The FIFA World Cup or the Football | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The FIFA World Cup or the Football World Cup is believed to be the world's most anticipated and biggest sporling extravaganza. However, the tournament organized by the Federation Internationale de Football Association or FIFA rose to the top of the world's sporling events from extremely humble beginnings. It was these humble beginnings that helped rocket the event to international 'stardom' and success. The FIFA World Cup tournament now sees almost the entire 209 FIFA member nations vie for a spot in the finals. After a number of qualifying matches held all over the world only 32 out of the 200 plus parlicipating nations make it to the Finals. The 32 national teams are then organized into 8 groups that comprise 4 teams each. The teams
lay against each other in the group stages, and on the basis of points, the top two teams of each group make it to the knockout stage or the 'Round of 16'. The teams that are successful in surviving the 'Round of 16' make it to the quarler finals and the semi-finals. The top two teams, post the quarler finals and semis, go on to book a berlh for themselves in the 'Final' of the FIFA World Cup tournament. Go ahead; take a step. History and Origin of the FIFA World Cup It all began with the first international football match that was played between England and Scotland in 1872. Football back then wasn’t really played outside of the United Kingdom, but soon began to garner popularity across various parts of the world. The game soon graduated into a showcase sport at the 1900 and 1904 Summer Olympics. It was a sport that was played only for the sake of the game; there were no medals to be won. FIFA, the international football organization, was founded in the same year as the 1904 Summer Olympics. The organization tried putting together a tournament between non-Olympic participating nations, but this tournament failed to gather any attention at the international stage. Post this tournament, football was recognized as an official sport in the 1908 London Olympics. However, the Olympic matches only consisted of amateur teams and weren’t received too well by the public. This debacle was followed by the Sir Thomas Lipton Trophy tournament held in 1909, it saw professional clubs from Italy, Germany, England and Switzerland vie against each other for the Lipton trophy. This tournament is often referred to as the first World Cup tournament. FIFA then decided to play its part in the international football scene after recognizing the success of football as an amateur Olympic sport. The effort of stitching together the first ever FIFA World Cup tournament was piloted by the then President of FIFA, Jules Rimet. Football’s moment of glory came when the first World Cup tournament was held in 1930 in Uruguay, the host country. Thirteen nations took part in the inaugural event that saw the host country Uruguay emerge ‘Champions of World Football’. Uruguay pulled off this feat by defeating Argentina 4-2 in what was a brilliant finish to the first World Cup tournament. The World Cup tournament was soon in the spotlight and even went on to overshadow football in the Olympics. However, the tournament faced hurdles in the form of South American teams finding it difficult to travel to Europe for the competition. Also, the 1942 and 1946 World Cup tournaments were called off due to World War II.
Post World War II, the World Cup tournament slowly began to crawl back into the hearts of the public. The 1950 World Cup tournament, the first one post World War II, was held in Brazil. The tour-
nament saw the English participating in the same for the first time after their boycott that was the result of political reasons. The Uruguayans went on to clinch the 1950 World Cup tournament trophy after defeat¬ing Brazil in a historic final. Between the inception of the World Cup tournament and the 1982 World Cup only around 13-16 teams graced the same. In 1982 FIFA increased the number of participating teams to 24 and this was followed by an increase to 32 in the 1998 World Cup tournament. Source: football.s ortin 99.com
he FIFA World Cup has been held 18 times and only 7 nations have won this pres-tigious tournament. Brazil is the only country to have played in all the tourna¬ments to date and to have won a total of five FIFA World Cups. Current title holders Italy are close be¬hind with four titles, Ger¬many with three, Argentina and Uruguay with two each and England and France with one title each. The tourna-ment did not always feature 32 teams in the run for the trophy. It was first expanded to 24 teams in 1982 and later to 32 in 1998 to enable more teams from Africa, Asia, and North America to participate. Nevertheless the tournament has always been dominated by the South American and European countries that have been playing in the World Cup since 1930. The FIFA World Cup is the most widely-viewed single sport event in the world with the final match of the 2006 World Cup being viewed by over 715 million people allover the world. The trophy awarded from 1930 to 1946 was originally called the World Cup or Coup du Monde, it was renamed the Jules Rimet trophy in 1946. In 1970 Brazil was allowed to keep the trophy permanently after winning the World Cup thrice. The currently used trophy, the FIFA World Cup was designed by Italian designer Silvio Gazzinga and is made of solid gold and the base made of semi-precious malachite and the trophy bears the engraved year and name of every World Cup winner since 1974. A com¬prehensive list of winners of the FIFA World Cup since its introduction in 1930 is given below.
Source: football.sporting99.com | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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