THE WORLD CUP IN JUNE 1950

Twent years after the first staging of the World Cup (1930), Brazil hosted the 1950 World Cup following on from the Second World War. FIFA clearly had some work to do and after last minute complications, FIFA was practically begging nations to bring their teams to fill the last three places. British teams had not joined in the fun, the home countries' reason has been explained in this blog before. Snobbism? Nevertheless FIFA offered places to the winners and runners up of our own Home Championship, which were England and Scotland. The Scots did not want to accept this because they had not won the Home Championship! The England captain, Billy Wright, an international who eventually won 105 caps, along with the Scottish captain, George Young, tried hard to persuade the Scottish FA to accept the invitation. The Scots did not "play ball" and stayed at home. So England went on their own representing GB. The first World Cup match was played on June 24th at the Maracana, Brazil 4 v Mexico 0.

The English may have wished they had stayed at home, because having played in Pool 2, they beat Chile 2-0 on June 25th, then crucially lost to the USA amateurs (above) 1-0 on the 29th and then lost to Spain 1-0 on July 2nd. England came runners up in their group, second to Spain (who won 3 out of 3 with a goal tally of 6 for and 1 against). Only one team went forward to the next round, Spain and England went home in disappointment.

Argentina did not join the World Cup due to differences with neighbours Brazil, who apparently had been "rough" in matches between the two countries, played in the 1940s...no change there then? The Czechs declined, the French stayed at home having seen their proposed qualifying matches staged 2,000 miles apart and the Brazilians refused to change the venues. Germany was banned following the war. 13 teams competed, not an easy number to deal with. There were two groups of 4 (Brazil, Yugoslavia, Switzerland and Mexico) and (Spain, England, Chile and the US), one of three (Sweden, Italy Paraguay) and one of two (Uruguay and Bolivia)! Uruguay, who had won the first World Cup in 1930 on their home soil and had not played since, beat Bolivia in ONE match 8-0. 

(A serious note is that Alfred Bickel and Erik Nilsson of Sweden both played in the final stages of the World Cup before and after the Second World War; the only men to do this!)