The eagle has landed: Fifa World Cup trophy arrives in Kenya
Posted by africanpress on November 12, 2009
By Robin Toskin and Agencies
The Fifa World Cup (often called the Football World Cup, Soccer World Cup or simply the World Cup) is the most important competition in international football, and the world’s most representative team sport event.
Organised by Federation Internationale de Football Association (Fifa), the sport’s governing body, the World Cup is contested by the men’s national football teams of Fifa member nations.
The championship has been awarded every four years since the first tournament in 1930 (except in 1942 and 1946 due to World War II), however, it is more of an ongoing event as the qualifying rounds of the competition take place over three years preceding the final rounds.
Current holder
The final tournament phase (often called the “Finals”) involves 32 national teams competing over a four-week period in a previously nominated host nation, with these games making it the most widely-viewed sporting event in the world. In the 17 tournaments held, only seven nations have ever won the World Cup Finals.
Brazil is the current holder, as well as the most successful World Cup team, having won the tournament five times, while Germany and Italy follow with three titles each.
The 2010 World Cup final will be held in South Africa
, the first time it is held in Africa. No other sporting event captures the world’s imagination like the Fifa World Cup.
Ever since the first tentative competition in Uruguay in 1930, Fifa’s (FÈdÈration Internationale de Football Association) flagship has constantly grown in popularity and prestige.
A group of visionary French football administrators, led in the 1920s by the Jules Rimet, are credited with the original idea of bringing the world’s strongest national football teams together to compete for World Champions.
Jules Rimet
The original gold trophy bore Jules Rimet’s name and was contested three times in the 1930s, before the Second World War put a 12-year stop to the competition.
When it resumed, the Fifa World Cup rapidly advanced to its undisputed status as the greatest single sporting event of the modern world.
Held since 1958 alternately in Europe and the Americas, the World Cup broke new ground with the Executive Committee’s decision in May 1996 to select Korea and Japan as co-hosts for the 2002 edition.
The Fifa World Cup has also been punctuated by dramatic upsets that have helped create footballing history – the United States defeating England in 1950, North Korea’s defeat of Italy in 1966, Cameroon’s emergence in the 1980s and their opening match defeat of the Argentinean cup-holders in 1990.
“The lines spring out from the base, rising in spirals, stretching out to receive the world. From the remarkable dynamic tensions of the compact body of the sculpture rise the figures of two athletes at the stirring moment of victory.”
source.standard.ke
