Football is the king of sports and the FIFA World Cup is the biggest sporting event on the planet. Nothing compares to it. It surpasses even the Olympic Games in terms of size, popularity, and spectacle. But how did the World Cup become the biggest and greatest sporting event on the planet? Now let’s have a look at the early birth of the competition.
Dating back to the first international match in 1872 between England and Scotland, we can clearly see the global appeal of football. Since then, the sport has quickly spread to other countries across Europe as well as around the world. As a result, by the early 20th century, the popularity of football was increasing at an exponential rate, causing its need for a single entity to oversee the worldwide game.
That the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the international governing body of football, was formed in 1904 in France helped to fill the void.
FIFA proclaimed at its inaugural Paris congress that it was alone, and not the IOC, had the right to stage football’s world championship. During the ensuing years, the FIFA and the IOC butted heads over control of the Olympic football tournament, which was currently the only competition that had worldwide participation.
In 1920, the idea of the World Cup was agreed to in principle by the FIFA’s delegates at a congress at the Antwerp Olympics. Then the matter was discussed further by the FIFA at a meeting during the 1924 Paris Olympics.
Two years later, Henri Delaunay and FIFA president Jules Rimet turned up the heat. Finally, at a 1928 Amsterdam Olympics meeting, the delegates of the FIFA passed by Delaunay’s resolution. The organization immediately started making plans to organize football’s first world championship, and the World Cup was born with the first tournament to be held in 1930 in Uruguay.