FIFA World Cup Fun Facts

FIFA World Cup, simply known as the World Cup, is held every 4 years, and it unleashes a huge rush of adrenalin throughout its fans in every corner of the Earth. The first world cup took place in the year 1930 and is held every four years. It was hosted by Uruguay. However, due to World War II, the event was not held between 1942 and 1946.

# Frenchman Lucien Laurent created history by scoring the first goal in the very first World Cup match held in Uruguay in 1930. However, Lucien was adjudged to be the first scorer, only after the settlement of a dispute which vouched for America's Bart McGee to be the first one.

# In the World Cup help in 1974, Chile's Carlos Caszely was sent off from the field after having given a red card. This decision of the referee was said to be controversial though. He became the first player to be dismissed in this manner.

# What about the youngest player to play in FIFA World Cup. Only 17 years and 41 days old was the age of this little football player named Norman Whiteside.

# Hungary is known to have a score of 27 goals in the World Cup of 1954. However, it lost to West Germany 3 - 2. Funny or unfortunate?

# Roger Milla from Cameroon is known to be the oldest player to participate in a World Cup Match. This man was responsible to lead his country in the World Cup of Italy 1990.

# The country bringing home the World Cup for the most number of times is none other than Brazil. However, it could never win the title when hosting the tournament.

# In the quarter finals of the World Cup held in the year 1958 is that, none of the losing teams scored even a single goal.

# Probably, one of the funniest facts associated with the World Cup involves the penalty shootout of the great Italian footballer Giuseppe Meazza. In the year 1938, he got a chance of a penalty kick against Brazil. While he was about to do so, his shorts fell down. Despite this malfunction, he picked up his shorts, and made the goal beating the goalkeeper who was still laughing. This pushed Italy to the finals.

# In the year 1950, India qualified for the World Cup in Brazil. However, they could not make it to the big event as they were accustomed to play barefoot, and FIFA required all players to wear shoes during matches.

# The famous song entitled "Coup de Boule" ("Headbutt"), was inspired from what France's Zinedine Zindane did during the World Cup final in 2006. He hit Italy's Marco Materazzi's chest with his head.

# Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban, Port Elizabeth, Nelspruit, Polokwane, Bloemfontein, Rustenburg, and Pretoria are the places which were selected as venues for staging the 2010 World Cup matches. To add to these, 10 stadiums were organized in these places.

# Did you know by what name the South African National Team is known? It is 'Bafana Bafana'. In isiZulu, it means 'the boys, the boys'.

To conclude, the number of viewers who were estimated to have watched the 2006 final match of the FIFA World Cup in Germany, was an unbelievable 715.1 million!