Video: Uruguay 4-2 Argentina, 1930 World Cup Final

Ollie Irish

21st, May 2010

2 Comments

By Ollie Irish

Just 13 nations contested the inaugural FIFA World Cup, with hosts Uruguay winning the two-week tournament. Here, via the power of YouTube, is some terrific archive footage of the final:

“The final was played at the Estadio Centenario on July 30. The stadium gates were opened at eight o’clock, six hours before kick-off, and at noon the ground was full, officially holding 93,000 people. A disagreement overshadowed the build-up to the match as the teams disagreed on who should provide the match ball, forcing FIFA to intervene and decree that the Argentine team would provide the ball for the first half and the Uruguayans would provide their own for the second.

“The game ended 4-2 to Uruguay (who had trailed 2-1 at half time) who added the title World Cup winners to the mantle of Olympic Champions, as Jules Rimet presented the World Cup Trophy, which was later named for him. The following day was declared a national holiday in Uruguay; in the Argentinian capital Buenos Aires a mob threw stones at the Uruguayan consulate.” [Via Wiki]

As Wiki says, 93,000 was the official attandence, but I bet there were more than 100,000 fans inside the Estadio Centenario that day.

Why didn’t England play? They – and the other British home nations – were ineligible, having withdrawn from FIFA because of a dispute over payments to amateur players.

Posted in International football, Videos, World Cup

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2 Comments

  1. Deckard says:

    Imagine that, the European teams had to make a boat trip of 3-4 weeks to play in a tournament for amateurs(no professional football in those days). Not only that, the players had to request time off from work and be assured there’d still be a job when they got back. And to top it off, to my knowledge there was no prize money either, so the winner got the Cup and nothing else and every other team got absolutely nothing for their efforts. Except having played in the innaugral World Cup. Which was only seen as an experiment at the time. Nobody was sure if this tournament would be a success and last. If only they knew.

    How times have changed.

  2. pazzini says:

    not a sponsor in sight. aaahh the beauty :)

Leave a Reply to pazzini