2002 FIFA World Cup

• 1. Introduction

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  The 2002 FIFA World Cup ran from the 31st of May to the 30th of June 2002. Its final was staged at International Stadium in Yokohama, Japan. This was the seventeenth FIFA World Cup, the tournament FIFA holds every four years for men's national teams. Thirty-two teams qualified, and for the first time the competition left Europe and the Americas altogether, landing in Asia. It was also the first World Cup ever shared between more than one host nation, split between Japan and South Korea. Four teams made their World Cup debut that year: China, Ecuador, Senegal and Slovenia. Behind those facts sit harder questions. How did two political and sporting rivals end up sharing a single tournament? Why did the presumed favorites collapse before the knockout rounds even started? And why would the referees, not just the players, end up at the center of the story?

• 2. A Reluctant Partnership

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  On the 31st of May 1996, FIFA announced South Korea and Japan as co-hosts. South Korea, Japan and Mexico had each submitted bids, though Mexico was regarded as a long shot from the start. South Korea's entry into the race was seen by some as a direct response to rival Japan's ambitions.

  FIFA boss João Havelange had long backed the Japanese bid. His rival within FIFA, UEFA chief Lennart Johansson, worked against those plans instead. Both UEFA and the Asian Football Confederation favored a shared hosting arrangement over naming a single winner. Sultan Ahmad Shah, the head of the Asian Football Confederation, stepped in as the two Asian rivals ran an expensive worldwide public relations campaign. South Korea and Japan were left with a stark choice: co-host together or lose the World Cup entirely. They reluctantly agreed, and FIFA then chose them unanimously as co-hosts over Mexico.

  The next shared World Cup will not arrive until 2026, when the United States, Mexico and Canada host together. Qatar became the second Asian host of a World Cup twenty years later, in 2022. Song Young-shik, general secretary of South Korea's bidding committee, said FIFA had even considered staging some matches in North Korea to support Korean reunification. The idea was ultimately ruled out. Co-hosting did not meaningfully change relations between Japan and South Korea, two nations with a historically strained relationship. Even so, the tournament did promote a broader vision of cooperation between them.

  Shut out of hosting, North Korea staged its own event instead, the Arirang Mass Games, timed to run alongside the World Cup. That echoed its approach to the 1988 Seoul Olympics, when North Korea hosted the 13th World Festival of Youth and Students rather than take part. At the time FIFA made its hosting decision, Japan had never even qualified for a World Cup final tournament. It went on to qualify in 1998. Only two other countries have ever been awarded a World Cup without first reaching a final tournament: Italy in 1934 and Qatar in 2022. Uruguay hosted the very first World Cup in 1930, but no earlier tournament existed for them to qualify for. They arrived instead as the defending Olympic champions from 1928.

  Getting from that political decision to the opening kickoff still required 199 nations to fight through a qualifying tournament of their own.

• 3. The Road to Asia

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  199 nations entered the race to reach the 2002 World Cup. The preliminary qualifying draw took place in Tokyo on the 7th of December 1999. France and co-hosts South Korea and Japan needed no qualifying matches at all. It was the last time a team qualified automatically and then played the tournament's opening game.

  Fourteen places went to UEFA teams from Europe. Five went to CAF teams from Africa, four to CONMEBOL teams from South America, and four to AFC teams from Asia. Three more went to CONCACAF teams from North and Central America and the Caribbean. Two further places were settled by playoffs, one between the AFC and UEFA and one between CONMEBOL and Oceania's OFC. Turkey qualified for the first time since 1954. Poland and Portugal both returned for the first time since 1986, and Costa Rica and Uruguay came back for the first time since 1990. Sweden, Russia and the Republic of Ireland also returned after missing the 1998 tournament. South Korea became the first nation from outside Europe or the Americas to reach five consecutive World Cup finals tournaments.

  All seven previous World Cup winning nations, Argentina, Brazil, England, France, Germany, Italy and Uruguay, qualified for 2002 at the same time. That set a new record for former champions gathered in one tournament. The mark was broken again only in 2014, once Spain's 2010 win added an eighth. Colombia, ranked fourth in the world, was the highest ranked team to miss out entirely. China, ranked fiftieth, was the lowest ranked team to qualify.

  On the 28th of November 2001, FIFA's organising committee announced the tournament's eight seeded teams. The full draw followed on the 1st of December 2001, at the Busan Exhibition and Convention Center in South Korea. American singer Anastacia gave the debut public performance of the official World Cup song, "Boom," during the ceremony. FIFA general secretary Michel Zen-Ruffinen conducted the draw, assisted by former players including Pelé, Johan Cruyff, Michel Platini and Roger Milla. This was also the first World Cup where squads expanded to 23 players, up from 22 previously, with at least three required to be goalkeepers.

  One outcome of that draw stood out immediately. It placed Argentina, England, Nigeria and Sweden together in Group F, which pundits nicknamed the group of death.

• 4. Giants Fall, Underdogs Rise

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  France went out in the group stage without scoring a single goal, taking just one point from three matches. Argentina, ranked among the tournament's other favorites, suffered the identical fate, eliminated in the group stage alongside them.

  South Korea beat Poland, Portugal, Italy and Spain in succession to reach the semi-finals. No team from outside UEFA, CONMEBOL or CONCACAF had ever managed that before. Their win over Italy came in extra time in Daejeon, settled by an Ahn Jung-hwan goal in the 117th minute. That victory sent teams from five different continents into the quarter-finals of the same World Cup for the first time ever. Beating Spain 5-3 on penalties in Gwangju, after a scoreless draw, sent South Korea into the semi-finals. That made them the first Asian Football Confederation team ever to reach that stage. It surpassed North Korea's own run to the quarter-finals in 1966.

  Turkey reached its first ever semi-final in the same tournament, in what was only the nation's second World Cup finals appearance in total. Their path there ran through Osaka, where a golden goal from İlhan Mansız in the 94th minute eliminated Senegal. Senegal had advanced to that match only after Henri Camara's own golden goal beat Sweden 2-1 in Ōita, following a 1-1 draw in regulation. That result had already made Senegal just the second African team ever to reach a World Cup quarter-final, after Cameroon in 1990.

  In the semi-final itself, a single Michael Ballack goal was enough for Germany to eliminate South Korea in Seoul. Ballack had already picked up a yellow card earlier in that same match, and the accumulated booking meant he would miss the final entirely.

  None of those golden-goal deciders drew half the anger that a pair of refereeing decisions would generate elsewhere in the tournament.

• 5. Whistles and Complaints

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  The match between Italy and South Korea drew 400,000 complaints over its officiating. The outcry was large enough that ESPN later listed it among the ten most fabled controversies in World Cup history.

  Spain's match against South Korea featured two controversially disallowed Spanish goals, in moments the Spaniards believed were legitimate. Spanish defender Iván Helguera called the officiating "a robbery" afterward, and the Spanish press branded the match officials "thieves of dreams." FIFA, for its part, dismissed the entire incident as human error.

  None of that anger touched the team that was about to set a record of its own in the final.

• 6. The Final Word

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  In the match for third place in Daegu, Turkey beat South Korea 3-2. Hakan Şükür scored the opening goal straight from kickoff, in just 10.8 seconds, even though South Korea had been the team to kick off. It remains the fastest goal ever scored in World Cup history.

  Two second-half goals from Ronaldo secured Brazil's 2-0 win over Germany in the final. Those goals gave Ronaldo the Golden Shoe as the tournament's leading scorer, with eight goals in total. Brazil's win made them the first and only country to win the World Cup five times. Brazil became the only team since Argentina's win in 1986 to lift the trophy without needing a penalty shoot-out. That held true at every stage of the knockout rounds. The tournament's total of two penalty shoot-outs was the lowest since the four-round knockout format began in 1986. Brazil also became the first team to win every single match at a World Cup since 1970. They also set a new record for goal difference by a champion, plus fourteen across the tournament. Brazil's captain, Cafu, became the first player ever to appear in three consecutive World Cup finals. It was Cafu who accepted the trophy on the team's behalf.

  This was also the last World Cup to use the golden goal rule in extra time. It was also the last tournament in which every match was played with the same official ball.

  Starting in 2006, the final has used a ball with the same specifications but a different color each time. Off the pitch, the tournament left behind its own set of numbers to reckon with.

• 7. Aftermath and Economics

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  By the end of April, organizers had sold out the original domestic ticket allocation and finished selling tickets returned from the international allocation. Yet several opening matches still had a significant number of empty seats. It emerged that the World Cup Ticketing Bureau still held unsold tickets in its own possession. Once FIFA agreed to release that inventory, JAWOC handled sales by telephone while the Ticketing Bureau managed sales online. For the second-round match between Japan and Turkey in Miyagi, both organizations had reported a complete sellout. Yet roughly 700 seats sat empty on the day.

  The tournament generated an estimated 1.3 billion US dollars in revenue across both host countries. In South Korea, spending by World Cup tourists created 307 million US dollars in direct income and 713 million US dollars in added value. Japan spent an estimated 5.6 billion US dollars preparing for the event. That spending produced a 24.8 billion US dollar impact on the Japanese economy and accounted for 0.6 percent of the country's GDP in 2002.

  Germany's Oliver Kahn won the tournament's Golden Ball as its best overall player. He remains the only goalkeeper in World Cup history to receive that honor.