
How Have Individual Countries Performed?
The World Cup is the biggest sporting event in the world. With the quadrennial event taking place this year, the excitement for the tournament has reached new heights. Fans from all over the world are on tenterhooks to see who will be crowned as champions once again. However, apart from all the action that’ll take place on the pitch, there’s a whole lot more to the World Cup than meets the eye. Many countries have long and storied histories at the tournament and hear you can learn about the most interesting of them.
Italy and its Long History in the World Cup
Italy has had a love-hate relationship with the World Cup. A third of all the times Italy has qualified, they were knocked out at the group stage. The Azzurri have also failed to progress past the first round on four different occasions (1934,…
367Scotland and the FIFA World Cup
The 1978 World Cup was one of the most memorable in the history of the competition not just for Scotland, who made it to the final 16, but also for neutral viewers. This was a fascinating and unpredictable edition of football’s showpiece…
358France Hosts and wins the FIFA World Cup 1998
The first World Cup to be hosted jointly by two countries was staged in France and host nation Belgium between June and July 1998. The tournament was the first to employ goal-line technology, as well as the third installment of the ‘ group of…
410The Netherlands has never won the FIFA World Cup
The Dutch national team has come agonizingly close on numerous occasions to lifting the famous trophy, but they have never been able to do it in their history. The closest they came was in South Africa in 2010, when they fell to Spain in the…
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