

[1][11] After this congress, which was attended by 900 athletes, Pope Pius X strongly encouraged foreign gymnasts to return, and Simon ensured that this wish was granted when this gathering was renewed in 1906, and again in 1908, despite the hostility of the French public authorities, which was joined by the USFSA, among others,[1] whose opposition was based on the law concerning the separation of Church and State that had been promulgated on 9 December 1905, which kickstarted the war between secular footballers and the federation of patrons, each excluding the other.

We are a physical education organization whose sole concern is to make the young people who come to us into robust men and we have too high an idea of our role to consider ourselves as entrepreneurs competing with the opposite house.

[5] After the FGSPF's annual festival of 1906, IOC founder Pierre de Coubertin proposed Charles Simon to its general secretary, and although the latter rejected this offer, they remained friends.

[5][14][15] Created in principle to federate all the organizations worried or dissatisfied with the hegemonic attitude of the USFSA, the CFI, who was open to all without discrimination of any kind, was able to bring together a total of 490 sports societies (although not all of them played football), including the ones that had been excluded by the USFSA due to the latter's opposition to professionalism in sport; all of them regrouped under the banner of the CFI, who thus became a superstructure grouping the likes of FGSPF, FCAF, and Jules Rimet's LFA.

[17] In 1907, Simon's CFI organized its inaugural championship, the so-called Trophée de France, which pits the champions of each federation that makes up the CFI against each other at the end of the season, and its inaugural edition in 1907 was won by Étoile, the champions of the FGSPF, after claiming an 8–3 victory over the Bordeaux-based FC Simiotin, winners of the Amateur Athletic Federation (FAA), and their reward was a trophy that had been donated by Pierre de Coubertin.

[1][2] In 1913, the USFSA had to capitulate and request its registration to the CFI, which means that at that time, Simon was the unofficial first president of a French Football Federation (almost, since it lacked the "socialists" of the FSAS).

[3] In 1906, he participated with 6 friends in the creation of the Manécanterie des Petits Chanteurs à la Croix de Bois, a children's choir to revive the love of Gregorian chants, which was established in the 15th arrondissement; each member contributed 20 francs per quarter.

[3] Nature inspired him to write poems, and in 1912, his first collection, La Flûte enguirlandée, was published by Jouve, as well as two plays in verse, Pierrots de France, a fairy tale, and L'Hôtellerie du Pot d'Etain, a comedy, completed in 1914 and which were to be performed in two Parisian theaters, but the outbreak of the First World War interrupted these projects.

[3] However, Simon had survived and then became a soldier in the 205th infantry regiment, registration number 3614, and was killed by bullets at Écurie, Pas-de-Calais, just two weeks later, on 15 June 1915, a mere three days from the end of the Second Battle of Artois.

[4] On 18 July, a gathering of civil and religious authorities attended the ceremony organized by the FGSPF in the Saint-Thomas-d'Aquin church where the band of the Union athlétique du chantier sounded the service in front of the flags of more than forty associations, including four from the provinces.

[23] The participation of the FGSPF in the various competitions organized in the Saint Damase courtyard of the Vatican earned Charles Simon the cross of the Order of St. Sylvester in July 1915,[5] while the military medal was awarded to him posthumously in 1923.