1958 FIFA World Cup

• 1. Introduction

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  The 1958 FIFA World Cup opened in Sweden on the 8th of June with a question nobody could quite answer: was a 17-year-old from Brazil actually as good as people were saying? Six weeks later, Pelé had scored in every knockout game of the tournament, lobbed the ball over a Swedish defender in the final, and become the youngest player ever to win a World Cup. The competition that crowned him ran from the 8th to the 29th of June across twelve Swedish cities, making it the only World Cup ever staged in a Nordic country. Brazil beat the hosts 5-2 in the final at Solna, Stockholm, claiming their first world title. Meanwhile, French striker Just Fontaine was writing a separate chapter of history, scoring 13 goals across the tournament, a record no player has surpassed since. Wales, Northern Ireland, and the Soviet Union all made their World Cup debuts, and every one of the United Kingdom's four home nations qualified, the only time that has ever happened. The questions this tournament raises go beyond who won: how did a 17-year-old become the tournament's defining figure? How did a French striker score 13 goals in a single competition? And what brought four British nations to Sweden at the same moment?

• 2. Getting Sweden to the Stage

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  Sweden was awarded the 1958 tournament on the 23rd of June 1950, when FIFA delegates gathered in Rio de Janeiro during the 1950 World Cup finals. Swedish lobbyists had approached other nations at that congress, and when the vote came, Sweden won unopposed against the other candidates: Argentina, Chile, and Mexico. Building the venues proved harder than winning the bid. Holger Bergérus, the organising committee chairman, mortgaged his own house to pay for expanding the Råsunda Stadium in Solna from 38,000 capacity to one that could hold a final. The new Malmö Stadion was constructed from scratch, replacing the 1896 Malmö Stadion at a new site entirely. At the Idrottsparken in Norrköping, the Social Democratic municipal government refused to fund additional seating until the organisers threatened to move matches to Folkungavallen in Linköping instead. In the end, twelve cities across central and southern Sweden hosted games, with the Råsunda Stadium in Stockholm handling eight matches and the Ullevi Stadium in Gothenburg, the tournament's largest venue with a capacity of 53,500, hosting seven. Television shaped the scheduling in an unusual way: Sveriges Radio broadcast all three of Sweden's group matches live, so those games were given start times that let Swedish fans attend other matches first without missing their own team. Many Swedes bought their first television set specifically for this World Cup. One other detail from the preparation carries its own strange charm: the official match ball, the Top-Star VM-bollen 1958, was chosen after four FIFA officials conducted a blind test selecting it from 102 candidates. It was manufactured by Sydsvenska Läder och Remfabriks AB in the southern Swedish town of Ängelholm.

• 3. The Nations Who Made It

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  Wales arrived at the 1958 World Cup through one of the stranger qualification routes in the tournament's history. Finishing second in its European group behind Czechoslovakia, Wales was drawn into a play-off against Israel after Israel's three opponents, Turkey, Indonesia, and Sudan, had all refused to play. FIFA had imposed a rule that no team could qualify without playing at least one match. Wales won that play-off and secured a first-ever World Cup place, a feat they would not repeat for 64 years. Northern Ireland also made its debut, and with England and Scotland both qualifying, this became the only World Cup on record to feature all four of the United Kingdom's home nations simultaneously. The Soviet Union appeared in a World Cup for the first time, while Argentina returned for the first time since 1934. Italy, by contrast, failed to qualify, marking its first-ever absence from a competition for which it had actually entered. The seeding arrangement drew criticism even before a ball was kicked. Rather than ranking teams by strength, FIFA divided them geographically into four pots, placing one western European side, one eastern European side, one British team, and one team from the Americas in each group. Austria objected loudly, having been drawn against the teams regarded as strongest in each of the other three pots. The draw itself had been presented to the public on the 8th of February 1958 in Solna, with broadcasters Lennart Hyland and Sven Jerring announcing the group placements.

• 4. Group Stage Disruptions

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  Argentina, widely tipped to reach the semi-finals or possibly win the tournament, finished last in Group 1 with a goal difference of -5. When the squad returned to Buenos Aires, several thousand angry supporters met them at Ezeiza Airport. Their group had also seen Northern Ireland pull off what was described as one of the biggest upsets in World Cup history: nobody had expected much from the newcomers, yet they had already knocked out two-time world champions Italy during qualifying, and they beat Czechoslovakia in a play-off to reach the quarter-finals. Group 2 was the tournament's highest-scoring, producing 31 goals across its matches, an average of around 5.16 per game. Just Fontaine scored six of his eventual 13 in that phase alone. Hungary arrived in Sweden with a diminished squad after the failed uprising against the communist regime in 1956 had driven their best players into exile. Of the celebrated 1954 Hungarian side, only goalkeeper Gyula Grosics, defender Jozsef Bozsik, and forward Nándor Hidegkuti remained; Hidegkuti was 36 and well past his peak. Wales drew all three of their group games and then beat Hungary in a play-off in Sandviken, a town far enough north that that game became the most northerly World Cup match in history. Brazil and England's 0-0 draw in Group 4 was a landmark of a different kind: it was the first goalless game in World Cup history. England had been weakened by the Munich air disaster earlier in 1958, which killed three international players on Manchester United's books, including the young star Duncan Edwards. Brazil won the group without conceding a single goal, even without Pelé and Garrincha, who sat out the first two matches.

• 5. Fontaine and the Knockout Rounds

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  Just Fontaine had netted six goals in the group stage when the knockout rounds began. He scored twice more in the quarter-final as France beat Northern Ireland. France then met Brazil in the semi-final, and for much of the first half the teams were level at 1-1. Thirty-six minutes into the match, French captain Robert Jonquet suffered a broken leg in a collision with Vavá, and France played the remainder with ten men, substitutions not yet being permitted. Pelé scored a hat-trick in the second half, and Brazil won 5-2. Fontaine added a goal to his tally even in defeat. In the match for third place, Fontaine scored four more, giving France a 6-3 win over West Germany. That brought his tournament total to 13 goals, a record that has not been broken since. The other semi-final had its own moments of history. Sweden beat West Germany 3-1 in a game the source describes as vicious. Erich Juskowiak became the first German player ever sent off in an international match. German veteran forward Fritz Walter was injured, further depleting a side that had no recourse to substitutes; those were not permitted in World Cup play until the 1970 tournament. The German team that went into that semi-final had won the World Cup four years earlier, and counted a young Uwe Seeler among its forwards. Helmut Rahn, who had scored the winning goal in the 1954 final, finished the 1958 tournament with six goals, equal with Pelé.

• 6. The Final in Solna

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  Fifty thousand people filled the Råsunda Stadium in Solna for the final on the 29th of June. Sweden went ahead within four minutes. Brazil equalised through Vavá and then went in front before half time, with Vavá scoring again. The second half belonged to Pelé. His first goal involved lobbing the ball over Sweden's Bengt Gustavsson and then volleying it precisely into the net. He scored a second shortly after, and Mário Zagallo added another in between. Sweden scored a consolation goal to make the final score 5-2, matching the margin by which Brazil had beaten France in the semi-final. The records set in that final carry particular weight. At 17, Pelé became simultaneously the youngest player to participate in, score in, and win a World Cup final. At the opposite end, Sweden's Nils Liedholm became the oldest player to score in a World Cup final, at 35 years and 263 days. The five-goal winning total was the highest ever scored by a winning team in a final. The seven goals in total were the most ever in a final. The winning margin of three goals has since been equalled only by the 1970 and 1998 finals, matches in which Brazil also played. The game was also the first World Cup final to feature teams from different continents, Europe and South America, meeting outside of the group stage. It remains the only World Cup hosted in Europe not won by a European team, a record that stood until Germany hosted in 2006 and Italy took the title. The All-Star team voted by journalists at the tournament named Pelé, Garrincha, Didi, Raymond Kopa, and Lennart Skoglund as forwards; yet Just Fontaine, who received more forward votes than any other player, was left off because his votes were split across two positional slots.