FIFA - World Cup

How it all began ... and what it has become today

The entire world will witness the grand finals of the much awaited FIFA World Cup next Sunday. Often called the Football World Cup or simply the World Cup it is the most significant competition in international football.

The world's most representative team sport event, the World Cup is contested by the men's national football teams of member nations of Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), which is the sport's global governing body.

The championship has been awarded every four years since the first tournament in 1930, except in 1942 and 1946, due to World War II. However, the event is often ongoing, as the qualifying rounds of the competition take place over the three years preceding the final rounds.

The tournament's final phase (often called the "Finals") involves 32 national teams competing over a four-week period in a previously nominated host nation, with these games making it the most widely-viewed sporting event in the world.

In seventeen tournaments held, only seven nations have ever won the World Cup. Brazil is the current holder, as well as the most successful World Cup team, having won the tournament five times, while Germany and Italy follow with three titles each.

Of the nine World Cups staged in Europe, before the current tournament, only one saw victory by a non-European team, that being Brazil in 1958.

When held outside Europe, the competition has only ever been won by South American teams. Only two teams from outside these two continents have ever reached the semi-finals of the competition: the USA (in 1930) and South Korea (in 2002).

The trophy

From 1930 to 1970, the Jules Rimet Trophy was awarded to the Cup winner. It was originally simply known as the World Cup or Coupe du Monde, but was renamed in 1946 in honour of the FIFA president who organised the first tournament.

In 1970, Brazil's third victory in the tournament entitled them to keep the trophy permanently. However, the trophy was stolen in 1983, and has never been recovered. After 1970, a new trophy, known as the FIFA World Cup Trophy, was designed. This is not awarded to the winning nation permanently, irrespective of how many World Cups they win.

Argentina, Germany (as West Germany) and Brazil have all won the second trophy twice. It will not be retired until the name plaque has been entirely filled with the names of winning nations, in 2038. The new trophy is 36 cm high, made of solid 18-carat gold and weighs 6175 grammes. The base contains two layers of semi-precious malachite, while the bottom side of the trophy bears the engraved year and name of each FIFA World Cup winner since 1974.

World Cup winners retain it until the next tournament, and are awarded a gold-plated replica rather than the solid gold original.

The first official World Cup

The 1932 Summer Olympics, held in Los Angeles, did not plan to include football as part of the programme due to the low popularity of football in the United States. FIFA and the IOC also disagreed over the status of amateur players, and so football was dropped from the Games.FIFA President Jules Rimet thus set about organising the inaugural World Cup tournament to be held in Uruguay in 1930.

The national associations of selected nations were invited to send a team, but the choice of Uruguay as a venue for the competition meant a long and costly trip across the Atlantic Ocean, for European sides. Indeed, no European country pledged to send a team until two months before the start of the competition.

In total, 13 nations took part - seven from South America, four from Europe and two from North America.

The first two World Cup matches took place simultaneously, and were won by France and the USA, who beat Mexico 4-1 and Belgium 3-0, respectively. The first goal in World Cup history was scored by Lucien Laurent of France. In the final, Uruguay defeated Argentina 4-2 in front of a crowd of 93,000 people in Montevideo, and became the first nation to win a World Cup.

Final tournament

The current finals tournament features 32 national teams competing for over a month in the host nation. There are two stages; a group stage and a knockout stage. In the first stages (the group stage), teams are drawn into eight groups of four. Eight teams are seeded at the draw (based on both current FIFA World Rankings and recent World Cups), and assigned a group. The other teams are drawn at random. Each group plays a round-robin tournament, guaranteeing that every team will play at least three matches.

The last round of matches of each group is held simultaneously to prevent collusion between nations. The top two teams from each group advance to the second stage (the knockout stage). If two or more teams finish level on points, tie-breakers are used: first is goal difference, then total goals scored, then head-to-head results, and finally drawing of lots.[14]The second round, or knockout stage, is a single-elimination round in which teams play each other in one-off matches, with extra time and penalty shootouts used to decide the winner.