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The Football World Cup - A brief history
The association representing football, FIFA - Federation of International Football Associations - was founded in 1904 in Paris. FIFA initially consisted of 7 countries - Belgium, Denmark, France, Holland, Spain Switzerland and Sweden.
In years to come membership in FIFA grew and the realisation that football was fast becoming a professional sport hastened the creation of an International Football Competition or World Championship as suggested by Henri Delauney in 1926. This was to be the seed that created the World Cup.
The first World Cup was held in Uruguay in 1930 in Montevideo in the purpose built stadium called the "Centenario". Uruguay managed to win the bid to host the first World Cup because they were previously 1928 Olympic football champions and also offered payment to cover all travelling costs for participating nations to the tournament. This offer beat out the other bids of Spain, Sweden, Holland and Hungary.
The location for the tournament caused many European footballing powers to boycott the event. The more notable countries being England, a non-FIFA member, Germany, Italy, Holland, Spain and Sweden were all absent. The tournament was however a success and the finals pitted the host nation Uruguay vs. Argentina.
Uruguay won the first World Cup, 4-2 in Montevideo and were awarded the Jules Rimet Cup, named after FIFA President and sculpted by Abel Lafleur.
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Champions