Around the World - but not in 80 Days

The World Cup

The idea of a world football championship is as old as FIFA itself. The interest in international Football was greatly helped by the Oliympic Tournaments which were first held in 1908.

Only FIFA has the right to organise a world football championship and it was the success of the Olympic tournaments of 1924 and 1928 which convinced them that it was a viable proposition. By this time FIFA had 41 member countries.

It was not until 1929 that FIFA gave Uruguay permission to stage the first World Cup tournament in 1930.

The choice of Uruguay for the first competition meant that the strongest European countries did not enter. Only France, Belgium and Yugoslavia embarked on the two-week voyage across the Atlantic Ocean. There were only thirteen entries in all. As expected Uruguay - the Olympic Champions - won beating Argentina 4-2.

The competition has been held every four years (with the exception of war years) since 1930. Today the World Cup tournament rivals the Olympic Games as the world’s most important sporting occasion.

Altogether there have been 17 World Cup Competitions. The 2006 World Cup to be staged in Germany will be the 18th Tournament in the series.

2002 was a World Cup of 'Firsts'. It was the first

World Cup competition of the new millennium

to be hosted by two countries

for which every stadium had been specially built

to be held outside of Europe and the Americas

The Trophy

The World Cup trophy itself is the second in the lifetime of the competition.
The first, The Jules Rimet Trophy was named after a french player who pioneered the first World Cup competition.

It took 68 years for France to win the tournament

The Jules Rimet trophy, was won by Brazil for the third time in 1970 and awarded to them as a permanent honour.

A new solid gold trophy called the FIFA World Cup was used for the first time in 1974.

The Jules Rimet Trophy

The World Cup

The Seven Seas Cup

The most comprehensive competition given FIFA approval is played by merchant seamen. Teams from the crews of any two ships docked in any part of the world can play a match in the Seven Seas Tournament for which a trophy is awarded.

The results of these world-wide games are fed into FIFA headquarters in Zurich, where they are tabulated as methodically as the World Cup returns.

This cup competition was started in 1950 in the Norwegian Seaman’s Service and has now spread around the world.

Teams are entered by almost every country that has a ship at sea - at present 70 nations are represented by almost 1000 teams.

Often games take place on pitches far from perfect. Surfaces range from the rice-field variety to sun-baked ‘concrete’.

The competition covers two classes. Class I for passenger ships, ferries and cruiseships and Class II comprises all others.

It is accepted that matches should be between eleven-man teams but sometimes a small ship may have only a few footballers in its crew. If both ships agree a match can be arranged between seven-a-side teams, in which case these games are played on smaller grounds than normal.