World Cup History

The FIFA World Cup, also referred to as the Football World Cup or Soccer World Cup, is an international competition for the sport of soccer, wherein several soccer playing nations from all over the world compete for the prized World Championship. The history of this tournament can be traced back to the year 1930, when the first competition was held in Uruguay. Since then the Cup is held once every four years, and over the last eight decades, the only exception was a brief break in 1940s wherein proceedings were stalled as a result of the ongoing Second World War.

FIFA World Cup History

Even though the International Federation of Association Football (also known as Fédération Internationale de Football Association or (FIFA), came into existence in 1904, it took the world another 25 years to see the first Football World Cup take place. The idea of hosting an independent international competition was conceptualized by the FIFA Congress under the leadership of Jules Rimet, the then President of FIFA, on 28th May, 1928, in Amsterdam. Uruguay, who had won the Olympic football tournament in 1924 and 1928, was chosen to be the host nation for first ever Soccer World Cup.

First Football World Cup

Uruguay was celebrating the centenary of its first constitution in 1930, and this was yet another reason why it was chosen to host the first FIFA World Cup. The tournament was held between 13th July to 30th July that year. A total of thirteen soccer playing nations from South America (7 teams), Europe (4 teams) and North America (2 teams) participated in the first World Cup. The tournament started with two matches being played simultaneously - the first between France (4) and Mexico (1) and the second between USA (3) and Belgium (0). The goal scored by Lucien Laurent for France became the first goal in the history of World Cup Football. Eventually, four teams made it to the semi-finals - USA, Argentina, Uruguay and Yugoslavia. The first semi-final saw Argentina defeat USA (6-1) to book a berth in the finals. In the second semi-final, Uruguay defeated Yugoslavia (2-1) and set up the first ever title clash for the Soccer World Cup. In the first ever World Cup final, Uruguay defeated Argentina with a score line of 4-2, and became the first ever Soccer World Champions.

Subsequent Football World Cups

The next two World Cups were hosted by Italy (1934) and France (1938) respectively. During this period, traveling across the continents was a major hindrance and that resulted in poor participation from South American nations in these two World Cups. Brazil was the only Latin-American nation which participated in both of these World Cups. World championships scheduled for 1942 and 1946 were scrapped as a result of Second World War outbreak. The fourth World Cup was finally held in 1950 in Brazil. The FIFA World Cup Trophy which is being awarded to the winners even today was designed in 1970. Before 1970, the winner was given the Jules Rimet Trophy, which was also called the World Cup. Since 1950, FIFA has successfully organized a World Cup every four years, with the last one being held in South Africa in 2010.

Year	Winner	Runner-Up	Host Nation
1930	Uruguay	Argentina	Uruguay
1934	Italy	Czechoslovakia	Italy
1938	Italy	Hungary	France
1950	Uruguay	Brazil	Brazil
1954	West Germany	Hungary	Switzerland
1958	Brazil	Sweden	Sweden
1962	Brazil	Czechoslovakia	Chile
1966	England	West Germany	England
1970	Brazil	Italy	Mexico
1974	West Germany	Netherlands	Germany
1978	Argentina	Netherlands	Argentina
1982	Italy	West Germany	Spain
1986	Argentina	West Germany	Mexico
1990	West Germany	Argentina	Italy
1994	Brazil	Italy	USA
1998	France	Brazil	France
2002	Brazil	Germany	S. Korea & Japan
2006	Italy	France	Germany
2010	Spain	Netherlands	South Africa

As of today, Brazil has won as many as 5 out of the 19 World Cups since 1930. One of the most interesting facts about Soccer World Cup is that Brazil is the only nation to have participated in each of these 19 World Cups. Coming a close second is Italy, with 4 World Cup wins to their credit. While Germany has won the Cup thrice, Uruguay and Argentina have won it twice each, and England, Germany and Spain have won it once each. Throughout the history, South America and Europe were tied with 9 World Cup wins each, but a win for Spain in recently concluded World Cup 2010 gave Europe a lead of 10-9. Brazil also holds the distinction of scoring the most number of goals in the history of World Cup, with a present count of 210.

All throughout the history of soccer, there has never been a tournament as interesting as the World Cup, and a viewership of 700 million across the world speaks in volumes about the craze for the Cup.