A comprehensive overview of countries that have won the World Cup

The World Cup. Two days from today, on December 18th, the final of the 2022 World Cup will be played in Qatar. Who will win this year's edition of the World Cup is still unknown to us, but I thought that this would be a good opportunity to take a brief look at the history of the competition, learning a little about who the winning countries have been throughout time, as well as how and when they won it. So let's jump right into it. The FIFA World Cup was founded in the year of 1930, 92 years ago. In case you don't know, FIFA is the international governing body for football founded in 1904. Its name stands for Fédération Internationale de Football Association. Headquartered in Zurich, in Switzerland, its membership comprises 211 national associations. Each of these must also be a member of one of the six regional confederations into which the world is divided. But back to the World Cup itself. The first World Cup took place in 1930 in Uruguay, which coincidentally also won the first competition. The current champions are France who won in 2018 in Russia and the country with the most titles is Brazil having won it 5 times. We'll see when in a minute. They're also the only team in the world who have qualified and played in every single tournament. The championship has been awarded every 4 years since the inaugural tournament except in 1942 and 46 when it wasn't held because of the second world war. I won't get into how the tournament itself works. Currently there are 32 teams that take part, first in a group stage and then in a knockout phase, until only two teams are left, which play the final and determine the winner. The World Cup is often viewed as the most prestigious sports tournament in the world. It's the most widely viewed sporting event at an international level. A total of 3.5 billion people, almost half the world's population, tuned in to watch the 2018 World Cup. And other than viewership, attendance has also increased tremendously throughout time, from 590,000 in 1930 to 1 million in 1950, 1.6 million in 1970, 2 million in 1982, 3.5 in 1994, and it seems to be growing more and more. Although the competition has grown in size with more teams being part of it and more games being played, which also justifies growth in attendance. In 1930, they only played 18 games, while from 1998 onwards they played 64 as the number of participating teams grew. Every four years the World Cup takes place and is hosted by a different country or a set of countries together. 17 countries have hosted the World Cup. Brazil, France, Italy, Germany and Mexico have each hosted twice while Uruguay, Switzerland, Sweden, Chile, England, Argentina, Spain, the United States, Japan and South Korea together, South Africa and Russia have each hosted once. Qatar is currently hosting the 2022 tournament and 2026 will be jointly hosted by Canada, the United States and Mexico. So now let's list out the winners. Despite the fact there have been 23 editions of the tournament, only 8 national teams have won it. Brazil have won 5 times, Germany and Italy 4 titles each, Argentina, France and Uruguay have two titles each and England and Spain have won it once. But we need to remember that winning first place isn't everything. In order to participate they have to qualify and within the tournament some get further than others which is an accomplishment in itself too. The losing teams of each semi-final play another game before the final which decides who wins third and fourth place. And 24 teams have placed within these first four places throughout all competitions. Aside from the gold, let's take a look at the other positions. The Netherlands, Hungary and the Czech Republic, as well as Sweden and Croatia have reached second place at least once. Poland, Austria, Portugal, Belgium and the United States, as well as Chile and Turkey have reached third place. And Serbia, Russia, Bulgaria and South Korea were able to reach fourth place. The winners themselves did too. Brazil has been second, third and fourth place, two times each. It's also interesting to rank countries by the total of top 4 positions. If we do this, Germany becomes the most awarded country with 13 top 4 placements, ahead of Brazil that has 11, Italy with 8, France with 6, and Argentina, Uruguay, and the Netherlands with 5 each. Before we keep going, a quick message from today's sponsor, Wondrium. Wondrium is one of the best services for people who love to learn, offering you hundreds of high-level courses about numerous topics. Some are documentaries, series, others are how-to videos or tutorials, spanning over six thousand hours of content, which is thoroughly researched and entertaining. They describe themselves as a service that enriches your overall life experience with approachable, comprehensive, and illuminating content. I love to watch things like these. I feel like through a video, especially a good one, you can learn so much more and do it in such an easy and entertaining way. I've been watching this series they have about the history of ancient Egypt and it's super cool. I especially liked how they look into how the study of Egyptology came about and the importance of certain historical figures like Napoleon in it. If you have something you really want to learn about, odds are Wondrium has it and is a great place to learn about it. And if they don't have it, they add new content every month. They're giving my viewers a great offer of a free trial, so thank you to Wondrium for sponsoring today's video. Sign up now through the link in the description. Now, back to the video. We can also take a look at the best result achieved by each country, this map shows us precisely that. It's interesting to see how some big countries have never made it past the group stage, like Canada, Bolivia, South Africa, Iceland or China, not to mention the amount of countries worldwide in the grey, which I guess never qualified for the competition, like India, Finland, the three Baltics or Venezuela. This seems really surprising to me, let me know in the comments if it's a mistake. By looking at the color scale on the map, we can tell that the majority of the winners are concentrated in Europe. The only exceptions are the three South American winners, Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay. Which brings us to another interesting aspect. Remember how I mentioned FIFA members are organized into six confederations, the ones on this map? Out of the trophies awarded, only 9 have gone to CONMEBOL, the South American confederation, and 12 went to European nations, members of UEFA. no North American, African, Asian or Oceanian country have ever won the competition. So now let's go through all the editions of the World Cup that have taken place and check who won. Like I mentioned at the start, the first World Cup was held in Uruguay in 1930, won by the host country defeating their neighbor Argentina. Interestingly, this first edition and the creation of the competition itself was connected with the high degree of success that Olympic football tournaments had. Because of it, the recently created FIFA began organizing tournaments outside the Olympic context. They chose Uruguay as the first host because they were two-time world Olympic champions and also 1930 was the anniversary of one century of their independence. The second edition was also won by the host, Italy, who beat Czechoslovakia in the final. Italy also won the third edition, beating Hungary in the last game. This one was hosted by France in 1938. The last edition held before two of them were suspended due to World War II. In 1950, they resumed with Brazil as the host and Uruguay won again, beating the host in the final. In 1954, West Germany, the recently created country, beat Hungary in the final. To make up for losing the final at home, Brazil won the next two editions in 1958 and 62, first against the host Sweden and then against Chile. The host country won again in 1966 as England won the trophy for the first time and only time so far. The host country seemed to really have some type of psychological advantage or just the fact that they have a lot more fans supporting them at each game. The host team won again in 1974, West Germany and then again in 1978 with Argentina. From 1982 to 94 this didn't happen though and only in 1998 did France, the host country, win. In 2002 it was the first time two countries hosted together, Japan and South Korea. South Korea made it to the semi-finals reaching fourth place but Brazil came away with the title for the fifth time. They had also won in 1994 in the United States. Italy won in Germany in 2006 with the hosts getting third place after beating Portugal who got fourth. Portugal's second best result after reaching third place in the 1966 England tournament in which, fun fact, the Soviet Union got the fourth place. The only non-existing country today which once got to the top four if we exclude West Germany and Czechoslovakia. In 2010, Spain won in South Africa and in 2014 Germany won in Brazil against Argentina with the host only reaching third place. Finally in 2018 in Russia France won against Croatia with Belgium getting third place and England fourth. This year it remains to be seen who will triumph in the 2022 Qatar World Cup. We also already know the hosts for 2026 Canada, Mexico and the US which will be the first time three countries host the World Cup together. Bids are also already being put forth to host the 2030 World Cup. Uruguay has presented one, which would be really cool, to celebrate 100 years of the competition, going back to the first host. Portugal, Spain, and Ukraine have presented a joint proposal too. I get wanting to include Ukraine, but it doesn't make much logistic sense. Saudi Arabia, Greece, and Egypt apparently want to present a bid together too, among various others. In this cool map, we can see previous hosts. No country has ever hosted more than two times. There's also some other interesting statistics like the top goal scorers. The German Miroslav Klose is the best individual scorer in history with 16 goals, followed by Ronaldo, the Brazilian one, with 15, Müller with 14, Just Fontaine with 13, and Pelé with 12. If we look at the most goal scoring countries as a whole, and this will likely be outdated by the time the video comes out since I'm making it before the whole competition starts, Brazil has the most goals scored at 229, followed by Germany at 226. Very close together. Maybe they'll become number one with this World Cup. Argentina is a distant second at 137, followed by Italy at 128 and France at 120. All other countries have less than 100 goals scored. Spain will certainly make it to the 100 plus club since they have 99 right now and England has 91. Uruguay, Hungary and the Netherlands have 87 each for instance. We could also do something which is look at all the World Cups as if they had a league format instead of an individual cup format every time. So accounting each win, draw and loss in points. Obviously the teams that have participated more times have more games to get points from and the ones who have won more trophies too because they got further in the competition and so played and won more games. But I think this adds value to the ranking itself. If we chose the league format, Brazil would still rank first with 237 points, followed by Germany in second with 221. Italy would be third, Argentina fourth, then France, England, Spain and then Uruguay. This really allows us to get a big picture perspective at which the best teams have been throughout all editions of the competition. And with these statistics, we really understand what a firm grasp Brazil and Germany have in world competitions and how far ahead they are of all other teams, at least historically. So, that is a brief overview at the World Cup, the competition's creation, way of functioning and its history, focusing on interesting statistics about the countries that have participated, the ones who have won it, as well as other achievements that some have reached. Did I make any mistakes and is there any other additional information or fun facts about this topic that you have? Let me know in the comments and good luck to whichever team you're supporting in this Sunday's final. I'm doing this video far in advance, so I'm not sure who will be competing for the trophy. I'm Portuguese, so I hope that we are in the final and if I were to choose an opponent team, I would hope it's Argentina. A Ronaldo vs Messi duel at the World Cup final would be one of the coolest sporting moments in history, but speaking now from the past, I think this is a little unlikely. Thanks so much for watching this video, subscribe if you want and I will see you next time for more general knowledge.