The First World Cup: Soccer Comes to South America
Uruguay becomes an international sensation, and Argentina does not like it
Lindo viaje había hecho el fútbol: había sido organizado en los colegios y universidades inglesas, y en América del Sur alegraba la vida de gente que nunca había pisado una escuela. – Eduardo Galeano, El fútbol a sol y sombra1
The story of the first World Cup is the story of soccer’s transatlantic journey from the fields of England to the New World. It all starts with the game’s arrival to the Southern edge of the Americas (to the banks of the Rio de la Plata to be exact), where it was reinterpreted and remodeled after their own image. The game that developed, the Rioplatense style, reflected the character of the working class neighborhoods of the growing port cities of Buenos Aires, in Argentina, and Montevideo, in Uruguay. In the aftermath of the First World War, soccer’s growing popularity was seen as an opportunity to foster unity between nations. The European countries became more interested in organizing international competitions, and were surprised to find that the best soccer was played in a small country most Europeans had never heard of before. By the time the first ever World Cup rolled around, this tiny but tenacious nation had become the first powerhouse of international soccer.
The South American Touch
It’s the nineteenth century, and the sun never sets on the British Empire. Wherever the British go, they bring their favorite pastimes with them, and none is more popular than cricket. You can tell because if you lay a map of countries that were colonized by Great Britain and a map of countries who are good at cricket, the overlay is near perfect. India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, New Zealand, Australia, and the West Indies2 have all been finalists of the Cricket World Cup at one point or another. The British were also present in countries that they didn’t colonize directly, usually setting up companies to extract materials and trading posts all around the globe. Wherever there was a community of British expats, a cricket club was quickly established. But the locals of these port cities weren’t very interested in cricket, but rather in this other sport that was much easier to replicate outside the walls of the cricket club, one that only required a ball and could be played pretty much anywhere.
Most countries in South America became independent nations early in the nineteenth century, and without the Spanish and Portuguese present, British presence in the region grew steadily as the Empire relied on the continuing export of raw materials (such as guano and rubber) from the continent. It was through these trade networks that soccer first made the journey across the Atlantic to reach South American shores, making its first landing in the port city of Buenos Aires, capital of the Argentine Republic. According to historian Jonathan Wilson, the very first Argentinian football club was founded in 1867 (the short lived Buenos Aires Football Club), and by the early 1900s Soccer had gone from being a popular game amongst the English expat community into a country-wide obsession that was soon to spread to the whole continent. It would take a little longer for soccer to fully ingrain itself in the countries along the Pacific and Caribbean coast of South America, but just across the Río de la Plata, soccer had become as popular with the Uruguayans as it had with the Argentinians.
The circumstances under which people in Buenos Aires and Montevideo played soccer were quite different from those of the English public schools3 where the game was originally codified. Rather than a preppy gentlemen in the making, the prototypical South American player was a street urchin, who instead of playing in the wide open fields of the British countryside had to make due in the narrow streets of these port cities. As the game was adapted to these new surroundings, a new and ingenious style of play was born. Much like the Scots left behind the Englishman’s bullish charge toward goal and embraced the idea of passing the ball between players, the Rioplatense players rejected straightforward attacks and embraced a style of game based around individual skill. Uruguayan journalist Eduardo Galeano makes a comparison between the rise of Soccer in these countries and the simultaneous rise of the tango:
Dancers drew filigrees on a single floor tile, and soccer players invented a language in that minuscule space where the ball was not kicked but rather retained and possessed, as if their feet were hands braiding leather. On the feet of the first creole virtuosos, “el toque” [lit: the touch] was born: the ball strummed as if it was a guitar, a source of music.
Galeano, El fútbol a sol y sombra4
The term “toque” refers to someone’s ability to nimbly manipulate the ball with their foot, to feign going one way when you’re about to go the other, to be able to use your feet to touch the ball many different ways depending on what you want to achieve, and most significantly, the ability to show off by performing jaw-dropping tricks while playing. These have all become fundamental skills of soccer, and emblems of South American Soccer in particular, and it all began in the Río de la Plata area at the turn of the 20th Century. In Inverting the Pyramid, Jonathan Wilson talks about “imagination [being] prized to the extent that certain players were lionized as the inventors of certain skills or tricks.” He cites the volleyed back-heel, the diving header and the scissor kick as all being invented - and attributed to specific players - during this time.
The other key development of this period was the “gambeta,” a common term in Spanish-speaking countries that Wilson translates as “the slaloming style of dribbling,” but which I would argue is closer to what English speakers call a “duel,” in which the attacking player must be as nimble and creative as possible to go past all the defenders without losing the ball. Wilson also refers to a recurring urban legend told in Argentina and Uruguay of “a player skipping through the opposition to score a goal of outrageous quality and then erasing his footsteps in the dust as he returned to his own half so that no one should ever copy his trick.” The Rioplatense style was focused on cunning attacks, ingenious showmanship, and above all, on having fun.
From “Silver” to Gold
South America’s big coming out party on the World Soccer stage came at the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris. Uruguay was the only South American team to make the long and expensive cross-Atlantic trip. The first modern Olympic Games were held in Athens in 1896, and they very strongly emphasized the Corinthian spirit of sportsmanship and amateurism. At this time, professionalism in sports was associated with undignified hustlers and gamblers, true sportsmanship could only come from people who did sport out of love, not out of a desire to make money. This adds another layer or romance to Uruguay’s success story. According to Galeano, the Uruguayan team was made up of “a meat-packer, a stone-cutter, a grocer, and an ice cream salesman.” These working men with a passion for soccer “traveled to Europe in steerage and played (a series of friendly preparation matches in Spain) to pay for their lodge” (Wilson). Once in Europe, the Uruguayan team won all nine of these friendly matches. Spirits were high as they arrived in Paris for the Olympic tournament.
Soccer had been an Olympic event in one form or another since 1900, but it reached new levels of popularity in the summer of 1924 as word got around Paris of this mysterious Uruguayan team that kept winning all their matches in spectacular fashion. They started by beating Yugoslavia 7-0, then the United States 3-0, and most importantly, they beat host nation France with a score of 5-1. It’s estimated that 2,000 people showed up to that first game against Yugoslavia, but crowds kept growing throughout, and there were more than 40,000 people on the stands when Uruguay beat Switzerland 3-0 in the final and earned the gold medal. According to the South American press at the time “millions of maps were sold in Paris to people who wanted to know exactly where that tiny nation that is the home of the football artists was.” Uruguay, a small country of less than 2 million inhabitants, the political underdog sandwiched between Argentina and Brazil, had made a name for itself on the global stage and proved that there was a fierce and defiant world outside of Europe. With this victory, Uruguay set the template for the kind of attention that winning an international soccer championship could bring to your country.
Here is some footage of the 1924 olympic final between Uruguay and Switzerland. It’s hard to make up the gameplay as a whole (they hadn’t figured out their filming angles yet), but you can see the differences in pace when compared to the modern game. Players have more time to think before they act, and they also have more space to run and move around. You can see a pretty good example of the “gambeta” and the passing game of the Uruguayans at the 3:50 minute mark (Uruguay is the team wearing the lighter shirts).
Uruguayan officials celebrated the news of their Parisian victory by declaring a national holiday. Across the Río de la Plata, however, it was a very different story. The history of Uruguay is defined by their status as an underdog surrounded by giants, and as such is deeply intertwined with the history of its neighbors Brazil and Argentina. Back in colonial times, both current-day Argentina and Uruguay were part of the Spanish-controlled Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata. Buenos Aires was the capital and biggest city, but Montevideo had a sizeable population and a growing dislike of the big-wigs across the river who thought they could make decisions on their behalf. Originally, both nations gained joint independence as the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata, but if regional rivalries continued to manifest themselves in armed conflicts between republicans and royalists. Shortly thereafter, northern neighbor Brazil, which was still a Portuguese colony at the time, grew fearful of revolutionary fervor spreading across its borders and decided to invade, annexing Uruguay as a colonial province. Several wars followed, which can be generally summarized as Argentina and Brazil trying to establish control over Uruguay until finally accepting it as a buffer state between them.
Given all of this background, one could say that Argentina reacted to Uruguay’s big win the way an older sibling might react to suddenly and unexpectedly being beaten by their younger sibling at their favorite game. Jonathan Wilson’s brilliant book about the history of Argentinian Soccer, Angels with Dirty Faces, describes the sentiment: “If only Argentina had bothered to go to the Olympics, the attitude seemed to be, then of course they’d have won it” and adds that such self-confidence “conveniently ignored the fact that in six of the seven South American championships to that point, Uruguay had finished ahead of Argentina.” So what did Argentina do? What every sore loser older brother would do: they challenged Uruguay to a rematch.
Uruguay agreed to a two-legged rematch, which in Soccer terminology means playing two games, one in each country, then determining the winner by adding up the the score line of both matches. The first leg was played in Montevideo, and ended in a 1-1 draw. A week later, the second leg was played in Buenos Aires, but it was only five minutes before rowdy fans encroaching on the pitch and forced the referee to stop the match. When fans were finally pacified back to the stands, the Uruguayan team, concerned for their safety, refused to go back on the pitch. The match was rescheduled for the following week, and in the meantime, a fence was built to separate fans on the stand from the players on the pitch (to this day, barriers between players and fans are a common sight across Latin America, and it all started at this particularly tense game.) A week later, the fans just as riled up as before, if not more so. The first half ended with the teams tied with one goal each. Eight minutes into the second half, Argentina pulled ahead with a second goal. At this point, the Uruguayans turned more aggressive, which enraged the Argentinians on the stands. About five minutes before the final whistle, Uruguayan star José Andrade tackled an Argentinian player from behind, but the referee declined to award the injured player a penalty kick as is expected for such a foul. The fans became furious, and began to throw rocks at Andrade and his team-mates. Then the Uruguayan players began to throw the rocks back at the fans and all hell broke loose. When the referee told them to stop, the Uruguayans simply walked off in defiance. Officially, the match never finished, and left Argentina with an inconclusive 2-1 victory (3-2 on aggregate).
The Argentine press spun the rematch as proof that Argentina was the better side, and would have indeed won at the Olympics had they been there. The rest of the world, however, paid no attention to such claims. Soon enough, it became clear that the only way to make the desired statement would be for Argentina to win gold at the next Olympics. By the time the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam rolled around, the Rioplatense style of play had become an international sensations. Both Uruguayan and Argentinian teams had toured Europe and become synonymous with great soccer. Everyone expected these two to face each other in the final, and enthusiasm was through the roof. Lo and behold, the gold medal match was just what everyone expected: Argentina versus Uruguay. The Dutch received more than a quarter of a million requests for tickets for the final, which took place in a stadium that could only fit 40,000. The match ended in a 1-1 draw, which meant a replay was scheduled for three days later. This time around, the score ended 2-1 in favor of Uruguay.
Argentina was starting to lose its patience. In the lead up to the Olympics, they had lobbied FIFA (which had been formed in 1904 and had been organizing the Olympic Soccer tournaments since 1924) to be able to field the strongest team possible and they had still lost to Uruguay. The reason Argentina had to lobby for their team was that by the late nineteen-twenties, soccer was slowly becoming a fully professional sport. Professional leagues had been operating in the Home Nations of Great Britain since the late 19th Century, and Europe was following suit. In South America, tournaments had remained mostly amateur, but even then it was mighty tricky to convince the best players to miss work for several weeks in order to travel to another country for a soccer tournament. Several European and South American nations were willing to pay these athletes for their commitment to play for their national team, but that would have been an infringement on the Olympic Committee’s strict amateur-only policy. The Home Nations, always eager to assert their dominance as the inventors of soccer, were against the idea of professional players at the Olympics, but the nations who were actually looking forward to competing in the event (Argentina chief among them) were not going to take no for an answer. Finally, the Olympic Committee proposed a compromise: to allow national federations to compensate players for their time by paying them the amount of money they would have earned if they had stayed back home. The British saw this as nothing but a slap in the face of sportsmanship and collectively resigned from FIFA. It was clear something had to be done about this, and so, at a congress organized during the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam, FIFA president Jules Rimet proposed the creation of an international tournament outside the Olympics, one that would allow for both professionals and amateurs, and that would be organized entirely by FIFA. The proposition passed (with 25 votes in favor and 5 against), and even before any Soccer matches had been played at the Amsterdam games, it was announced that the first ever World Championship of Soccer would take place in the year 1930.
The World Cup of 1930
What better host for the first ever World Cup than Uruguay? Not only had their victories at the 1924 and 1928 Olympics made them synonymous with excellent soccer, but the timing of the tournament would coincide with the centenary of Uruguay’s independence. The Uruguayan Federation arranged the construction of a brand new 93,000-capacity stadium in Montevideo (“el Estadio Centenario”) to celebrate the occasion. They were officially chosen as host country at the 1929 FIFA congress.
This would be the only World Cup to not require any kind of qualifying process. Invitations were sent to every single FIFA member. There was great interest from countries in the Americas: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru and the United States all accepted the invitation. Egypt - who had been semi-finalists at the 1928 Olympics - also accepted. They would have been the first African country to compete at the World Cup, except a storm in the Mediterranean delayed their travel and made them miss their cross-Atlantic ship. The original invitation requested interested Nations to confirm their participation by February 28, 1930, but as May rolled around not a single European country had RSVPd to the tournament.
When confronted, the Europeans cited the cost of the long voyage across the Atlantic as well as the economic impact of the 1929 Wall Street crash and the unfolding Great Depression as the reasons for their refusals. Since the Uruguayan economy had emerged relatively unscathed from the crash (making them an even more fortuitous choice to host the tournament), the Uruguayan government offered to cover the expenses of the participating nations. Still, no responses. At this point FIFA president Jules Rimet took matters into his own hands. He personally pressured the French Federation to commit to the Cup, and he sent off vice president Rudolf Seedrayers to do the same with the Belgians. Rimet also got a hold of King Carol II of Romania, and got him to force his players to make the voyage. Yugoslavia was the only European Nation who agreed to participate without needing much pressure.
The original plan was to organize a 16-team knockout tournament, much like the format of the Olympic games, but only 13 countries had confirmed their presence at the Cup. So instead, the teams were put into three groups of 3 and one group of 4. The teams in each group would play each other once, with the winner of each group qualifying to the semi-finals. Unsurprisingly, Argentina and Uruguay won their respective groups. Yugoslavia was the victor in Group 2, when it was able to beat both Bolivia and Brazil. The biggest surprise to modern eyes came in Group 4, where the United States beat both Belgium and Paraguay to finish top of the group. That’s right, the United States was a semi-finalist at the very first World Cup, making it their best ever showing at the tournament. The Semifinals were far less surprising. Argentina and Uruguay beat the United States and Yugoslavia respectively, both with a scoreline of 6-1.
Once again, the Rioplatense neighbors faced each other in the final, and expectations couldn’t have been greater. According to Eduardo Galeano “a pin needle couldn’t have fit in the Centenario.” The official number of spectators was 68,346, although Jonathan Wilson claims it was closer to 80,000 - and that’s not counting the people surrounding the stadium. Thousands of Argentinians had crossed the River Plate to attend the final, but those who remained home were also paying attention. Wilson describes the scene in Buenos Aires:
“Offices closed for the afternoon, although many workers stayed behind to listen to the game on the radio. General Motors shut down their production lines and the Chamber of Deputies abandoned its afternoon sitting. There was a parade of optimistic banners, while an estimated 50,000 gathered outside newspaper offices to listen to updates of the game being relayed by loudspeaker.”
Such enthusiasm also sparked fears of potential violence. Attendees were checked for weapons at the entrance, while the ref - a Belgian by the name of John Langenus - is said to have taken out a life insurance policy before agreeing to referee the match. Langenus’s caution turned out to be exaggerated, though he did have to broker a deal when both teams demanded the final be played with a ball made in their own country. Langenus decreed that an Argentinian ball would be used for the first half, and a Uruguayan ball for the second, an arrangement which turned out to be more than a bit prophetic.
The Uruguayans took an early lead with a goal from Pablo Dorado, but Argentina’s Carlos Peucelle was able to equalize only eight minutes later. By the time the half-time whistle blew, it looked like it could be Argentina’s day - they were up by 2-1 going into the break (the second goal was scored by Guillermo Stábile, who ended up top goalscorer of the tournament with 8 goals.) In his book about Argentinian soccer, Jonathan Wilson quotes Pancho Varallo - the last surviving member of the Argentinian squad, who died in 2010 at the age of 100. Varallo claims his team was winning comfortably and could have gone into the break having scored even more goals. “We were making them dance,” he said, which makes what happened next even more painful for him. In the second half, the hosts staged a comeback with goals from Pedro Cea, Santos Iriarte and Hector Castro. The final result was 4-2. Uruguay had beaten Argentina once again. They were World Champions.
One crucial term we haven’t explained yet is what the Uruguayans call la Garra Charrúa. This translates literally to the Charrúa claw, with Charrúa being the name of the Indigenous population of Uruguay before the Spanish conquest. Figuratively, Garra means something like “fighting spirit.” Manuel Ugarte, a Uruguayan midfielder who currently plays for Manchester United, describes it as “fighting for every ball like it was your very last.” The concept of Garra has come to define Uruguayan soccer, and the romantic re-telling of the first World Cup final as a manifestation of this fighting spirit is an essential part of the country’s sporting identity. Despite holding a population of only 3.5 million, Uruguay remains one of the most competitive soccer nations thanks to a serious commitment to developing the talent of young players and the undying memory of their soccer history. “Always from the bottom” is a common refrain for Uruguayans fans who want to keep true to their history, even when this is said with quite a bit of false modesty. To this day, Uruguayans are most comfortable going into a match as underdogs, ready to fight it out to the end just like they did almost a hundred years ago, when their tiny nation conquered the world of soccer.
It is tradition for any country that wins a World Cup to then add a star above the crest of their National Federation, which is displayed in official materials as well as on the team’s uniforms. Many soccer fans, knowing that Uruguay has won two World Cups, have been confused to see that their uniforms show four stars above the crest. In 1992 Uruguay petitioned FIFA to recognize the two Olympic tournaments of 1924 and 1928 as equivalent championships, citing reports of the time in which Uruguay were described as being “world champions” when they won those gold medals. FIFA, recognizing their role as chief organizers of both of those Olympic tournaments, agreed that while the Olympics and the World Cup were categorically different events, they were both determining world champion status. That is the origin of Uruguay's mysterious four stars: two for the Olympic tournaments of 1924 and 1928 respectively, one for the World Cup of 1930, and one for… well, that’s a story for another installment.
That’s all for today. If you enjoyed this post, please share it with someone who might enjoy it too! And come back next week as we dive into the controversial World Cups of 1934 and 1938 and explore the forceful relationship between soccer and fascism. More specifically: Benito Mussolini really wanted to win a World Cup.
Sources for this chapter:
El fútbol a sol y sombra by Eduardo Galeano
Angels with Dirty Faces: The Footballing History of Argentina by Jonathan Wilson
Inverting the Pyramid: The History of Soccer Tactics by Jonathan Wilson
“What a beautiful journey for soccer: it was born in English colleges and universities, and in South America, it had come to light up the lives of people who had never set foot inside a school.”
I mean, you can’t much more imperial than the fact that there is a “national team” called the West Indies. This team represents basically every Cricket-playing Caribbean Nation, including ten former British colonies (like Trinidad and Tobago), as well as three Overseas Territories of the United Kingdom, Sint Maarten (a Dutch Constituent territory) and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Public Schools, confusingly, are what British people call what we in the rest of the world call fancy Private Schools.
Los bailarines dibujaban filigranas, floreándose en una sola baldoza, y los futbolistas inventaban su lenguaje en el minúsculo espacio donde la pelota no era pateada sino retenida y poseída, como si los pies fueran manos trenzando el cuero. Y en los pies de los primeros virtuosos criollos, nació el toque: la pelota tocada como si fuera guitarra, fuente de música.