Mammoth Book of the World Cup
Page 3
The new President of CONCACAF is Jeffrey Webb, a lawyer from the Cayman Islands. And we all know the Cayman Islands would have no truck with shady financial deals.
The CONCACAF Gold Cup began in 1991, and has been held twelve times; Mexico have won six, United States five (including the most recent in July 2013), with Canada the surprise winners in 2000.
CONMEBOL
Confederación Sudamericana de Fútbol
Formed in 1916 and now based in Luque, Paraguay, home of the President since 1986, Nicolás Léoz, Conmebol is the representative body of the South American countries, excepting the knot of countries lying on the continent’s north-eastern coast – these nations are part of CONCACAF. This leaves Conmebol with only ten member countries, of which Venezuela is the only one never to have appeared in a World Cup Finals tournament. (At time of writing they have a slim chance of qualifying for 2014.) The ten countries habitually play out a round-robin tournament for World Cup qualification. They also compete (with two invited guest teams from North America) for the Copa América, a tournament held at inconsistent intervals – currently it seems to have settled on every four years, the year following a World Cup. Conmebol sides suffer from having their squads spread far and wide, with many key players employed by the big European clubs, making release, especially for friendlies, an irksome process.
Uruguay are the most frequent winners of the Copa América – perhaps a surprise to most European fans, who would most likely assume Brazil or Argentina.
Winners of the Copa América (and its forerunners)
1916 Uruguay
1939 Peru
1975 Peru (2)
1917 Uruguay (2nd win)
1941 Argentina (6)
1979 Paraguay (2)
1919 Brazil
1942 Uruguay (8)
1983 Uruguay (12)
1920 Uruguay (3)
1945 Argentina (7)
1987 Uruguay (13)
1921 Argentina
1946 Argentina (8)
1989 Brazil (4)
1922 Brazil (2)
1947 Argentina (9)
1991 Argentina (13)
1923 Uruguay (4)
1949 Brazil (3)
1993* Argentina (14)
1924 Uruguay (5)
1953 Paraguay
1995 Uruguay (14)
1925 Argentina (2)
1955 Argentina (10)
1997 Brazil (5)
1926 Uruguay (6)
1956 Uruguay (9)
1999 Brazil (6)
1927 Argentina (3)
1957 Argentina (11)
2001 Colombia
1929 Argentina (4)
1959 Argentina (12)
2004 Brazil (7)
1935 Uruguay (7)
1959 Uruguay (10)
2007 Brazil (8)
1937 Argentina (5)
1963 Bolivia
2011 Uruguay (15)
1967 Uruguay (11)
CAF
The Confederation of African Football
The African federation is located in Cairo and oversees African football and the African Cup of Nations. It is a vast, unwieldy beast, which has to cope with myriad different cultures and attitudes, not to mention constant civil wars and border disputes of extreme brutality. There have been two Egyptian Presidents, two from Sudan and one from Ethiopia; the current incumbent, installed in 1988, is Issa Hayatou of Cameroon.
Hayatou was instrumental in the suspension of Togo for two African Cup of Nations tournaments after they withdrew from the 2010 Finals. They withdrew after an armed attack on their convoy on the way to the Finals saw two of their support staff killed. Clearly a man of compassion, Mr Hayatou.
Africa Cup of Nations Winners
1957 Egypt
1988 Cameroon (2)
1959 Egypt (2†)
1990 Algeria
1962 Ethiopia
1992 Ivory Coast
1963 Ghana
1994 Nigeria (2)
1965 Ghana (2)
1996 South Africa
1968 Congo-Kinshasa
1998 Egypt (4)
1970 Sudan
2000 Cameroon (3)
1972 Congo
2002 Cameroon (4)
1974 Zaire (2*)
2004 Tunisia
1976 Morocco
2006 Egypt (5)
1978 Ghana (3)
2008 Egypt (6)
1980 Nigeria
2010 Egypt (7)
1982 Ghana (4)
2012 Zambia
1984 Cameroon
2013 Nigeria (3)
1986 Egypt (3)
AFC
Asian Football Confederation
The Asian Football Confederation also includes Australia since 2006 – why they don’t just combine Asia and Oceania, Lord only knows. Countries that have land within Asia and Europe are all UEFA affiliated, as is Israel, for obvious political reasons.
The AFC President from 2002 to 2011, Mohamed bin Hammam, was banned from football for life after allegations of corruption were investigated, but a court later overturned this ban, and bin Hammam is seeking to be reinstated as President. He was the President when the ridiculous decision to hold the Finals in Qatar was ratified, amid widespread accusations of bribery and vote-buying.
Are you getting any sense of pattern in these summaries of the various organisations running the game? A faint whiff in the nostrils, perhaps . . .?
Asian Cup Winners
1956 South Korea
1976 Iran (3)
1996 Saudi Arabia (3)
1960 South Korea (2)
1980 Kuwait
2000 Japan (2)
1964 Israel
1984 Saudi Arabia
2004 Japan (3)
1968 Iran
1988 Saudi Arabia (2)
2007 Iraq†
1972 Iran (2)
1992 Japan
2011 Japan (4)
FA
Football Association
These are the guys responsible for running the English game. Convinced for years they were the only ones who knew the real meaning of football, having founded the game, they fell further and further behind their peers in Europe and South America in their understanding of tactics and sports science, and they are still struggling desperately to catch up.
If you need to know why England have found it so hard to maintain a place at football’s top table, look no further than the guys pulling the handle on the fruit machine of club football – the FA and their rivals running the Premier League (and I use the word rivals deliberately, any pretence at cooperation is utterly misleading).
The FA was formed in 1863 and initially did wonderful work organising the game and initiating the professional league, most notably under the stewardship of Charles Alcock, Secretary from 1870 to 1895. Alcock organised the first match between England and Scotland, set up the FA Cup and also organised the first Test match at cricket between England and Australia – not a bad CV!
For the next ninety-four years Alcock had only four successors: Frederick Wall, Stanley Rous (later President of FIFA), Denis Follows and Ted Croker. Croker endured a particularly tormented tenure as Secretary, dealing with the worst of the hooligan era that embraced the disasters at Heysel and Hillsborough. His replacement, Graham Kelly, was the first to carry the title of Chief Executive – an attempt to make an old-fashioned, slow-moving organisation sound more businesslike – and he had nine years in office before resigning amid allegations (unproven and debatable) of corruption. His successor was Adam Crozier, who left to go and upset postal workers (i.e. run Royal Mail), followed by the hapless Mark Palios, Brian Barwick, Ian Watmore (remember him? no? me neither) and the current incumbent, Alex Horne.
The CEO reports to a board headed by a Chairman. The recent appointment of Greg Dyke, former head of the BBC, holds some hope for an era of decent communication and clarity – Dyke’s time at the BBC was viewed as largely positive until he fell on his sword in the wake of the Hutton inquiry, the
usual scapegoat for the righteous indignation of the newspaper owners in their lifelong vendetta against the BBC. The last FA Chairman to talk sense and breathe fresh air into the organisation was Lord Triesman, a former Labour MP, but he was stitched up by the Mail on Sunday and forced to resign. The press, eh? They moan about the running of the game, and, as soon as they get someone in charge who seems equipped and prepared to tackle the problems, they can’t wait to bring them down.
SFA
Scottish Football Association
The Scottish Football Association, a group of small-minded people who, Nero-like, have sat and watched while their towers tumble around them. This has resulted in a league with the potency of the Latvian second division and a national side sandwiched between the Cape Verde Islands and Panama at No.50 in the FIFA rankings – and those dizzy heights attained with a victory over Croatia that saw them rise twenty-four places to sprint away from football superpowers such as Togo and Jordan.
* From 1993 selected nations from other regions were invited to join the tournament; invitees have included Costa Rica, Honduras, USA, Japan and, in every competition since 1993, Mexico, who have twice been runners-up. In 2011 Spain were invited but withdrew (as did Japan), while Canada rejected her only invitation in 2001.
† Competing as a United Arab Republic
* (2) because Zaire and Congo-Kinshasa (1968) are the same country, which is now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo.
† Barely covered in the West, Iraq’s recovery from the 2001 invasion and subsequent occupation to win this tournament was one of the game’s most impressive feats in recent years, and testimony to people’s resilience and determination to get on with positive stuff even amid such an appalling upheaval. Iraq has subsequently been suspended twice by FIFA after excessive political involvement in the administration of the game.
EARLY DAYS
1.1 WORLD CUP 1930
When FIFA first convened in 1904, their charter reserved the right to host a full-scale international tournament. At first there seemed no need; the Olympic Games served as a perfectly good means of sorting the men from the boys. It was the success of these Olympic Games that soon prompted FIFA to see the opportunities presented by hosting their own tournament. The 1928 Olympic final, won by Uruguay, was watched by more than 40,000 people, with over six times that number applying for tickets. Football was easily the biggest event at these Amsterdam Olympics, representing, as it did, the only opportunity for global bragging rights in the world’s most popular sport.
Jules Rimet was the President of FIFA in 1929, but it was his countryman Henri Delaunay (the Secretary of the organisation) who proposed a resolution to host a world tournament in 1930. Twenty-five of the thirty member countries voted in favour. Another, Sweden, performed a remarkable volte face; they voted against and then promptly offered themselves as inaugural hosts. That honour was reserved for Olympic champions Uruguay, who offered up Montevideo as the host city in Olympic manner, and promised a shiny new stadium to showcase the big games. Most of the big economies had suffered in the Wall Street Crash, but the downturn was still to hit Uruguay in the same way – it would do so, with great severity, the following decade. Montevideo was a thriving, bustling port city boasting some of the most adventurous new architecture on the continent and Uruguay had a President keen to publicise the nation’s resources and pride. Elsewhere in South America, Generals were replacing Presidents and the military fist was closing around the people, just as it would across Europe in the ensuing years.
1930
URUGUAY
The first tournament was more like an Olympic competition, with all the matches held in one city, Montevideo.
Three grounds were used:
Estádio Centenário
The Centenário was built for the 1930 World Cup, and held 90,000 spectators for Uruguay’s match against Yugoslavia. The stadium still stands in the Parque Batlle area of the city. The Centenário is unusual in that it is owned by the municipal government, and clubs wishing to use it (which the biggest Montevideo clubs do often – Peñarol, especially) pay rent to the city.
Estádio Gran Parque
This stadium still stands, holding 27,000 people, having been refurbished a number of times since opening in 1900. It is the home of Nacional, one of Uruguay’s premier clubs, although it often relocates to the Centenário for big continental fixtures.
Estádio Pocitos
Pocitos was a tiny suburban stadium used as an emergency third ground for the 1930 tournament while the Centenário was hastily finished. It was the home of Peñarol, but was demolished at the end of the decade as the club was playing the majority of its matches in the Centenário and the space occupied by the Pocitos was needed for housing as the city expanded.
Uruguay loved its football, and a series of popular club tours by major European clubs had whetted the Uruguayan appetite for seeing opponents from Europe; this new tournament provided a good opportunity. Disappointingly for the hosts, many of the top European sides failed to show; Hungary, Austria, Spain and Italy all stayed at home, while a squabble over definitions of amateurism had led England and Scotland to resign their brief four-year tenure as FIFA members in 1928. Even had they travelled, England and Austria, the best European sides, would have struggled against the best of the South Americans on foreign soil. The Copa América (initially called the South American Championships) had been in place since 1910, and the South American sides were used to competing for a trophy over an intensive period, as Uruguay’s success at the last two Olympics had shown. Four European sides – France, Belgium, Romania and Yugoslavia – crossed the Atlantic to appear, the first three of them on the same boat, which also collected the Brazilian squad in passing. Peter Seddon (The World Cup’s Strangest Moments) describes the decision to give Uruguay the tournament as “FIFA’s first major cock-up” but that’s Eurocentric nonsense. Have a go at Mexico in 1986 and Russia in 2018, fine, but this was an appropriate and correct choice of venue.
Two different companies worked feverishly from February to make the Estádio Centenário fit for purpose. The name was easy, as 1930 was also the first centenary of the establishment of the constitution of Uruguay after the Treaty of Montevideo established independence from the Brazilian Empire two years earlier. The initial schedule was hastily rearranged when it became obvious the Centenário couldn’t host the opening game. Instead of the hosts, the honour of playing the first match fell to France and Mexico, and the venue wasn’t the glitzy new stadium but the tiny Pocitos stadium of Peñarol in the suburbs. The ground was originally the home of the Uruguay Railway Cricket Club, founded for its many expat British employees. The new stadium was still being finished by the time Uruguay played their first match of the competition, but in 1930 health and safety inspectors did not wield the power they do today. The stadium still exists in roughly the same format, with a slightly reduced 65,000 capacity, and Uruguay remain a tough side to beat on their home turf, even if they are not the force of old.
GROUP 1
* These games were played one after another as a double header, hence the same attendance; the figures quoted are FIFA’s official attendance figures and are highly debatable, like most things coming out of that organisation.
This first game was hardly a glamorous fixture. France, also-rans in Europe, were in South America on sufferance largely because the tournament was a Frenchman’s brainchild. Mexico were poor, an occasional side who lost 7–1 to Spain (no great shakes) at the previous Olympic Games. France won, easily, despite losing their goalkeeper to injury in the first half (no substitutes, remember). The honour of scoring the first ever World Cup goal fell to Lucien Laurent, an inside-forward.
Laurent was less fortunate in the next match against Argentina – he spent most of the game limping after a diabolical challenge from Argentinian hard man Luis Monti. The rough and ready organisation dictated that France play again two days after the Mexican match – why Argentina couldn’t face the fourth team in the
group, Chile, is anyone’s guess. France, with their excellent goalkeeper Alex Thépot of Red Star FC (Paris, not Belgrade, they’re a French third division club these days) in good form, held out for eighty minutes. Monti scored the winner from a free-kick, but Argentina would need to improve to match Uruguay – their forwards were overly fond of displaying their extravagant skills and less fond of giving the ball to a better-placed colleague to score. The game ended in farce as the Brazilian referee blew for full time six minutes prematurely and took ten minutes explaining his error to the dejected French and celebrating Argentinians.
France also lost to Chile, despite Thépot saving a penalty, and went out. Lucien Laurent appeared on French TV during the 1998 World Cup, describing his experiences enthusiastically and – predictably, but not without reason – criticising the mercenary attitude and disrespectful behaviour of modern players. Laurent had taken weeks off from his job in a car factory to travel to Uruguay, receiving only basic expenses from the French FA. Later he spent three years in a German prisoner-of-war camp and they took away his France shirt from 1930. Unlike most of us, he has earned the right to say “j’accuse” to the pampered Premiership millionaires.