MyfootballFacts is putting together 100 FIFA World Cup facts ahead of the 2022 FIFA World Cup tournament. Click the links for facts and trivia source.
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Italy and Brazil are the only two Nations to have won back-to-back titles. Italy did it first in 1934 and 1938 and Brazil followed suit with their 1958 and 1962 triumphs.
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The record for the most individual goals in a single World Cup match is held by Russia’s Oleg Slanko who scored five goals against Cameroon in 1994.
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The 2010 World Cup held in South Africa was the first ever World Cup to be held on African soil. It was also the first ever World Cup to see the most FIFA member nations attempt to qualify, with 204 out of 208 member nations participating in qualifiers across their continents. It was indeed a record-breaking World Cup tournament.
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Germany’s Miroslav Klose is the record goal scorer in World Cup history with 16 goals across all the tournaments he played in. However, France’s Just Fontaine scored 13 goals in the 1958 World Cup which is the record for the most goals in a single tournament. Fontaine only played in one tournament but that single tournament is enough to place him as one of the World Cups all-time greats and fourth on the list of the most goals scored in World Cup history.
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The infamous 2006 World Cup final between Italy and France in which we saw legendary midfielder Zinedine Zidane headbutt Marco Materazzi was watched by over 715.1 million viewers, the most in World Cup history.
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Brazil remains the only nation to have competed in all 21 FIFA World Cup tournaments held so far and they have also qualified for the upcoming tournament in Qatar this December.
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The nation with the most FIFA World Cup wins in history is Brazil with five wins from the 1958, 1962, 1970, 1994 and 2002 tournaments.
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Italy and Germany are the second most successful nations at the World Cup with four wins each. Italy’s four wins came from the 1934, 1938, 1982 and 2006 tournaments while Germany’s four wins came from the 1954, 1974, 1990 and 2014 tournaments.
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The first FIFA World Cup tournament was hosted by Uruguay in 1930 and had only 13 Nations participating. Uruguay was selected as the first nation to host the World Cup because they were the winners of the last two Olympic gold medals in men’s football (1924 and 1928).
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Uruguay won the first ever World Cup in 1930 as they were the best team on display at the time.
