FIFA WORLD CUP
The Fédération International de Football Association (FIFA), the world’s governing organization of association football, and its senior men’s national teams compete in the FIFA World Cup, commonly referred to as the World Cup. With the exception of 1942 and 1946, when it was not contested due to the Second World War, the championship has been awarded every four years since the first competition in 1930. France, who won its second championship at the 2018 competition in Russia, is the current champion.
To determine which teams advance to the tournament phase, the current model includes a qualification round that lasts for the previous three years. In the tournament phase, 32 teams, including the automatically qualifying host nation(s), compete for the title at venues within the host nation(s) over about a month.
Twenty-one championship matches, with 79 national teams, have been played as of the 2018 FIFA World Cup. Eight national teams have claimed the prize as their own. Brazil is the only team to have competed in every event and has won five times. Germany and Italy are the other World Cup champions, each with four titles; Argentina, France, and Uruguay, first-place finisher, each with two titles; and England and Spain, each with one title. The World Cup is not only the most renowned association football competition ever, but it’s also the most watched and followed sporting event ever. An estimated 715.1 million viewers, or a tenth of the world’s population, watched the World Cup final, bringing the total number of viewers for the tournament to an estimated 26.29 billion.
The World Cup has been hosted by 17 nations. While Uruguay, Switzerland, Sweden, Chile, England, Argentina, Spain, the United States, Japan and South Korea (jointly), South Africa, and Russia have each hosted once, Brazil, France, Italy, Germany, and Mexico have each hosted twice.
HISTORY
The inaugural game of international football was a challenge match between Scotland and England in Glasgow in 1872, which finished in a scoreless draw. In 1884, the first international competition, the British Home Championship, was held. Football was played as a demonstration sport at the 1900 and 1904 Summer Olympics (although the International Olympic Committee has retroactively upgraded those events to official events), as well as the 1906 Intercalated Games, as the sport gained popularity in other parts of the world at the turn of the 20th century.
FIFA attempted to organize an international football competition between nations outside of the Olympic framework in Switzerland in 1906, a year after its founding in 1904.
The competition was deemed a failure in FIFA’s official history, which was written during the very early years of international football.
Football was added as an official event at the London Summer Olympics in 1908. The tournament, which was organized by The Football Association (FA), England’s football governing body, was only open to amateur players and was viewed with suspicion as a performance rather than a match. The gold medals were won by Great Britain, which was represented by the England national amateur football team. The achievement was duplicated at the Stockholm Summer Olympics in 1912.
The Sir Thomas Lipton Trophy competition was held in Turin in 1909 because the Olympic event was still only competed in by amateur teams. The Lipton tournament was a competition between clubs (as opposed to national teams) from several countries, each of which was a representative of an entire nation. The most elite professional club teams from Italy, Germany, and Switzerland competed in what is commonly referred to as The First World Cup, however the FA of England refused to support the event and turned down the invitation to send a team. Lipton instead asked County Durham’s West Auckland, an amateur team, to represent England. West Auckland won the competition, and they successfully defended their championship in 1911.
FIFA accepted responsibility for organizing the event and agreed to recognize the Olympic competition as a “world football championship for amateurs” in 1914. This cleared the way for the first intercontinental football tournament in history, which took place in the 1920 Summer Olympics and was won by Belgium in front of Egypt and 13 other European nations. The following two Olympic football competitions, in 1924 and 1928, were won by Uruguay. Given that FIFA’s professional era began in 1924, the two events also served as the sport’s inaugural open world championships.
2022 FIFA WORLD CUP
The FIFA World Cup, a quadrennial international men’s football championship played between the senior national teams of FIFA member countries, is set to take place for the 22nd time in 2022. The dates are set for 21 November through 18 December 2022 in Qatar. After the event in South Korea and Japan in 2002, this will be the second World Cup wholly held in Asia and the first World Cup ever to be contested in the Arab world. Additionally, the tournament will include 32 teams for the final time; the tournament in the United States, Mexico, and Canada in 2026 will have 48 teams instead. This World Cup will be played over a shorter period of time, roughly 28 days, because to the extreme summer heat in Qatar, taking place from late November to mid-December. This will be the first World Cup not to take place in May, June, or July. Senegal and the Netherlands will square off in the tournament’s opening game at Doha’s Al Thumama Stadium. On December 18, 2022—Qatar National Day—at the Lusail Iconic Stadium, the championship game is scheduled to take place. France is the current World Cup champion.
Concerns over the legitimacy of Qatar hosting the World Cup in 2022 were first raised in May 2011 following allegations of corruption involving high FIFA executives. Regarding the process by which Qatar was selected to host the event, allegations of corruption have been made. Qatar was exonerated of all violations following an internal FIFA inquiry and report, however head investigator Michael J. Garcia later claimed that the document had “many materially incomplete and erroneous assertions.” Swiss federal prosecutors launched an investigation into bribery and money-laundering in connection with the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bids on May 27, 2015. Sepp Blatter, the former president of FIFA, said on August 6 that Qatar had engaged in “black ops,” implying that the bid committee had cheated to secure the hosting rights.
Furthermore, Qatar has been under fire for how it has treated foreign laborers working on the World Cup, with Amnesty International citing “forced labor” and subpar working conditions[8] while numerous migrant workers said they had to pay significant “recruitment fees” in order to find work. According to an investigation by The Guardian newspaper, many workers are allegedly denied food and drink, have their identity documents removed from them, and are either underpaid or not paid at all, effectively turning some of them into slaves. By the time the tournament is place, up to 4,000 workers could have passed away from poor safety practices and other causes, according to The Guardian. The Qatari government implemented major labor reforms between 2015 and 2021 to enhance working conditions, including a minimum salary for all employees and the abolition of the kafala system. However, Amnesty International claims that there has been no improvement in the living and working conditions of foreign employees in recent years.