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football: 2006 FIFA World Cup™ |
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2006 FIFA World Cup™Destinations I Travel Request Form I Match Schedule Link I Media Services Link Introduction:
The finals tournament is held every four years, but the World Cup competition itself takes place over a three-year period. Over 160 national teams compete in regional qualifying tournaments for a place in the finals. The finals tournament now involves 32 national teams (increased from 24 in 1998) competing over a 4-week period in a previously nominated host nation. A recent innovation has allowed more than one country to act as joint hosts. In the past, the host country and current world champions automatically qualified for the next World Cup, but from 2006 on only the hosts will get an automatic berth. Over 200 nations have competed for the World Cup, but only eleven nations have made it to the final matches, and of those eleven only seven national teams have actually won. As a consequence of this exclusiveness, the World Cup inspires a great deal of enthusiasm and national pride amongst the tournament's fans. History:
In total, thirteen nations took part - seven from South America, four from Europe and two from North America. Uruguay beat Argentina 4-2 in front of crowd of 93,000 in Montevideo to become the first nation to win the World Cup trophy. In 1946 the World Cup trophy (Coupe du Monde) was renamed the Jules Rimet trophy in his honour.
Argentina and Uruguay are both two-time World Champions, although Uruguay's two successes came rather a long time ago, in the early years of the tournament. England (1966 World Cup) and France (1998 World Cup) have both won the title once.
South America holds the most titles at nine, followed by Europe at eight:
2006 World Cup Travel Information Destinations:
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The Football World Cup (official name: FIFA World Cup) is the most important competition in international football. Organised by Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the sport's governing body, the World Cup finals tournament is the most widely-viewed and followed sporting event in the world, more so than even the Olympic Games.
In 1927 the 1932 Summer Olympics were awarded to Los Angeles in the United States where the popularity of American football far surpassed that of the international game of association football (by then becoming known as soccer in the US). The general lack of interest from the Americans and a disagreement between FIFA and the IOC over the status of amateur players led to football being dropped from the official Olympic programme for the 1932 games. As a consequence, Jules Rimet, who had become president of FIFA in 1921, set about organising the inaugural World Cup tournament, to take place 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 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. Rimet eventually persuaded teams representing Belgium, France, Romania, and Yugoslavia to make the trip. 
Brazil, by a clear margin, is the most successful World Cup team overall, having won the tournament five times in total and finished as runners-up twice. Brazil is also the only nation to have participated in every World Cup so far. Germany, three-time winners (as West Germany) and four-time runners-up (three times as West Germany), are next, while Italy have also won three trophies and two-time runners-up. 
To date, the final of the World Cup has only been contested by European and/or South American teams. The greatest success of a North American team was reaching the semi-finals. This was achieved by the USA at the 1930 World Cup. The first Asian teams to make it to the semi-finals was at the 2002 World Cup, when South Korea and Turkey both did this (Turkey is however a member of the UEFA, and thus sometimes considered a European country when it comes to football). Two African teams have reached the quarter-finals: Cameroon at the 1990 World Cup and Senegal in 2002. The only visits of teams from Oceania in the finals tournament ended in the first round: Australia at the 1974 World Cup and New Zealand in the 1982 World Cup.
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