World Cup Football

The FIFA World Cup, sometimes called the Football World Cup or the Soccer World Cup, but usually referred to simply as the World Cup, is an international football competition contested by the men's national football teams of the member nations of Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), 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.

The tournament's final phase, often called the World Cup Finals, is the most widely-viewed sporting event in the world, with an estimated 1.1 billion people watching the 2002 tournament final. The current format of the Finals involves thirty-two national teams competing at venues within the host nation (or nations) over a period of about a month. To determine the participating teams, qualifying rounds take place over the three years preceding the Finals.

In the eighteen tournaments held, only seven nations have won the title. Brazil is the most successful World Cup team, having won the tournament five times. The current Cup holders, Italy, follow with four titles, while Germany hold three. The other former champions are Uruguay (who won the inaugural tournament) and Argentina with two titles each, and England and France with one title each.

The most recent World Cup Finals were held between June 9 and July 9, 2006 in Germany, where Italy were crowned champions after beating France in the final, winning the penalty shootout 5-3 after the match finished 1-1 after extra time. The next World Cup Finals will be held in 2010 in South Africa.

Since 1991, FIFA has also organized the FIFA Women's World Cup every four years.

History

Previous international competitions
The first international football match was played in 1872 between Scotland and England. [2] At this stage the sport was rarely played outside Great Britain and Ireland. As football began to increase in popularity in other parts of the world at the turn of the century, it was held as a demonstration sport (with no medals awarded) at the 1900 and 1904 Summer Olympics, and at the 1906 Intercalated Games; football became an official competition at the 1908 Summer Olympics. Planned by The Football Association (FA), the event was for amateur players only and was regarded suspiciously as a show rather than a competition. Great Britain (represented by the England national amateur football team) won the event in both 1908 and 1912.

After FIFA was founded in 1904, there was an attempt made by FIFA to arrange an international football tournament between nations outside of the Olympic framework in Switzerland in 1906. 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, Sir Thomas Lipton organized the Sir Thomas Lipton Trophy tournament in Turin in 1909. The Lipton tournament was a championship between individual clubs (not national teams) from different nations, each one of which represented an entire nation. The competition is sometimes described as The First World Cup,[4] and featured the most prestigious professional club sides from Italy, Germany and Switzerland, but The Football Association of England refused to be associated with the competition and declined the offer to send a professional team. Lipton invited West Auckland, an amateur side from County Durham to represent England instead. West Auckland won the tournament and returned in 1911 to successfully defend their title, and were given the trophy to keep forever, as per the rules of the competition.

In 1914, FIFA agreed to recognise the Olympic tournament as a "world football championship for amateurs", and took responsibility for managing the event. This paved the way for the world's first intercontinental football competition, at the 1920 Summer Olympics, contested by Egypt (who were knocked out in their first match) and thirteen European teams. The gold medals were won by Belgium. Uruguay then won the Olympic football tournaments in 1924 and 1928. In 1928 FIFA made the decision to stage their own international tournament outside of the Olympics. With Uruguay now two-time official football world champions (as 1924 was the start of FIFA's professional era) and to celebrate their centenary of independence in 1930, FIFA named Uruguay as the host country.

First World Cup
The 1932 Summer Olympics, held in Los Angeles, did not plan to include football as part of the schedule due to the low popularity of football in the United States, as American football had been growing in popularity. FIFA and the IOC also disagreed over the status of amateur players, and so football was dropped from the Games.[6] FIFA president Jules Rimet thus planned 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. 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. 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.

Growth
The issues facing the early World Cup tournaments were the difficulties of intercontinental travel, and war. Few South American teams were willing to travel to Europe for the 1934 and 1938 tournaments, with Brazil the only South American team to compete in both. The 1942 and 1946 competitions were cancelled due to World War II and its aftermath.

The 1950 World Cup was the first to include British participants. British teams withdrew from FIFA in 1920, partly out of unwillingness to play against the countries they had been at war with, and partly as a protest against a foreign influence to football,[9] but rejoined in 1946 following FIFA's invitation. The tournament also saw the return of 1930 champions Uruguay, who had boycotted the previous two World Cups. Uruguay won the tournament again.

In the tournaments between 1934 and 1978, 16 teams competed for each finals tournament, except in 1938 and 1950 when teams withdrew after qualifying, leaving them with 15 and 13 teams respectively. Most of the participating nations were from Europe and South America, with a small minority from North America, Africa, Asia and Oceania. These teams were usually defeated easily by the European and South American teams. Until 1978, the only teams from outside Europe and South America to advance out of the first round were: United States, semi-finalists in 1930; Cuba, quarter-finalists in 1938; North Korea, quarter-finalists in 1966; and Mexico, quarter-finalists in 1970.

The finals were expanded to 24 teams in 1982, then to 32 in 1998, allowing more teams from Africa, Asia and North America to take part. The one exception is Oceania, who have never had a guaranteed spot in the finals. In recent years, teams from these regions have enjoyed more success, and those who have reached the knockout stage include: Mexico, quarterfinalists in 1986 and reaching the knockout rounds in 1994, 1998, 2002 and 2006; Morocco, reaching the knockout rounds in 1986; Cameroon, quarter-finalists in 1990; Costa Rica, reaching the knockout rounds in 1990; Nigeria, reaching the knockout rounds in 1994 and 1998; Saudi Arabia, reaching the knockout rounds in 1994; United States, reaching the knockout rounds in 1994 and quarter-finalists in 2002; South Korea, finishing in fourth place in 2002; Senegal, quarter-finalists in 2002; Japan, reaching the knockout rounds in 2002; and Australia and Ghana, both reaching the knockout rounds in 2006. However, European and South American teams have remained the stronger forces. For example, the quarter-finalists in 2006 were all from Europe or South America.

198 nations attempted to qualify for the 2006 FIFA World Cup, and all but three of the 207 FIFA member nations have previously entered the competition, with Comoros, East Timor and Bhutan the only current members not yet to have entered (Comoros and East Timor were not FIFA members at the time of the qualifying draw for the 2006 tournament, and so have not yet had an opportunity to take part).

An equivalent tournament for women's football, the FIFA Women's World Cup, was first held in 1991 in the People's Republic of China.

Trophy
The FIFA World Cup Trophy on a German stampFrom 1930 to 1970, the Jules Rimet Trophy was awarded to the World Cup winner. It was originally simply known as the World Cup or Coupe du Monde, but in 1946 it was renamed after the FIFA president Jules Rimet who set up 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, apparently melted down by the thieves.

A new trophy was made, it is not awarded to the winning nation permanently, irrespective of how many World Cups they win. World Cup winners retain the trophy until the next tournament and are awarded a gold-plated replica rather than the solid gold original. Argentina, Germany (as West Germany), Italy and Brazil have all won the second trophy twice, while France has won it once. It will not be retired until the name plaque has been entirely filled with the names of winning nations in 2038.

Surprisingly little is known about the origin of baseball. The question has been the subject of considerable debate and controversy for more than 100 years. Baseball (and softball), as well as the other modern bat, ball and running games, cricket and rounders, developed from earlier folk games.

Many of the earlier games were similar to each other, but there certainly were local, regional and national variations, both in how they were played and what they were called: names included "stoolball", "poison ball", and "goal ball". Few details of how the modern games developed from earlier folk games are known. Some think that various folk games resulted in a game called town ball, from which baseball was eventually born.

A number of early folk games in the British Isles had characteristics that can be seen in modern baseball (as well as in cricket and rounders). Many of these early games involved a ball that was thrown at a target while an opposing player defended the target by attempting to hit the ball away. If the batter successfully hit the ball, he could attempt to score points by running between bases while fielders would attempt to catch or retrieve the ball and put the runner out in some way.

Since they were folk games, the early games had no 'official' rules, and they tended to change over time. To the extent that there were rules, they were generally simple and were not written down. There were many local variations, and varied names.

Many of the early games were not well documented, first, because they were generally peasant games (and perhaps children's games, as well); and second, because they were often discouraged, and sometimes even prohibited, either by the church or by the state, or both.

Aside from obvious differences in terminology, the games differed in the equipment used (ball, bat, club, target, etc., which were usually just whatever was available), the way in which the ball is thrown, the method of scoring, the method of making outs, the layout of the field and the number of players involved.

An old English game called "base," described by George Ewing at Valley Forge, was apparently not much like baseball. There was no bat and no ball involved! The game was more like a fancy game of "tag", although it did share the concept of places of safety (ie, bases) with modern baseball.

In an 1801 book entitled The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England, Joseph Strutt claimed to have shown that baseball-like games can be traced back to the 14th century, and that baseball is a descendant of a British game called stoolball. The earliest known reference to stoolball is in a 1330 poem by William Pagula, who recommended to priests that the game be forbidden within churchyards.

In stoolball, a batter stood before a target, perhaps an upturned stool, while another player pitched a ball to the batter. If the batter hit the ball (with a bat or his/her hand) and it was caught by a fielder, the batter was out. If the pitched ball hit a stool leg, the batter was out. It was more often played by young men and women as a sort of spin the bottle.

According to many sources, in 1700, a Puritan leader of southern England, Thomas Wilson, expressed his disapproval of "Morris-dancing, cudgel-playing, baseball and cricket" occurring on Sundays. However, David Block, in Baseball Before We Knew It, reports that the original source has "stoolball" for "baseball". Block also reports that the reference appears to date to 1672, rather than 1700.

A 1744 publication in England by John Newbery called A Little Pretty Pocket-Book includes a woodcut of stoolball and a rhyme entitled "Base-ball." The book was later published in Colonial America in 1762. In 1748, the family of Frederick, Prince of Wales partook in the playing of a baseball-like game.

A 1791 bylaw in Pittsfield, Massachusetts bans the playing of baseball within 80 yards of the town meeting house.

Les Jeux des Jeunes Garçons is the first known book to contain printed rules of a bat/base/running game. It was printed in Paris, France in 1810 and lays out the rules for "poison ball," in which there were two teams of eight to ten players, four bases (one called home), a pitcher, a batter, and flyball outs.

Another early print reference is Jane Austen's posthumous 1818 novel Northanger Abbey.

In 1829, William Clarke in London, published The Boy's Own Book which included rules of rounders. Similar rules were published in Boston, Massachusetts in 1834, except the Boston version called the game "Base" or "Goal ball." The rules were identical to those of poison ball, but also added fair and foul balls and strike outs.

The account by Fred Lillywhite (1829-66) of the first English cricket tour to Canada and the United States in 1859 refers to the "base-ball game [being] somewhat similar to the English game of "rounders"". A day's play was lost during a cricket match in New York due to snow, but a game of baseball was arranged about a mile away between "the players of that game and a portion of the English party" (The English Cricketers' Trip to Canada and the United States, 1860).

That Abner Doubleday invented baseball in 1839 was once widely promoted and widely believed, but there was and is no evidence but the testimony of one man decades after the fact, and there is counter-evidence. The eminent Doubleday left many letters and papers, including no description of baseball or suggestion that he considered himself a prominent person in the history of the game. An encyclopedia article about Doubleday published in 1911 makes no mention of the game.

The legend of Doubleday's invention of baseball was itself baseball's invention, in a sense that of Al Spalding, a former star pitcher, then club executive, who had become the leading American sporting goods entrepreneur and sports publisher. Debate on baseball origins had raged for decades, heating up in the first years of the 20th century. To end argument, speculation and innuendo, Spalding organized a panel in 1905. The panelists were his friend Abraham G. Mills, a former National League president; two United States Senators, ex-NL president Morgan Bulkeley and ex-Washington club president Arthur Gorman; ex-NL president and lifelong secretary-treasurer Nick Young; two other star players turned sporting goods entrepreneurs (George Wright and Alfred Reach); and AAU president James E. Sullivan.

The final report published in 1908 included three sections: a summary of the panel's findings written by Mills, a letter by John M. Ward supporting the panel, and a dissenting opinion by Henry Chadwick. The research methods were, at best, dubious. The Mills Commission probably looked for and found the perfect story: baseball was invented in a quaint rural town without foreigners or industry, by a young man who later graduated from West Point and served heroically in the Mexican-American War, Civil War, and U.S. wars against Indians.

The Mills Commission concluded that baseball had been invented by Doubleday in Cooperstown, New York in 1839; that Doubleday had invented the word baseball(?), designed the diamond, indicated fielder positions, written down the rules and the field regulations. However, no written records from 1839 or the 1840s have ever been found to corroborate these claims; nor could Doubleday be interviewed for he died in 1893. The principal source for the story was a letter from elderly Abner Graves, a five-year-old resident of Cooperstown in 1839. But Graves never mentioned a diamond, positions or the writing of rules. Graves' reliability as a witness has also been questioned because he was later convicted of murdering his wife and spent his final days in an asylum for the criminally insane. Further, Doubleday was not in Cooperstown in 1839. He was enrolled in West Point and there is no record of any leave time. Mills, a lifelong friend of Doubleday, had never heard him mention inventing baseball.

As noted previously, versions of baseball rules have since been found in publications that significantly predate the alleged invention in 1839.

Jeff Idelson of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York has stated, "Baseball wasn't really born anywhere," meaning that the evolution of the game was long and continuous and has no clear, identifiable single origin.

1845 / The Knickerbocker Rules
The first published rules of baseball were written in 1845 for a New York (Manhattan) base ball club called the Knickerbockers. The author, Alexander Joy Cartwright, is one person commonly known as "the father of baseball". Evolution from so-called "Knickerbocker Rules" to the current rules is fairly well documented.

The role of Cartwright himself is disputed; his authorship is sometimes called a significant exaggeration, a modern attempt to identify a single "inventor" of the game, thereby akin to the Doubleday myth. He was at least secretary for a group effort. One point undisputed by historians is the direct evolution from amateur urban clubs of the 1840s and 1850s, not the pastures of the small Cooperstowns of America, to the modern professional major leagues that began in the 1870s.

Before 1845
Evolution of the game that became modern baseball is unknown before 1845. The Knickerbocker Rules describe a game that they had been playing for some time. But how long is uncertain and so is how that game had developed.