July 13 - First Ever World Cup Begins in 1930

While we now take it for granted that England will fly off to some exotic location with a very inconvenient time-difference every four years to go out on penalties in the quarter-finals of the World Cup, it was not always so.

The first ever football world cup was held in 1930 in Uruguay, with the first two games of the tournament held on this day, with France beating Mexico 4-1, and the USA defeating Belgium 3-0. England did not participate in a world cup until 1950.

It was also on this day that Frenchman Lucien Laurent scored the first world cup goal in history, 20 minutes into the game at the Estadio Gran Parque Central stadium.

Laurent later said: “We were playing Mexico and it was snowing, since it was winter in the southern hemisphere. One of my teammates centred the ball and I followed its path carefully, taking it on the volley with my right foot. Everyone was pleased but we didn’t all roll around on the ground - nobody realised that history was being made. A quick handshake and we got on with the game. And no bonus either; we were all amateurs in those days, right to the end.”

The tournament came about partly because football was not included as one of the events at the 1932 Olympic Games in Los Angeles due to the unpopularity of the games in the USA.

In 1928 FIFA President Jules Rimet announced that FIFA would be holding a football-dedicated tournament in which all FIFA members were invited to participate.

Uruguay were chosen as hosts which resulted in only four European teams attending the tournament. Only Belgium, France, Romania, and Yugoslavia made the long and costly voyage across the Atlantic to South America. The other nine teams that took part were all from the Americas.

Historic goal scorer Laurent recounted the voyage years later: “We were 15 days on the ship “CONTE VERDE” getting out there. We embarked from Villefranche-sur-Mer in company of the Belgians and the Yugoslavians. We did our basic exercises down below and our training on deck. The coach never spoke about tactics at all…”

The Conte Verde also carried Rimet himself, the trophy (not yet named after the great man), plus the three European referees to the tournament.

The first ever world cup was won by Uruguay when they defeated Argentina 4-2 to become both world and Olympic champions.

See some very grainy footage of the 1930 final and practice your Spanish at the same time.