FIFA World Cup

• 1. Introduction

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  The FIFA World Cup drew an estimated 5 billion in engagement at the 2022 tournament, with about 1.5 billion people watching the final match alone. That is close to a fifth of everyone alive, gathered around a single game between Argentina and France. Argentina won, taking a third title. The tournament has run every four years since 1930, pausing only for 1942 and 1946 during World War II. It crowns the senior men's national champion among the members of FIFA, the sport's global governing body. Eighty national teams have played in at least one edition. Only eight have ever lifted the trophy. So how did a competition that began with just thirteen nations, most of them refusing the long sea voyage, become the most widely viewed and followed sporting event on earth? Who keeps winning, who keeps trying, and why does a solid gold object weighing just over six kilograms carry so much weight beyond its mass?

• 2. Before The First Whistle

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  Glasgow in 1872 hosted the world's first international football match, a challenge between Scotland and England. The British Home Championship followed in 1884, drawing in England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. Football spread fast, appearing as a demonstration sport with no medals at the 1900 and 1904 Summer Olympics. The International Olympic Committee has since retroactively upgraded those events, and the 1906 Intercalated Games, to official status. FIFA was founded in 1904 and tried staging its own tournament in Switzerland in 1906, an effort its official history records as unsuccessful. At the 1908 Summer Olympics in London, football became an official Olympic sport, restricted to amateurs and viewed suspiciously as a show rather than a true contest. Great Britain, fielding the England national amateur team, took gold there and again at the 1912 Stockholm Games. Sir Thomas Lipton ran a rival event in Turin in 1909, a championship between individual clubs each standing in for a whole nation. The England FA refused to take part, so Lipton invited West Auckland, an amateur side from County Durham, to represent England. West Auckland won, then returned in 1911 to defend the title successfully. Earlier still, from 1876 to 1904, matches between leading English and Scottish clubs were treated as the football world championship, including an 1895 game that Sunderland won against Heart of Midlothian. In 1914, FIFA agreed to recognise the Olympic tournament as a world football championship for amateurs and took over its management.

• 3. Rimet's Gamble

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  Belgium won the 1920 Summer Olympics football tournament, the first intercontinental competition for nations, contested by Egypt and 13 European teams. Uruguay then took the next two Olympic titles, in 1924 and 1928, the first two open world championships now that FIFA's professional era had begun. That double is why Uruguay is allowed to wear four stars. FIFA, with President Jules Rimet driving the effort, decided to build something of its own. On the 28th of May 1928, the FIFA Congress in Amsterdam voted to stage a world championship. Uruguay, by then two-time official world champions and marking the centenary of its independence in 1930, was named host of the inaugural tournament. The choice carried a cost. A crossing of the Atlantic in the depths of the Great Depression deterred Europe, and no European nation pledged a team until two months before kickoff. Rimet eventually coaxed Belgium, France, Romania, and Yugoslavia aboard. Thirteen nations took part in all: seven from South America, four from Europe, two from North America. The opening two matches kicked off simultaneously on the 13th of July 1930, won by France and the United States, who beat Mexico 4-1 and Belgium 3-0. Lucien Laurent of France scored the very first World Cup goal. In the final, before 93,000 spectators in Montevideo, Uruguay beat Argentina 4-2 to become the first champion.

• 4. War, Boycott, And Maracanazo

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  The 1934 World Cup struggled to attract South American teams willing to cross to Europe, and the 1938 tournament saw every North and South American nation except Brazil and Cuba boycott. Brazil alone among South Americans played in both. The 1942 and 1946 competitions, sought by Germany and Brazil, were cancelled for World War II. When the game resumed in Brazil in 1950, it was the first edition to include the British football associations. Scotland, England, Wales, and Northern Ireland had quit FIFA in 1920, partly unwilling to face wartime enemies and partly protesting foreign influence, and rejoined in 1946. That 1950 tournament also welcomed back Uruguay, who had skipped the previous two. India, Scotland, and Turkey withdrew, leaving just 13 teams. Uruguay beat host Brazil in the deciding match, a result Brazilians still call the Maracanazo. For most editions between 1934 and 1978, sixteen teams competed, with exceptions: in 1938 Austria was absorbed into Germany after qualifying, leaving fifteen teams. Until 1982, only four sides from outside Europe and South America escaped the first round: the United States as semi-finalists in 1930, Cuba as quarter-finalists in 1938, North Korea as quarter-finalists in 1966, and Mexico as quarter-finalists in 1970.

• 5. Opening The Gates

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  Twenty-four teams entered the 1982 tournament, the first expansion, followed by a jump to 32 in 1998. The wider field let more nations from Africa, Asia, and North America compete, and several reached the quarter-finals: Mexico in 1986, Cameroon in 1990, Senegal and the United States in 2002, Ghana in 2010, and Costa Rica in 2014. South Korea finished fourth in 2002 and Morocco fourth in 2022. Yet Europe and South America still dominate; every quarter-finalist in 1994, 1998, 2006, and 2018 came from those two continents, as has every finalist in the tournament's history. The scale of qualification grew alongside the finals. A record 204 countries entered the running for the 2010 World Cup. In October 2013, Sepp Blatter wrote in the FIFA Weekly that the European and South American confederations could not keep claiming most of the berths. His rival for the presidency, UEFA's Michel Platini, proposed expanding to 40 teams, arguing it was a political matter and asking why not have more Africans, since nations that cannot take part cannot improve. In October 2016, FIFA president Gianni Infantino backed a 48-team field, and on the 10th of January 2017 FIFA confirmed it for 2026.

• 6. A Dark Cloud

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  By May 2015 the games sat under the shadow of the FIFA corruption case, with officials accused of taking bribes totaling more than $150 million over 24 years to rig media and marketing rights. The U.S. Department of Justice announced a 47-count indictment against 14 people, charging racketeering, wire fraud, and money laundering conspiracy. By the end of that month, nine FIFA officials and five sports and broadcasting executives had been charged. Sepp Blatter said he would relinquish the presidency in February 2016. On the 4th of June 2015, Chuck Blazer, cooperating with the FBI and Swiss authorities, admitted that he and fellow members of FIFA's executive committee had been bribed to promote the 1998 and 2010 World Cups. Six days later, Swiss authorities seized computer data from Blatter's offices, and FIFA postponed the bidding for the 2026 tournament. Secretary general Jérôme Valcke called it nonsense to start any bidding process for the time being. On the 28th of October 2015, Blatter and Michel Platini were suspended for 90 days, both maintaining their innocence. On the 3rd of December, two FIFA vice-presidents were arrested for suspected bribery in the same Zurich hotel where seven officials had been seized in May, and the Justice Department announced 16 more indictments that day.

• 7. The Golden Object

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  From 1930 to 1970, the winning team received the Jules Rimet Trophy, named in 1946 after the FIFA president who founded the competition. Brazil's third victory in 1970 let them keep it permanently, but it was stolen in 1983 and never recovered, apparently melted down by the thieves. FIFA's experts, drawn from seven countries, then judged 53 proposed designs and chose the work of Italian designer Silvio Gazzaniga. His FIFA World Cup Trophy stands 36 cm high, is made of solid 18 carat gold, and weighs 6.175 kg, with two layers of semi-precious malachite in its base. Gazzaniga described lines springing from the base, rising in spirals to receive the world, with two athletes rising at the stirring moment of victory. This trophy is never kept; winners hold it only until the post-match celebration ends, then receive a gold-plated replica. The bottom bears the engraved name and year of each champion since 1974, and only eight national teams appear on it. Medals tell their own story of inclusion. Before 1978 only the eleven players on the pitch at the end received them, and in November 2007 FIFA retroactively awarded winners' medals to every champion squad from 1930 to 1974. That decision made Brazil's Pelé the only player with three winners' medals, from 1958, 1962, and 1970, though injury kept him out of the 1962 final.

• 8. The Names On The Trophy

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  Brazil are the most successful team, with five titles, and the only nation to have played in all 22 World Cups, scoring the most goals at 237 and recording the most wins at 76. Italy in 1934 and 1938, and Brazil in 1958 and 1962, are the only sides to win back-to-back titles. Germany owns the most top-four finishes at 13, the most finals at 8, and the most semi-finals at 13. The individual records run just as deep. Miroslav Klose of Germany is the all-time top scorer with 16 goals, having passed Brazil's Ronaldo and his 15 during the 2014 semi-final against Brazil. France's Just Fontaine scored all 13 of his goals in the single 1958 tournament, a one-edition record. Lionel Messi has played the most matches overall, with 26 appearances. Cristiano Ronaldo became the first and only player to score in five different tournaments. Three men have won the World Cup as both player and head coach: Brazil's Mário Zagallo, West Germany's Franz Beckenbauer, and France's Didier Deschamps, who repeated the feat in 2018 after captaining the 1998 winners. Italy's Vittorio Pozzo remains the only head coach to win twice, in 1934 and 1938, and every winning coach was a native of the country he led. The final itself has only ever been contested by European and South American teams, twelve titles to ten, and the next edition opens a new chapter: the 2026 tournament, jointly hosted by Canada, Mexico, and the United States, will field 48 teams across 104 matches and make Mexico the first country to host games in three World Cups.