A brief history of the FIFA World Cup…
The FIFA World Cup is easily the second most watched sporting spectacle on earth, after only the quadrennial Olympic Games.
While the 32-team event, held every four years, has grown into a modern-day leviathan, it has not always been this way.
It had very humble roots when it first started off in Uruguay in 1930, when then FIFA president Jules Rimet decided to stage an international football tournament. The inaugural edition was contested by just 13 invited teams.
From those early days, it has now become a competition that involves two years of qualification events featuring over 200 teams from around the world.
Early growth of football
The first official international football match was played in 1872, in Glasgow, between Scotland and England. It was only in 1902 that the first international match outside the British Isles was played — between Uruguay and Argentina in Montevideo.
FIFA was founded in Paris on May 22, 1904, and it led to a rise in the popularity of the game. Football became a part of the Olympic Games from 1900, but it was contested mostly buy amateurs and was considered to be a show event, rather than serious competition.
FIFA recognised Olympic football as a ‘world championship for amateurs’ in 1914 and it directly led to the 1920 Games being recognised as the first intercontinental football competition. The competition grew more serious and football at the 1924 and 1928 Games were hotly contested.
Birth of the FIFA World Cup
FIFA decided to host international tournaments on its own in 1928. The reason for it was the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) refusal to recognise football as a professional sport. The IOC dropped football from the 1932 Los Angeles Games and it proved to be the catalyst for the birth of the FIFA World Cup.
It made FIFA president Jules Rimet to spring into action and set about organising the inaugural World Cup tournament.
Uruguay, having won the 1924 and 1928 Olympic gold medals, and due to celebrate their centenary year of independence, was chosen as hosts of the inaugural tournament in 1930.
A total of 13 teams — seven from South America, four from Europe and two from North America — took part.
The first goal in World Cup history was scored by France’s Lucien Laurent against Mexico. Four days later, the first World Cup hat-trick was achieved by USA’s Bert Patenaude against Paraguay.
In the final, Uruguay defeated Argentina in front of a 93,000-strong crowd to become the first nation to win a FIFA World Cup.
