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World Cup History

Previous international competitions The World Cup was not the first international football competition. Amateur football became a part of the official Olympic programme for the first time in 1908 (see Football at the 1908 Summer Olympics).

In Turin in 1909, in what is sometimes described as The First World Cup, Sir Thomas Lipton organised a football tournament to contest the Sir Thomas Lipton Trophy. Italy, Germany and Switzerland sent their most prestigious professional club sides to the competition, but The Football Association of England refused to be associated with it and declined the offer to send a team. Not wishing to have Britain unrepresented in the competition, Lipton invited West Auckland FC, an amateur side from the north-east of England and mostly made up of coal miners, to take part. West Auckland won the tournament and returned to Italy in 1911 to defend their title. In this second competition, West Auckland beat Juventus 6-1 in the final, and were awarded the trophy outright. In the Olympic games of 1924 and 1928, Uruguay won the football gold medal, in what was considered a proto-world cup. Unofficially, FIFA recognized Uruguay as World Champion. These victories led the FIFA to choose Uruguay as the home of the first FIFA sanctioned World Cup.

[edit] The first World Cup In 1927, the 1932 Summer Olympics were awarded to Los Angeles in the United States where the popularity of American football far surpassed that of the international game of association football (by then becoming known as soccer in the US). The general lack of interest from the Americans, and a disagreement between FIFA and the IOC over the status of amateur players, led to football being dropped from the official Olympic programme for the 1932 games.

As a consequence, Jules Rimet, who had become president of FIFA in 1921, set about organising the inaugural World Cup tournament, to take place in Uruguay in 1930. 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 for European sides, and up until two months before the start of the competition no team from that continent had promised to send a team. Rimet eventually persuaded teams representing Belgium, France, Romania, and Yugoslavia to make the trip. In total, thirteen nations took part - seven from South America, four from Europe and two from North America. The first ever goal was scored by Lucien Laurent, who scored for France against Mexico (match ended 4-1 for France). In the final, Uruguay beat Argentina 4-2 in front of a crowd of 93,000 people in Montevideo, to become the first nation to win a World Cup.

[edit] Growth The issues facing the early World Cup tournaments were travel (for teams outside the continent of the host nations), and war, with the 1942 and 1946 editions being cancelled due to World War II.

The British home nations, where football was first played, entered the World Cup for the first time in 1950, after reaching an agreement with FIFA about their status.

For the tournaments between 1934 and 1978, 16 teams took part in the final tournament (except in a few cases where teams withdrew after qualifying). Most of the qualifiers were from Europe and Latin America, with a very small minority from Africa, Asia and Oceania. These teams were usually easily defeated by the European and Latin American teams (with the notable exception of North Korea in 1966, which reached the quarterfinals).

The final tournament was expanded to 24 teams in 1982, then to 32 teams in 1998, allowing more teams from Africa, Asia and North America to take part. In recent years, these comparatively newer participants have enjoyed more success, with examples such as Cameroon in 1990, and South Korea, Senegal and USA in 2002. The World Cup is now a truly global event, with as many as 197 nations entering qualification for the 2006 edition.

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