FIFA World Cup
Region: The World
Teams: 32
Founded: 1930
The FIFA World Cup kicks off every four years at venues throughout a host country selected by FIFA’s Executive Committee. The top thirty-two teams, that make it through a qualification phase, fight it out for the biggest prize in international football, the solid gold FIFA World Cup trophy and the title of best national football team in the world.
Organised by the international governing body of association football, the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), based in Zurich, Switzerland, the World Cup finals have been contested, over a period of a month, in various host countries since 1930.
The FIFA Confederations
In the three years preceding each World Cup finals event, qualifying tournaments are held within the six designated continental zones
- Africa
- Asia
- North & Central America and the Caribbean
- South America
- Oceania
- Europe
FIFA determines how many World Cup finals berths are allocated to each zone according to the relative strengths of each confederation. Although formats do differ, the general rule of thumb is one or two places are awarded to the winners of the intercontinental play-offs.
Host nations automatically qualify for the World Cup finals which is effectively divided into two phases:
Group stage
The final 32 teams are divided into 8 groups of 4 teams each, with seven of the top performing teams, plus the host, seeded for the tournament according to their FIFA World rankings and their performances at recent World Cup tournaments.
Each of the seeds is allocated to a different group, with the rest of the teams allotted to a specific group according to a random draw. However, no group is permitted to contain more than two European teams or 1 team from any of the other confederations.
Each group participates in a round robin format with every team contesting 3 matches. The top two of each group, according to points, will advance to the knock-out stage. If two teams share the same amount of points, tiebreakers are the decider:
- Goal difference
- Total goals netted
- Head-to-head results
- Drawing of lots
- Knock-out stage
Effectively a single-elimination tournament, the teams play each other in one-off events with extra time and penalty shoot-outs determining the winner if necessary. Then it’s on to the round of 16, where the winner of each group plays the runner-up of another, followed by the quarter finals, the semi finals, the 3rd place match and the final.