The first FIFA World Cup

Roh Jeong-tae

The author is a writer and senior fellow at the Institute for Social and Economic Research. 

At 3:19 p.m. on July 13, 1930, cheers erupted from Pocitos Stadium in Montevideo, Uruguay. Nineteen minutes into the first half of the match between France and Mexico, Lucien Laurent scored the opening goal of the tournament. In the United States-Belgium match, which was being played simultaneously at another stadium, the first goal of that game came in the 40th minute. It marked the beginning of the FIFA World Cup, which over the following century would grow into the world’s largest international competition devoted to a single sport.

The Olympic Games were already flourishing at the time. Athletes from around the world gathered to compete in a wide variety of events. Why, then, was football singled out and given its own global tournament?

The answer lay in a disagreement over the role of professionalism in sports. The International Olympic Committee insisted on preserving the purity of amateurism. Sports, in its view, should not be a means of making money, and professional athletes were therefore barred from Olympic competition. As football became increasingly popular among ordinary people, however, that principle began to clash with reality.

Jules Rimet, a French lawyer and the third president of FIFA, saw things differently. Having risen from a working-class background while supporting himself through his studies, he had not forgotten his roots. He argued that an excessive attachment to amateur ideals would leave sports in the hands of aristocrats and the wealthy, depriving much of society of the chance to participate.

Rimet envisioned a festival that could unite people across national and social boundaries. Football, he believed, belonged to everyone regardless of nationality or class. He firmly maintained that professional players should be allowed to compete and that any country surviving regional qualifying, no matter how large the gap in ability, deserved a place in the finals.

That principle explains why Uruguay, celebrating the centennial of its independence, was selected to host the inaugural World Cup despite South America’s distance from Europe, then the center of global affairs. Rimet wanted the tournament to represent the entire world rather than merely the traditional powers.

The wisdom of his vision has become clearer with time. At the 1954 World Cup, Korea, then one of the world’s poorest countries, suffered a humiliating 9-0 defeat against Hungary and became the target of ridicule. Yet Rimet defended the Korean team without hesitation.

“Even if Korea has collapsed disastrously today, no one knows what may happen decades from now,” he said. “The World Cup is the World Cup because anyone can take part. That is the spirit contained in its name.”

Leaving behind the disappointment of one tournament, fans can once again look ahead and hope for a stronger showing at the next World Cup.