The
history of the FIFA World Cup was first written in 1928, when FIFA President Jules Rimet from France decided to stage an international football/soccers tournament. The inaugural edition, held in Uruguay in 1930, was contested as a final tournament of only 13 teams invited by the organization. Since then, the FIFA world cup has experienced successive expansions and format remodeling to its current 32-team final tournament preceded by a two-year qualifying process, involving almost 200 teams from all over the world.
The first international football match was played in 1872 between England and Scotland
although at this stage the sport was rarely played outside Great Britain.
However by 1900 the sport had gained ground all around the world and national football associations were being founded. The first official international match outside of the British Isles was played between Uruguay and Argentina in Montevideo on July 1902. FIFA
was founded in Paris on May 22, 1904 - comprising football associations from France, Belgium (the preceding two teams having played their first international against each other earlier in month), Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland, with Germany pledging to join.
As football began to increase in popularity, it was contested as an IOC-recognised Olympic sport at the 1900 and 1904 Summer Olympics, as well as at the 1906 Intercalated Games, before becoming an official FIFA-supervised Olympic competition at the 1908 Summer Olympics.
Organised by England's Football Association (FA), the event was for amateur players only and was regarded suspiciously as a show rather than a competition. The England national amateur football team won the event in both 1908 and 1912.
There was an attempt made by FIFA to organize an international football tournament between nations outside of the Olympic framework in 1906 and this took place in Switzerland. These were very early days for international football and the official history of FIFA describes the competition as having been a failure.
With the Olympic event continuing to be contested only between amateur teams, competitions involving professional teams also started to appear. The Torneo Internazionale Stampa Sportiva, held in Turin, Italy in 1908, was one of the very first and the following year Sir Thomas Lipton organised the Sir Thomas Lipton Trophy, also held in Turin. Both tournaments were contested between individual clubs (not national teams), each one of which represented an entire nation. For this reason, neither was really a direct forerunner of the World Cup, but notwithstanding that, the Thomas Lipton Trophy is sometimes described as
The First World Cup at the expense of its less well-known Italian predecessor.
In 1914, FIFA world cup agreed to recognise the Olympic tournament as a "world football championship for amateurs
" and took responsibility for organising the event. This led the way for the world's first intercontinental football competition, at the 1920 Summer Olympics, won by Belgium.
Uruguay won the tournaments in 1924 and 1928. In 1928 FIFA made the decision to stage their own international tournament. With Uruguay now two-time official football world champions and due to celebrate their centenary of independence in 1930, FIFA named Uruguay as the host country.
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 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.
[citation needed] Rimet eventually persuaded teams from Belgium, France, Romania, and Yugoslavia to make the trip. 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. Four days later, the first World Cup hat-trick was achieved by Bert Patenaude of the USA in the Americans' 3-0 win against Paraguay. 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.
Past World Cup Finals
| Year | Winner | Runner-up | Result | Host |
| 2022 |
|
|
| Qatar |
| 2018 |
|
|
| Russia |
| 2014 |
|
|
| Brazil |
| 2010 | Spain | Holland | 1-0 (a.e.t.) | South Africa |
| 2006 | Italy | France | 1-1 (5-3) | Germany |
| 2002 | Brazil | Germany | 2-0 | S.Korea & Japan |
| 1998 | France | Brazil | 3-0 | France |
| 1994 | Brazil | Italy | 0-0 (3-2) | USA |
| 1990 | West Germany | Argentina | 1-0 | Italy |
| 1986 | Argentina | West Germany | 3-2 | Mexico |
| 1982 | Italy | West Germany | 3-1 | Spain |
| 1978 | Argentina | Netherlands | 3-1 | Argentina |
| 1974 | West Germany | Netherlands | 2-1 | Germany |
| 1970 | Brazil | Italy | 4-1 | Mexico |
| 1966 | England | West Germany | 4-2 | England |
| 1962 | Brazil | Czechoslovakia | 3-1 | Chile |
| 1958 | Brazil | Sweden | 5-2 | Sweden |
| 1954 | West Germany | Hungary | 3-2 | Switzerland |
| 1950 | Uruguay | Brazil | 2-1 | Brazil |
| 1938 | Italy | Hungary | 4-2 | France |
| 1934 | Italy | Czechoslovakia | 2-1 | Italy |
| 1930 | Uruguay | Argentina | 4-2 | Uruguay |
| Titles | Country |
| 5 | Brazil |
| 4 | Italy |
| 3 | Germany |
| 2 | Uruguay |
| 2 | Argentina |
| 1 | Spain |
| 1 | France |
| 1 | England |
| Titles | Continent |
| 9 | South America |
| 10 | Europe |
