World Cup Football

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The Football World Cup (officially FIFA World Cup) is the most important international football (soccer) competition. It is organised by the sport's governing body FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association), with the finals tournament being the worlds most widely viewed sporting event.

The finals tournament is held every four years, but the World Cup qualification competition takes place over the preceding two years. Over 160 national teams compete in regional qualifying rounds for a place in the finals. The finals tournament currently has 32 teams playing over a 4-week period.

Jules Rimet, FIFA president in 1921, organised the first World Cup tournament and it took place in Uruguay in 1930. Selected nations were invited to send a team but with Uruguay as the venue for the competition meant a long and costly trip across the Atlantic for European sides and up until two months before the start of the competition no team from that continent had promised to send a team. Eventually teams representing Belgium, Romania, France and Yugoslavia to took part. eventually 13 teams entered and the home team of Uruguay beat Argentina 4-2 in front of crowd of 93,000 in Montevideo to become the first winners of the World Cup. The World Cup trophy (Coupe du Monde) was renamed the Jules Rimet trophy in 1946.

Brazil won the tournament for the third time in 1970 and they were allowed to keep the original trophy with a new trophy being designed. The current trophy will be retired when the name plaque has been entirely filled but this will not be until 2038.

The most successful World Cup team is Brazil having won the tournament five times in and finished as runners-up twice. Brazil is also the only nation to have participated in every World Cup to date. Germany (as West Germany) have won three times and been runners up four times runners-up, whilst Italy have also won three trophies and two-time runners-up. Both Argentina and Uruguay have won the World Cup twice.