World Cup Corner

Italy’s history in the World Cup was a long, arduous journey marked with long stretches of success, and even longer stretches of defeats. Theirs is a portfolio that started out quite splendidly and ended in a so much lesser status. However, despite their recent fruitless attempts to win the Cup, they still hold the succeeding place as the third most successful teams in the history of the World Cup, following right behind Brazil and Germany. Let’s look closely at Italy’s journey through the Cup.
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A country need not have a continually successful run in the Football World Cup to lay claim to a few worthwhile pages in its illustrious history. The US, in particular, puts in a significantly rich and colorful contribution to the memoirs of the World Cup, in spite of all the “happy fun-ball” jokes poked at them and the “99% of the country doesn’t watch” remarks often made. From a bungling shameful embarrassment in 1998, to rowdy and surprising incredulity in 1930, to an encouragingly victorious stint in 1950, and finally to a necessarily ambitious and heroic endeavor in 2002, the US has indeed eked out its own special place in World Cup History.
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Walter Winterbottom, a former coach to England, once said that an African team would win the World Cup by 2000. Even Pele, one of soccer’s greatest players ever, seconded that opinion. Although Winterbottom predicted this it did not come true. However, Cameroon did come pretty close in 1990.

There were certainly opportunities for an African team to take it all the way In 1982 Algeria seemed like it might go all the way before being cheated by Austria and West Germany. Then in 1986 Morocco was really showing progress and many were wondering if this was it However, it was not until Cameroon in 1990 that the world began to believe that Winterbottom’s prediction might actually come true. It did not but Cameroon really did have a shot.
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If you are part of the football circle then you have probably heard of the word catenaccio, which means “dead-bolt” or “lock” in literal terms but it is interpreted as a very bad word referring to Italian football from the ‘60s and ‘70s that was negative at best. There are some tactical lessons to be learned from Catenaccio and any soccer coach should take these into consideration. However, Catenaccio can be a very good strategy to use for defense when it is correctly performed. In fact, the result of implementing Catenaccio may be one of the very best defensive strategies that exist in football. There is of course one good reason why Catenaccio isn’t liked by many soccer fans and that is as simple as the strategy keeps the other team from scoring.
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World Cup soccer was the brainchild of the president of the World Football federation in 1926. Therefore, if it were not for Jules Rimet there would not be world cup soccer. He pushed to get everything organized and fought for nondiscrimination because of amateur or professional status. These things would not matter to this league. It took him and a few others 5 years to get everything together and to get it finalized by the board. Then on May 26th, 1928, the World Cup was born. Five of the European countries were picked to be the host, Uruguay was chosen. This was because of their outstanding Olympic record.
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World Cup soccer was the brainchild of the president of the World Football federation in 1926. Therefore, if it were not for Jules Rimet there would not be world cup soccer. He pushed to get everything organized and fought for nondiscrimination because of amateur or professional status. These things would not matter to this league. It took him and a few others 5 years to get everything together and to get it finalized by the board. Then on May 26th, 1928, the World Cup was born. Five of the European countries were picked to be the host, Uruguay was chosen. This was because of their outstanding Olympic record.
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Scotland and England played the first football match that would eventually lead to the International FIFA World Cup. However, there was no way of knowing this at this first game played in 1872. During this time frame the sport was not popular worldwide as it is today.
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The Brazilian Football Confederation have offered the position of president of their 2014 World Cup Organising Committee to the one and only Edson Arantes do Nascimento - Pele. He would take on a similar role to that of Franz Beckenbauer at the World Cup 2006 in Germany and Michel Platini in France 1998.

The Brazil legend has indicated he would love to take on the position.

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