The FIFA World Cup, also known as the World Cup Soccer, is an annual international football competition organized by the international governing body of football, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association. This is the most distinguished sporting event in the world with a potential audience of more than TV viewers and multitudes of spectators from all over the planet. The competition was first held in Africa in 1960 and has since then gone on to include countries in Europe, Asia, North America, South America and Australia. The current FIFA World Cup tournament is being held in Germany during the summer months of June and July.
A record twenty nations are competing in this World Cup soccer competition. It has been played in different countries including Uruguay, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Spain, Brazil, United States, Italy, France, Germany, Russia, Sweden and England. It has been played in a round-robin format with the hosts coming from the groups with the highest ranking.
There are four different types of tournaments in which teams are decided for the world cup. The qualification rounds play teams against each other until only one team qualifies for the final tournament. The other teams play against teams from other continents and the third and fourth teams qualify from the other groups. The format of these tournaments is based on points scored by each team. With so many teams playing in the tournament, a simple point system has been put in place to determine who gets to participate.
The format of this competition has also been modified from the original rules set in place almost a hundred years ago. Initially, the format was to have the four teams from each country qualifying to the final tournament. However, following the popularity of European matches, which were much more popular than their American counterparts, the English and Scottish clubs started playing in the World Cup. In order to prevent this, the English and Scottish representatives were excluded from the original tournament and replaced by representatives of other countries. This meant that the other representatives needed to be from a different country. The United States did not participate in the first world cup but was one of the teams that joined later.
The qualification rounds of this world cup are also different to the original qualifying rounds. In the original tournament, teams had to qualify through a draw. As many countries became interested in participation, there were requests to increase the number of qualifying rounds. Six confederations joined in and now there are seven qualified teams at every World Cup. This increases the pressure on the teams as they now need to win all the qualifying rounds in order to make it to the final tournament.
The World Cup prize money is also much greater today than it was in previous years. Every major sponsor has an official representative at the World Cup and this includes big companies such as Adidas. The World Cup prize money is used to reward teams and it is distributed according to the finishing position that a team finished in. Usually the winning team receives around 70% of the entire prize money but this varies year by year. Every team wants to win the World Cup and to do that they must ensure that they reach the top four of the tournament.