The current format of the competition involves a qualification phase , which currently takes place over the preceding three years, to determine which teams qualify for the tournament phase, which is often called the
World Cup Finals . 32 teams, including the automatically qualifying host nation(s), compete in the tournament phase for the title at venues within the host nation(s) over a period of about a month.
The 20 World Cup tournaments have been won by eight national teams. Brazil have won five times, and they are the only team to have played in every tournament. The other World Cup winners are Germany and Italy, with four titles each; Argentina and inaugural winner
Uruguay , with two titles each; and England,
France and Spain , with one title each.
The World Cup is the most prestigious association football tournament in the world as well as the most widely viewed and followed sporting event in the world, exceeding even the
Olympic Games ; the cumulative audience of all matches of the 2006 FIFA World Cup was estimated to be 26.29 billion with an estimated 715.1 million people watching the final match, a ninth of the entire population of the planet.
History
History of the FIFA World Cup
The world's first international football match was a challenge match played in Glasgow in 1872 between Scotland and England, which ended in a 0–0 draw. The first international tournament, the inaugural edition of the British Home Championship, took place in 1884. [6] As football grew in popularity in other parts of the world at the turn of the 20th century, it was held as a demonstration sport with no medals awarded at the 1900 and 1904 Summer Olympics (however, the IOC has retroactively upgraded their status to official events), and at the 1906 Intercalated Games.
After FIFA was founded in 1904, it tried to arrange an international football tournament between nations outside the Olympic framework in Switzerland in 1906. These were very early days for international football, and the official history of FIFA describes the competition as having been a failure. [8]
At the 1908 Summer Olympics in London, football became an official competition. Planned by The Football Association (FA), England's football governing body, the event was for amateur players only and was regarded suspiciously as a show rather than a competition. Great Britain (represented by the
England national amateur football team ) won the gold medals . They repeated the feat at the
1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm .
With the Olympic event continuing to be contested only between amateur teams, Sir Thomas Lipton organised the Sir Thomas Lipton Trophy tournament in Turin in 1909. The Lipton tournament was a championship between individual clubs (not national teams) from different nations, each one of which represented an entire nation. The competition is sometimes described as The First World Cup , [9] and featured the most prestigious professional club sides from Italy, Germany and Switzerland, but the FA of England refused to be associated with the competition and declined the offer to send a professional team. Lipton invited West Auckland , an amateur side from County Durham , to represent England instead. West Auckland won the tournament and returned in 1911 to successfully defend their title.
In 1914, FIFA agreed to recognise the Olympic tournament as a "world football championship for amateurs", and took responsibility for managing the event. [10] This paved the way for the world's first intercontinental football competition, at the 1920 Summer Olympics , contested by Egypt and 13 European teams, and won by Belgium . [11] Uruguay won the next two Olympic football tournaments in 1924 and
1928 . Those were also the first two open world championships, as 1924 was the start of FIFA's professional era.
World Cups before World War II
Estadio Centenario , the location of the first World Cup final in 1930 in
Montevideo , Uruguay
Due to the success of the Olympic football tournaments, FIFA, with President Jules Rimet as the driving force, again started looking at staging its own international tournament outside of the Olympics. On 28 May 1928, the FIFA Congress in Amsterdam decided to stage a world championship itself. [12] With Uruguay now two-time official football world champions and to celebrate their centenary of
independence in 1930, FIFA named Uruguay as the host country of the inaugural World Cup tournament .
The national associations of selected nations were invited to send a team, but the choice of Uruguay as a venue for the competition meant a long and costly trip across the Atlantic Ocean for European sides. Indeed, no European country pledged to send a team until two months before the start of the competition. Rimet eventually persuaded teams from Belgium , France, Romania, and Yugoslavia to make the trip. In total, 13 nations took part: seven from South America, four from Europe and two from North America.
The first two World Cup matches took place simultaneously on 13 July 1930, and were won by France and the USA, who defeated Mexico 4–1 and Belgium 3–0 respectively. The first goal in World Cup history was scored by
Lucien Laurent of France. [13] In the final ,
Uruguay defeated Argentina 4–2 in front of a crowd of 93,000 people in Montevideo, and in doing so became the first nation to win the World Cup.
After the creation of the World Cup, FIFA and the IOC disagreed over the status of amateur players, and so football was dropped from the
1932 Summer Olympics.
Olympic football returned at the 1936 Summer Olympics , but was now overshadowed by the more prestigious World Cup.
The issues facing the early World Cup tournaments were the difficulties of intercontinental travel, and war. Few South American teams were willing to travel to Europe for the 1934 and all North and South American nations except Brazil and Cuba boycotted the 1938 tournament. Brazil was the only South American team to compete in both. The 1942 and 1946 competitions, which
Germany and Brazil sought to host,were cancelled due to World War II and its aftermath.
World Cups after World War II.
The opening game of the Maracanã Stadium , shortly before the 1950 FIFA World Cup . National Archives of Brazil.
The 1950 World Cup , held in Brazil , was the first to include British participants. British teams withdrew from FIFA in 1920, partly out of unwillingness to play against the countries they had been at war with, and partly as a protest against foreign influence on football, but rejoined in 1946 following FIFA's invitation. The tournament also saw the return of 1930 champions Uruguay, who had boycotted the previous two World Cups. Uruguay won the tournament again after defeating the host nation Brazil, in the match called " Maracanazo" (Portuguese:
Maracanaço ).
In the tournaments between 1934 and 1978 , 16 teams competed in each tournament, except in 1938, when Austria was absorbed into Germany after qualifying, leaving the tournament with 15 teams, and in 1950, when
India , Scotland , and Turkey withdrew, leaving the tournament with 13 teams.
Most of the participating nations were from Europe and South America, with a small minority from North America, Africa, Asia, and Oceania. These teams were usually defeated easily by the European and South American teams. Until 1982, the only teams from outside Europe and South America to advance out of the first round were: USA, semi-finalists in 1930; Cuba , quarter-finalists in 1938; North Korea, quarter-finalists in 1966 ; and Mexico , quarter-finalists in 1970 .
Expansion to 32 teams
Interior view of the Soccer City in
Johannesburg, South Africa, during a match at the 2010 FIFA World Cup .
The tournament was expanded to 24 teams in
1982 , [20] and then to 32 in 1998 , [21] also allowing more teams from Africa, Asia and North America to take part. Since then, teams from these regions have enjoyed more success, with several having reached the quarter-finals: Mexico , quarter-finalists in 1986 ;
Cameroon , quarter-finalists in 1990 ; South Korea , finishing in fourth place in 2002 ;
Senegal , along with USA , both quarter-finalists in 2002; Ghana , quarter-finalists in 2010; and
Costa Rica, quarter-finalists in 2014. Nevertheless, European and South American teams continue to dominate, e.g., the quarter-finalists in 1994, 1998, and 2006 were all from Europe or South America and so were the finalists of all tournaments so far.
Two hundred teams entered the 2002 FIFA World Cup qualification rounds; 198 nations attempted to qualify for the 2006 FIFA World Cup , while a record 204 countries entered qualification for the 2010 FIFA World Cup .
Expansion to 48 teams
In October 2013, Sepp Blatter spoke of guaranteeing the Caribbean Football Union 's region a position in the World Cup.
In the 25 October 2013 edition of the FIFA Weekly Blatter wrote that: " From a purely sporting perspective, I would like to see globalisation finally taken seriously, and the African and Asian national associations accorded the status they deserve at the FIFA World Cup. It cannot be that the European and South American confederations lay claim to the majority of the berths at the World Cup. " Those two remarks suggested to commentators that Blatter could be putting himself forward for re-election to the FIFA Presidency.
Following the magazine's publication, Blatter's would-be opponent for the FIFA Presidency,
UEFA President Michel Platini responded that he intended to extend the World Cup to 40 national associations, increasing the number of participants by eight. Platini said that he would allocate an additional berth to UEFA, two to
Asia Football Confederation and Confederation of African Football, two shared between
CONCACAF and CONMEBOL, and a guaranteed place for the Oceania Football Confederation . [26] Platini was clear about why he wanted to expand the World Cup. He said: " [The World Cup is] not based on the quality of the teams because you don't have the best 32 at the World Cup ... but it's a good compromise. ... It's a political matter so why not have more Africans? The competition is to bring all the people of all the world. If you don't give the possibility to participate, they don't improve. "
In October 2016 FIFA president Gianni Infantino stated his support for a 48-team World Cup in 2026. On 10 January 2017, FIFA confirmed the 2026 World Cup will have 48 finalist teams.
