Wikileaks is an international organization, based in Sweden, which publishes anonymous submissions and leaks of otherwise unavailable documents while preserving the anonymity of sources. Its website, launched in 2006, is run by The Sunshine Press.[1] The organization has described itself as having been founded by Chinese dissidents, as well as journalists, mathematicians, and start-up company technologists from the U.S., Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa.[1] Newspaper articles and The New Yorker magazine (June 7, 2010) describe Julian Assange, an Australian journalist and Internet activist, as its director.Within a year of its launch, the site claimed a database that had grown to more than 1.2 million documents.
In April 2010, video posted on a website called Collateral Murder established Wikileaks as a prime portal for unauthorized, accurate accounts, documents and video from distant battlefields.[5][6] In July of the same year, Wikileaks released Afghan War Diary, a compilation of more than 90,000 documents about the War in Afghanistan not previously available for public review.
History
Wikileaks first appeared on the Internet in January 2007.The site states that it was “founded by Chinese dissidents, journalists, mathematicians and start-up company technologists, from the US, Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa”.The creators of Wikileaks have not been formally identified.[9] It has been represented in public since January 2007 by Julian Assange and others. Assange describes himself as a member of Wikileaks’ advisory board News reports in The Australian have called Assange the “founder of Wikileaks”.As of June 2009[update], the site had over 1,200 registered volunteers and listed an advisory board comprising Assange, Phillip Adams, Wang Dan, C. J. Hinke, Ben Laurie, Tashi Namgyal Khamsitsang, Xiao Qiang, Chico Whitaker and Wang Youcai.Despite appearing on the list, when contacted by Mother Jones magazine in 2010, Khamsitsang said that while he received an e-mail from Wikileaks, he had never agreed to be an advisor.
Wikileaks states that its “primary interest is in exposing oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but we also expect to be of assistance to people of all regions who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their governments and corporations.”
In January 2007, the website stated that it had over 1.2 million leaked documents that it was preparing to publish.[15] An article in The New Yorker said
One of the WikiLeaks activists owned a server that was being used as a node for the Tor network. Millions of secret transmissions passed through it. The activist noticed that hackers from China were using the network to gather foreign governments’ information, and began to record this traffic. Only a small fraction has ever been posted on WikiLeaks, but the initial tranche served as the site’s foundation, and Assange was able to say, “[w]e have received over one million documents from thirteen countries.”
Assange responded to the suggestion that eavesdropping on Chinese hackers played a crucial part in the early days of Wikileaks by saying “the imputation is incorrect. The facts concern a 2006 investigation into Chinese espionage one of our contacts were involved in. Somewhere between none and handful of those documents were ever released on WikiLeaks. Non-government targets of the Chinese espionage, such as Tibetan associations were informed (by us)”.The group has subsequently released a number of other significant documents which have become front-page news items, ranging from documentation of equipment expenditures and holdings in the Afghanistan war to corruption in Kenya.
Their stated goal is to ensure that whistle-blowers and journalists are not jailed for emailing sensitive or classified documents, as happened to Chinese journalist Shi Tao, who was sentenced to 10 years in 2005 after publicising an email from Chinese officials about the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.
The project has drawn comparisons to Daniel Ellsberg’s leaking of the Pentagon Papers in 1971.[20] In the United States, the leaking of some documents may be legally protected. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the Constitution guarantees anonymity, at least in the area of political discourse.Author and journalist Whitley Strieber has spoken about the benefits of the Wikileaks project, noting that “Leaking a government document can mean jail, but jail sentences for this can be fairly short. However, there are many places where it means long incarceration or even death, such as China and parts of Africa and the Middle East.”
The site has won a number of awards, including the 2008 Economist magazine New Media Award,[22] and in June 2009, Wikileaks and Julian Assange won Amnesty International UK’s Media Award 2009 (in the category “New Media”) for the 2008 publication of “Kenya: The Cry of Blood – Extra Judicial Killings and Disappearances”,[23] a report by the Kenyan National Commission on Human Rights about police killings in Kenya. In May 2010 it was rated number 1 of “websites that could totally change the news”.
Funding
On 24 December 2009, Wikileaks announced that it was experiencing a shortage of funds mand suspended all access to its website except for a form to submit new material. Material that was previously published was no longer available, although some could still be accessed on unofficial mirrors.Wikileaks stated on its website that it would resume full operation once the operational costs were covered.Wikileaks saw this as a kind of strike “to ensure that everyone who is involved stops normal work and actually spends time raising revenue”. While it was initially hoped that funds could be secured by 6 January 2010, it was only on 3 February 2010 that Wikileaks announced that its minimum fundraising goal had been achieved.
On 22 January 2010, PayPal suspended Wikileaks’ donation account and froze its assets. Wikileaks said that this had happened before, and was done for “no obvious reason”.The account was restored on 25 January 2010.
On May 18, 2010, Wikileaks announced that its website and archive were back up.
As of June 2010, Wikileaks was a finalist for a grant of more than half a million dollars from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation,but did not make the cut.Wikileaks commented, “Wikileaks was highest rated project in the Knight challenge, strongly recommended to the board but gets no funding. Go figure”. Wikileaks said that the Knight foundation announced the award to “’12 Grantees who will impact future of news’ – but not WikiLeaks” and questioned whether Knight foundation was “really looking for impact”.A spokesman of the Knight Foundation disputed parts of Wikileaks’ statement, saying “WikiLeaks was not recommended by Knight staff to the board.”
However, he declined to say whether Wikileaks was the project rated highest by the Knight advisory panel, which consists of non-staffers, among them journalist Jennifer 8. Lee, who has done PR work for Wikileaks with the press and on social networking sites.
On July 17, Jacob Appelbaum spoke on behalf of Wikileaks at the 2010 Hackers on Planet Earth conference in New York City, replacing Assange due to the presence of federal agents at the conference.He announced that the Wikileaks submission system was again up and running, after it had been temporarily suspended.Assange was a surprise speaker at a TED conference on 19 July 2010 in Oxford, and confirmed that Wikileaks was now accepting submissions again.
Administration
According to a January 2010 interview, the Wikileaks team then consisted of five people working full-time and about 800 people who worked occasionally, none of whom were compensated.[30] Wikileaks has no official headquarters. The expenses per year are about €200,000, mainly for servers and bureaucracy, but would reach €600,000 if work currently done by volunteers were paid for. Wikileaks does not pay for lawyers, as hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal support have been donated by media organisations such as the Associated Press, The Los Angeles Times, and the National Newspaper Publishers Association.Its only revenue stream is donations, but Wikileaks is planning to add an auction model to sell early access to documents.According to the Wau Holland Foundation, Wikileaks receives no money for personnel costs, only for hardware, travelling and bandwidth.An article in TechEYE.net wrote
As a charity accountable under German law, donations for Wikileaks can be made to the foundation. Funds are held in escrow and are given to Wikileaks after the whistleblower website files an application containing a statement with proof of payment. The foundation does not pay any sort of salary nor give any renumeration [sic] to Wikileaks’ personnel, corroborating the statement of the site’s German representative Daniel Schmitt on national television that all personnel works voluntarily, even its speakers.
Hosting
Wikileaks describes itself as “an uncensorable system for untraceable mass document leaking”. Wikileaks is hosted by PRQ, a Sweden-based company providing “highly secure, no-questions-asked hosting services.” PRQ is said to have “almost no information about its clientele and maintains few if any of its own logs.” PRQ is owned by Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij who, through their involvement in The Pirate Bay, have significant experience in withstanding legal challenges from authorities. Being hosted by PRQ makes it difficult to take Wikileaks offline. Furthermore, “Wikileaks maintains its own servers at undisclosed locations, keeps no logs and uses military-grade encryption to protect sources and other confidential information.” Such arrangements have been called “bulletproof hosting.”
Technology
The “about” page originally read: “To the user, Wikileaks will look very much like Wikipedia. Anybody can post to it, anybody can edit it. No technical knowledge is required. Leakers can post documents anonymously and untraceably. Users can publicly discuss documents and analyze their credibility and veracity. Users can discuss interpretations and context and collaboratively formulate collective publications. Users can read and write explanatory articles on leaks along with background material and context. The political relevance of documents and their verisimilitude will be revealed by a cast of thousands.”
However, Wikileaks established an editorial policy that accepted only documents that were “of political, diplomatic, historical or ethical interest”. This coincided with early criticism that having no editorial policy would drive out good material with spam and promote “automated or indiscriminate publication of confidential records.”It is no longer possible for anybody to post to it or edit it, as the original FAQ promised. Instead, submissions are regulated by an internal review process and some are published, while documents not fitting the editorial criteria are rejected by anonymous Wikileaks reviewers. By 2008, the revised FAQ stated that “Anybody can post comments to it. [...] Users can publicly discuss documents and analyze their credibility and veracity.”After the 2010 relaunch, posting new comments to leaks was not possible any more.
Wikileaks is based on several software packages, including MediaWiki, Freenet, Tor, and PGP.Wikileaks strongly encouraged postings via Tor due to the strong privacy needs of its users.
Police raid on German Wikileaks domain holder’s home
The home of Theodor Reppe, registrant of the German Wikileaks domain name, Wikileaks.de, was raided on 24 March 2009 after Wikileaks released the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) censorship blacklist.The site was not affected.
Chinese censorship
The Chinese government currently attempts to censor every web site with “wikileaks” in the URL, including the primary .org site and the regional variations .cn and .uk. However, the site is still accessible from behind the Chinese firewall through one of the many alternative names used by the project, such as “secure.sunshinepress.org”. The alternate sites change frequently, and Wikileaks encourages users to search “wikileaks cover names” outside mainland China for the latest alternative names. Mainland search engines, including Baidu and Yahoo, also censor references to “wikileaks”.
Potential future Australian censorship
Wikinews has related news: Portions of Wikileaks, Wikipedia blocked in Australia
On 16 March 2009, the Australian Communications and Media Authority added Wikileaks to their proposed blacklist of sites that will be blocked for all Australians if the mandatory internet filtering censorship scheme is implemented as planned.
Harassment and surveillance
According to The Times, Wikileaks and its members have complained about continuing harassment and surveillance by law enforcement and intelligence organizations, including extended detention, seizure of computers, veiled threats, “covert following and hidden photography.”
After the release of the 2007 airstrikes video and as they prepared to release film of the Granai massacre, Julian Assange has said that his group of volunteers came under intense surveillance. In an interview and Twitter posts he said that a restaurant in Reykjavik where his group of volunteers met came under surveillance in March; there was “covert following and hidden photography” by police and foreign intelligence services; that an apparent British intelligence agent made thinly veiled threats in a Luxembourg car park; and that one of the volunteers was detained by police for 21 hours. Another volunteer posted that computers were seized, saying “If anything happens to us, you know why … and you know who is responsible.”According to the Columbia Journalism Review, “the Icelandic press took a look at Assange’s charges of being surveilled in Iceland [...] and, at best, have found nothing to substantiate them.”
Wikileaks has claimed that Facebook deleted their fan page, which had 30,000 fans.
Verification of submissions
Wikinews has news on these topics:
* Huge interest takes Wikileaks offline
* Church of Scientology’s ‘Operating Thetan’ documents leaked online
* Wikileaks spokesperson discusses recent court case with Wikinews
* Representative for ACLU tells Wikinews their opinion on lifting of Wikileaks court injunction
* Wikileaks.org restored as injunction is lifted
* Wikileaks claims ‘abuse of process’ in court case that resulted in wikileaks.org being take offline
* Rights groups: Forcing Wikileaks.org offline raises ‘serious First Amendment concerns’
* ‘Wikileaks.org’ taken offline in many areas after fire, court injunction
Wikileaks states that it has never released a misattributed document. Documents are assessed before release. In response to concerns about the possibility of misleading or fraudulent leaks, Wikileaks has stated that misleading leaks “are already well-placed in the mainstream media.is of no additional assistance.”The FAQ states that: “The simplest and most effective countermeasure is a worldwide community of informed users and editors who can scrutinize and discuss leaked documents.”
According to statements by Assange in 2010, submitted documents are vetted by a group of five reviewers, with expertise in different fields such as language or programming, who also investigate the background of the leaker if his or her identity is known.In that group, Assange has the final decision about the assessment of a document.
Icelandic Modern Media Initiative
In August 2009 Kaupthing, a large bank, succeeded in obtaining a court order gagging Iceland’s national broadcaster, RUV, from broadcasting a risk analysis report showing the bank’s substantial exposure to debt default risk. This information had been leaked by a whistleblower to Wikileaks and remained available on the Wikileaks site. Citizens of Iceland felt outraged that RUV was prevented from broadcasting news of relevance.Therefore, Wikileaks has been credited with inspiring the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, a bill meant to reclaim Iceland’s 2007 Reporters Sans Frontieres ranking as first in the world for free speech. It aims to enact a range of protections for sources, journalists, and publishers.Birgitta Jónsdóttir, a member of both Wikileaks and the Icelandic parliament, helped with passage of the bill.
Notable leaks
Pre-2009
Apparent Somali assassination order
Wikileaks posted its first document in December 2006, a decision to assassinate government officials signed by Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys.The New Yorker has reported that. Assange and the others were uncertain of its authenticity, but they thought that readers, using Wikipedia-like features of the site, would help analyze it. They published the decision with a lengthy commentary, which asked, “Is it a bold manifesto by a flamboyant Islamic militant with links to Bin Laden? Or is it a clever smear by US intelligence, designed to discredit the Union, fracture Somali alliances and manipulate China?” … The document’s authenticity was never determined, and news about WikiLeaks quickly superseded the leak itself.
The document was covertly acquired by tapping into the Tor network, which was being used by other hackers in China to gather information on foreign governments.
Daniel arap Moi family corruption
On 31 August 2007, The Guardian (Britain) featured on its front page a story about corruption by the family of the former Kenyan leader Daniel arap Moi. The newspaper stated that the source of the information was Wikileaks.
Bank Julius Baer lawsuit
Main article: Bank Julius Baer vs. Wikileaks lawsuit
In February 2008, the Wikileaks.org domain name was taken offline after the Swiss Bank Julius Baer sued Wikileaks and the wikileaks.org domain registrar, Dynadot, in a court in California, United States, and obtained a permanent injunction ordering the shutdown.Wikileaks had hosted allegations of illegal activities at the bank’s Cayman Island branch.Wikileaks’ U.S. Registrar, Dynadot, complied with the order by removing its DNS entries. However, the website remained accessible via its numeric IP address, and online activists immediately mirrored Wikileaks at dozens of alternate websites worldwide.
The American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a motion protesting the censorship of Wikileaks. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press assembled a coalition of media and press that filed an amicus curiae brief on Wikileaks’ behalf. The coalition included major U.S. newspaper publishers and press organisations, such as: the American Society of Newspaper Editors, The Associated Press, the Citizen Media Law Project, The E.W. Scripps Company, the Gannett Company, The Hearst Corporation, the Los Angeles Times, the National Newspaper Publishers Association, the Newspaper Association of America, The Radio-Television News Directors Association, and The Society of Professional Journalists. The coalition requested to be heard as a friend of the court to call attention to relevant points of law that it believed the court had overlooked (on the grounds that Wikileaks had not appeared in court to defend itself, and that no First Amendment issues had yet been raised before the court). Amongst other things, the coalition argued that:
“Wikileaks provides a forum for dissidents and whistleblowers across the globe to post documents, but the Dynadot injunction imposes a prior restraint that drastically curtails access to Wikileaks from the Internet based on a limited number of postings challenged by Plaintiffs. The Dynadot injunction therefore violates the bedrock principle that an injunction cannot enjoin all communication by a publisher or other speaker.”
The same judge, Judge Jeffrey White, who issued the injunction vacated it on 29 February 2008, citing First Amendment concerns and questions about legal jurisdiction.Wikileaks was thus able to bring its site online again. The bank dropped the case on 5 March 2008.The judge also denied the bank’s request for an order prohibiting the website’s publication.
The Executive Director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Lucy Dalglish, commented:
“It’s not very often a federal judge does a 180 degree turn in a case and dissolves an order. But we’re very pleased the judge recognized the constitutional implications in this prior restraint.”
Guantánamo Bay procedures
A copy of Standard Operating Procedures for Camp Delta–the protocol of the U.S. Army at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp–dated March 2003 was released on the Wikileaks website on 7 November 2007.The document, named “gitmo-sop.pdf”, is also mirrored at The Guardian. Its release revealed some of the restrictions placed over detainees at the camp, including the designation of some prisoners as off-limits to the International Committee of the Red Cross, something that the U.S. military had in the past repeatedly denied.
On 3 December 2007, Wikileaks released a copy of the 2004 edition of the manual, together with a detailed analysis of the changes.
Scientology
On 7 April 2008, Wikileaks reported receiving a letter (dated 27 March) from the Religious Technology Centre claiming ownership of several recently leaked documents pertaining to OT Levels within the Church of Scientology. These same documents were at the centre of a 1994 scandal. The email stated:
“ The Advanced Technology materials are unpublished, copyrighted works. Please be advised that your customer’s action in this regard violates United States copyright law. Accordingly, we ask for your help in removing these works immediately from your service.
Moxon and Kobrin
”
The letter continued on to request the release of the logs of the uploader, which would remove their anonymity. Wikileaks responded with a statement released on Wikinews stating: “in response to the attempted suppression, Wikileaks will release several thousand additional pages of Scientology material next week”,and did so.
In September 2008, during the 2008 United States presidential election campaigns, the contents of a Yahoo account belonging to Sarah Palin (the running mate of Republican presidential nominee John McCain) were posted on Wikileaks after being hacked into by members of Anonymous.[86] The contents of the mailbox seemed to suggest that she used the private Yahoo account to send work-related messages in order to evade public record laws.[87] The hacking of the account was widely reported in mainstream news outlets.[88][89][90] Although Wikileaks was able to conceal the hacker’s identity, the source of the Palin emails was eventually publicly identified in another way as being David Kernell, a 20-year-old economics student at the University of Tennessee and the son of Democratic Tennessee State Representative Mike Kernell from Memphis.Kernell attempted to conceal his identity by using the anonymous proxy service ctunnel.com, but, because of the illegal nature of the access, ctunnel website administrator Gabriel Ramuglia assisted the FBI in tracking down the source of the hack.
BNP membership list
After briefly appearing on a blog, the membership list of the far-right British National Party was posted to Wikileaks on 18 November 2008. The name, address, age and occupation of many of the 13,500 members were given, including several police officers, two solicitors, four ministers of religion, at least one doctor, and a number of primary and secondary school teachers. In Britain, police officers are banned from joining or promoting the BNP, and at least one officer was dismissed for being a member.The BNP was known for going to considerable lengths to conceal the identities of members. On 19 November, BNP leader Nick Griffin stated that he knew the identity of the person who initially leaked the list on 17 November, describing him as a “hardliner” senior employee who left the party in 2007.On 20 October 2009, a list of BNP members from April 2009 was leaked. This list contained 11,811 members.
2009
In January 2009, over 600 internal United Nations reports (60 of them marked “strictly confidential”) were leaked.
On 7 February 2009, Wikileaks released 6,780 Congressional Research Service reports.
In March 2009, Wikileaks published a list of contributors to the Norm Coleman senatorial campaign[101] and a set of documents belonging to Barclays Bank that had been ordered removed from the website of The Guardian.
Climatic Research Unit emails
Main article: Climatic Research Unit email controversy
In November 2009, controversial documents, including e-mail correspondence between climate scientists, were leaked from the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia to various sites; one prominent host of the full 120MB archive was Wikileaks.
Internet censorship lists
Wikileaks has published the lists of forbidden or illegal web addresses for several countries.
On 19 March 2009, Wikileaks published what was alleged to be the Australian Communications and Media Authority’s blacklist of sites to be banned under Australia’s proposed laws on Internet censorship.[106] Reactions to the publication of the list by the Australian media and politicians were varied. Particular note was made by journalistic outlets of the type of websites on the list; while the Internet censorship scheme submitted by the Australian Labor Party in 2008 was proposed with the stated intention of preventing access to child pornography and sites related to terrorism,the list leaked on Wikileaks contains a number of sites unrelated to sex crimes involving minors.When questioned about the leak, Stephen Conroy, the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy in Australia’s Rudd Labor Government, responded by claiming that the list was not the actual list, yet threatening to prosecute anyone involved in distributing it. On 20 March 2009, Wikileaks published an updated list, dated 18 March 2009; it more closely matches the claimed size of the ACMA blacklist, and contains two pages which have been independently confirmed to be blacklisted by ACMA.
Wikileaks also contains details of Internet censorship in Thailand, including lists of censored sites dating back to May 2006.
A civil case against the West Australian Police for human rights violation is currently before the Supreme Court. The plaintiff is a whistleblower (a victim of Active-Profiling who was drugged by The West Australian Police Force) who attempted to leak the details to Wikileaks. Prior to this, the plaintiff could access the secure site, but when he returned a couple days later with the leaked report, access to the secure site was blocked. Access was also denied from the local library. The plaintiff lives in Bunbury, West Australia area code 6233.
Bilderberg Group meeting reports
Since May 2009, Wikileaks has made available reports of several meetings of the Bilderberg Group.It includes the group’s history and meeting reports from the years 1955, 1956, 1957, 1958, 1960, 1962, 1963 and 1980.
2008 Peru oil scandal
On 28 January 2009, Wikileaks released 86 telephone intercept recordings of Peruvian politicians and businessmen involved in the “Petrogate” oil scandal. The release of the tapes led the front pages of five Peruvian newspapers.
Toxic dumping in Africa: The Minton report
In September 2006, commodities giant Trafigura commissioned an internal report about a toxic dumping incident in the Ivory Coast, which (according to the United Nations) affected 108,000 people. The document, called the Minton Report, names various harmful chemicals “likely to be present” in the waste — sodium hydroxide, cobalt phthalocyanine sulfonate, coker naphtha, thiols, sodium alkanethiolate, sodium hydrosulfide, sodium sulfide, dialkyl disulfides, hydrogen sulfide — and notes that some of them “may cause harm at some distance”. The report states that potential health effects include “burns to the skin, eyes and lungs, vomiting, diarrhea, loss of consciousness and death”, and suggests that the high number of reported casualties is “consistent with there having been a significant release of hydrogen sulphide gas”.
On September 11, 2009, Trafigura’s lawyers, Carter-Ruck, obtained a secret “super-injunction”against The Guardian, banning that newspaper from publishing the contents of the document. Trafigura also threatened a number of other media organizations with legal action if they published the report’s contents, including the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation and The Chemical Engineer magazine.On 14 September 2009, Wikileaks posted the report.
On 12 October, Carter-Ruck warned The Guardian against mentioning the content of a parliamentary question that was due to be asked about the report. Instead, the paper published an article stating that they were unable to report on an unspecified question and claiming that the situation appeared to “call into question privileges guaranteeing free speech established under the 1689 Bill of Rights”. The suppressed details rapidly circulated via the internet and Twitter and, amid uproar, Carter-Ruck agreed the next day to the modification of the injunction before it was challenged in court, permitting The Guardian to reveal the existence of the question and the injunction.The injunction was lifted on 16 October.
Kaupthing Bank
Wikileaks has made available an internal document[125] from Kaupthing Bank from just prior to the collapse of Iceland’s banking sector, which led to the 2008–2009 Icelandic financial crisis. The document shows that suspiciously large sums of money were loaned to various owners of the bank, and large debts written off. Kaupthing’s lawyers have threatened Wikileaks with legal action, citing banking privacy laws. The leak has caused an uproar in Iceland.Criminal charges relating to the multibillion euro loans to Exista and other major shareholders are being investigated. The bank is seeking to recover loans taken out by former bank employees before its collapse.
9/11 pager messages
On 25 November 2009, Wikileaks released 570,000 intercepts of pager messages from the day of the September 11 attacks.[128] Among the released messages are communications between Pentagon officials and New York City Police Department.Bradley Manning (see below) commented that those were obvious NSA intercepts.
2010
U.S. Intelligence report on Wikileaks
On 15 March 2010, Wikileaks released a secret 32-page U.S. Department of Defense Counterintelligence Analysis Report from March 2008. The document described some prominent reports leaked on the website which related to U.S. security interests and described potential methods of marginalizing the organization. Wikileaks editor Julian Assange said that some details in the Army report were inaccurate and its recommendations flawed, and also that the concerns of the US Army raised by the report were hypothetical.The report discussed deterring potential whistleblowers via termination of employment and criminal prosecution of any existing or former insiders, leakers or whistleblowers. Reasons for the attack include notable leaks such as U.S. equipment expenditure, human rights violations in Guantanamo Bay and the battle over the Iraqi town of Fallujah.
Baghdad airstrike video
On 5 April 2010, Wikileaks released classified U.S. military footage from a series of attacks on 12 July 2007 in Baghdad by a U.S. helicopter that killed 12, including two Reuters news staff, Saeed Chmagh and Namir Noor-Eldeen, on a website called “Collateral Murder”. The footage consisted of a 39-minute unedited version and an 18-minute version which had been edited and annotated. Analysis of the video indicates that one man was thought to have been carrying an AK-47 assault rifle and another an RPG (rocket propelled grenade), though “none were assuming a hostile posture.”
The military conducted an “informal” investigation into the incident, but has yet to release the investigative materials (such as the sworn statements of the soldiers involved or the battle damage assessment) that were used, causing the report to be criticized as “sloppy.”
In the week following the release, “Wikileaks” was the search term with the most significant growth worldwide in the last seven days as measured by Google Insights.
Arrest of Bradley Manning
A 22-year-old US Army intelligence analyst, PFC (formerly SPC) Bradley Manning has been arrested after alleged chat logs were turned in to the authorities by former hacker Adrian Lamo, in whom he had confided. Manning reportedly told Lamo he had leaked the “Collateral Murder” video, in addition to a video of the Granai airstrike and around 260,000 diplomatic cables, to Wikileaks.Wikileaks said “allegations in Wired that we have been sent 260,000 classified US embassy cables are, as far as we can tell, incorrect.”[136] Wikileaks have said that they are unable as yet to confirm whether or not Manning was actually the source of the video, stating “we never collect personal information on our sources”, but that they have nonetheless “taken steps to arrange for his protection and legal defence.”On June 21, Julian Assange told The Guardian that WikiLeaks had hired three US criminal lawyers to defend Manning but that they had not been given access to him.
Manning reportedly wrote, “Everywhere there’s a U.S. post, there’s a diplomatic scandal that will be revealed.”According to the Washington Post, he also described the cables as, “explaining how the first world exploits the third, in detail, from an internal perspective.”
Afghanistan War Logs
In July 2010, Wikileaks released to The Guardian, The New York Times, and Der Spiegel over 92,000 documents related to the war in Afghanistan between 2004 and the end of 2009. The logs detail individual incidents including friendly fire and civilian casualties.The scale of leak was described by Julian Assange as comparable to that of the Pentagon Papers in the 1970s. On July 25, 2010, the logs were released to the public.
Upcoming
Wikileaks have said they have video footage of a massacre of civilians in Afghanistan by the US military, perhaps the Granai massacre, which they are preparing to release shortly.
In an interview with Chris Anderson on July 19, Assange said that Wikileaks were “getting an enormous quantity of whistle-blower disclosures of high caliber” including much material relating to the 2010 BP oil spill, but that they have not been able to verify and release the material because they do not have enough volunteer journalists.
Criticism
The Australia Defence Association (ADA) stated that Wikileaks’ Julian Assange “could have committed a serious criminal offence in helping an enemy of the Australian Defence Force (ADF).”Neil James the executive director of ADA states: “Put bluntly, Wikileaks is not authorised in international or Australian law, nor equipped morally or operationally, to judge whether open publication of such material risks the safety, security, morale and legitimate objectives of Australian and allied troops fighting in a UN-endorsed military operation.”
Wikileaks’ recent leaking of classified US intelligence has been described by commentator of The Wall Street Journal as having “endangered the lives” of Afghan informants” and “the dozens of Afghan civilians named in the document dump as U.S. military informants. Their lives, as well as those of their entire families, are now at terrible risk of Taliban reprisal.”[147] When interviewed, Assange stated that Wikileaks has withheld some 15,000 documents that identify informants to avoid putting their lives at risk. Greg Gutfeld of Fox News described the leaking as “WikiLeaks’ Crusade Against the U.S. Military.”
A bit of bad luck has befallen Ekpe Udoh, the 6-foot-10 fuel forward out of Baylor, who was drafted 6th overall in the 2010 NBA Draft by the Golden State Warriors.
Udoh injured his wrist while working out amidst teammate Stephen Curry and Summer League teammate, Joe Ingles.
At the time, the extent of the injury was not clear, but now according to a sum of reports, Udoh just now underwent surgery to repair a torn wrist ligament suffered in the workout and will miss six months.
According to Marcus Thompson II of the Contra Costa Times, “His wrist will be immobilized for 10 weeks, followed by rehabilitation.”
Ouch.
For the 23-year-old forward, who recently signed his rookie contract with the team, Udoh’s injury will not have come at a worse time, not clearly for the rookie, which goes without saying, but also for the team.
With fellow gas forward, Brandan Wright and center, Andris Biedrins, rehabilitating their own injuries, it was thought such a Udoh could provide enduring front court minutes for the Warriors.
Now Golden State will have to wait until at least January for its 2010 primarily round pick to bring in his debut.
The FIFA World Cup (also referred to as the Football World Cup, the Soccer World Cup, or simply the World Cup) is an worldwide association football competition contested by the senior men’s national teams of the realtors of Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the sport’s global governing body. The championship has been awarded every four years since the earliest tournament in 1930, except in 1942 and 1946 when it was not held because of the Second World War.
The current format of the tournament involves 32 teams contending for the title at venues within the duration of the host nation(s) over a cycle of about a month – this stage is often dubbed the World Cup Finals. A qualification phase, which currently takes place over the preceding 3 years, is used to determine that teams qualify for the tournament together with the host nation(s).
The 18 tournaments that experience been concluded have been won by seven weird national teams. Brazil have won the World Cup a record five times, and properties are the only team to have played in every tournament. Italy have won four titles, and Germany are coming up surrounded by three titles. The other former champions are Uruguay, winners of the inaugural tournament, and Argentina, surrounded by two titles each. England and France have won a single title each, both at home, while Spain or the Netherlands will win the first World Cup in South Africa, that will in addition be the first win for a European team in a finals tournament held outside of Europe.
The World Cup is the world’s most widely viewed sporting event; an estimated 715.1 million people watched the final match of the 2006 World Cup held in Germany.[1] The latest World Cup is being held in South Africa from 11 June to 11 July 2010, and the 2014 World Cup should be held in Brazil.
Previous international competitions
The world’s first international football equate was a challenge match played in Glasgow in 1872 between Scotland and England,with the first international tournament, the inaugural edition of the British Home Championship, taking place in 1884.At this stage the sport was rarely played outside the United Kingdom. As football grew in popularity in other parts of the world at the turn of the century, it was held as a demonstration sport with no medals awarded at the 1900 and 1904 Summer Olympics (however, the IOC has retroactively upgraded their status to official events), and at the 1906 Intercalated Games.
After FIFA was founded in 1904, it tried to arrange an international football tournament between nations outside the Olympic framework in Switzerland in 1906. These were very early days for international football, and the official history of FIFA describes the competition as having been a failure.
At the 1908 Summer Olympics in London, football became an official competition. Planned by The Football Association (FA), England’s football governing body, the event was for amateur players only and was regarded suspiciously as a show rather than a competition. Great Britain (represented by the England national amateur football team) won the gold medals. They repeated the feat in 1912 in Stockholm, where the tournament was organised by the Swedish Football Association.
With the Olympic event continuous to be contested only between amateur teams, Sir Thomas Lipton organised the Sir Thomas Lipton Trophy tournament in Turin in 1909. The Lipton tournament was a championship between precise clubs (not national teams) from different nations, each one of that represented an entire nation. The competition is sometimes described as The First World Cup,and featured the a multitude of prestigious professional club sides from Italy, Germany and Switzerland, but the FA of England refused to be associated with the competition and declined the end up with to send a professional team. Lipton invited West Auckland, an amateur portion from County Durham, to speak for England instead. West Auckland won the tournament and returned in 1911 to successfully defend their title. They were considering the trophy to stay forever, as per the rules of the competition.
In 1914, FIFA agreed to recognise the Olympic tournament as a “world football championship for amateurs”, and took responsibility for managing the event.This paved the way for the world’s first foreign football competition, at the 1920 Summer Olympics, disproved by Egypt and thirteen European teams, and won by Belgium.Uruguay won the approaching two Olympic football tournaments in 1924 and 1928.
Estadio Centenario, the location of the first World Cup final in 1930 in Montevideo, Uruguay
Due to the deed of the Olympic football tournaments, FIFA, through President Jules Rimet the driving force, again began looking at staging its own international tournament outside of the Olympics. On 28 May 1928, the FIFA Congress in Amsterdam reached the conclusion to stage a world championship organised by FIFA. With Uruguay now two-time official football world champions (as 1924 was the start of FIFA’s proficient era) and to celebrate their centenary of independence in 1930, FIFA named Uruguay as the host earth of the inaugural World Cup tournament.
The national associations of selected nations were invited to send a team, but the choice of Uruguay as a venue for the competition meant a long and pricey trip across the Atlantic Ocean for European sides. Indeed, no European country pledged to send a team until two months before the start of the competition. Rimet eventually persuaded teams based on what i read in Belgium, France, Romania, and Yugoslavia to cause the trip. In total thirteen nations took part: seven from South America, four from Europe and two from what i read in North America.
The first two World Cup matches took place simultaneously on 13 July 1930, and were won by France and USA, who defeated Mexico 4–1 and Belgium 3–0 respectively. The first task in World Cup history was scored by Lucien Laurent of France.[10] In the final, Uruguay defeated Argentina 4–2 in front of a crowd of 93,000 people in Montevideo, and in working at so became the first world to win the World Cup.
World Cups before World War II
After the creation of the World Cup, the 1932 Summer Olympics, held in Los Angeles, did not rules to include football as part of the schedule due to the low popularity of the sport in the United States, as American football had been growing in popularity. FIFA and the IOC also disagreed over the status of amateur players, and so football was moderated out of the Games.Olympic football returned at the 1936 Summer Olympics, but was now overshadowed by the more prestigious World Cup.
The issues facing the early World Cup tournaments got the issues of intercontinental travel, and war. Few South American teams got prepared to travel to Europe for the 1934 and 1938 tournaments, with Brazil the only South American collection to compete in both. The 1942 and 1946 competitions were cancelled due to World War II and its aftermath.
World Cups after World War II
The 1950 World Cup, held in Brazil, was the first to include British participants. British teams withdrew based on data from FIFA in 1920, partly out of unwillingness to play against the countries they had been at war with, and partly as a protest against foreign influence on football,[13] but rejoined in 1946 following FIFA’s invitation.[14] The tournament too saw the return of 1930 champions Uruguay, who had boycotted the earliest two World Cups. Uruguay won the tournament once again in the wake of defeating the host nation Brazil in one of the most famous matches in World Cup history, which was later called the “Maracanazo” (Portuguese: Maracanaço).
Map of countries’ best results
In the tournaments between 1934 and 1978, 16 teams competed in every tournament, except in 1938, when Austria was absorbed into Germany after qualifying, quitting the tournament with 15 teams, and in 1950, when India, Scotland and Turkey withdrew, quitting the tournament with 13 teams.[15] Most of the participating nations were based on what i read in Europe and South America, in on a minute minority from North America, Africa, Asia and Oceania. These teams were usually defeated easily by the European and South American teams. Until 1982, the only teams from outside Europe and South America to advance out of the first round were: USA, semi-finalists in 1930; Cuba, quarter-finalists in 1938; Korea DPR, quarter-finalists in 1966; and Mexico, quarter-finalists in 1970.
Expansion to 32 teams
The tournament was expanded to 24 teams in 1982,[16] and then to 32 in 1998,allowing more teams of Africa, Asia and North America to take part. In recent years, teams out of these regions own enjoyed more success, and folks who have obtained the quarter-finals include: Mexico, quarter-finalists in 1986; Cameroon, quarter-finalists in 1990; Korea Republic, finishing in fourth place in 2002; Senegal, along with USA, both quarter-finalists in 2002; and Ghana as quarter-finalists in 2010. Nevertheless, European and South American teams continue to dominate, e.g., the quarter-finalists in 1998 and 2006 were all for Europe or South America.
Two hundred teams entered the 2002 FIFA World Cup qualification rounds; 198 nations attempted to qualify for the 2006 FIFA World Cup, additonally a record 204 countries entered qualification for the 2010 FIFA World Cup.
Other FIFA tournaments
An equivalent tournament for women’s football, the FIFA Women’s World Cup, was first held in 1991 in the People’s Republic of China.[19] The women’s tournament is smaller in scale and profile than the men’s, but is growing; the number of entrants for the 2007 tournament was 120, more than double that of 1991.
Football has continued included in every Summer Olympic Games except 1896 and 1932. Unlike many other sports, the men’s football tournament at the Olympics is not a top-level tournament, and since 1992, an under-23 tournament with each team allowed three over-age players.Women’s football made its Olympic debut in 1996, and is proven false between full national sides with no age restrictions.
The FIFA Confederations Cup is a tournament held one year before the World Cup at the World Cup host nation(s) as a dress-rehearsal for the upcoming World Cup. It is contested by the winners of every of the six FIFA confederation championships, along with the FIFA World Cup champion and the host country.
FIFA also organises global tournaments for youth football (FIFA U-20 World Cup, FIFA U-17 World Cup, FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup, FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup), club football (FIFA Club World Cup), and football variants such as futsal (FIFA Futsal World Cup) and beach soccer (FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup)..
Trophy
From 1930 to 1970, the Jules Rimet Trophy was awarded to the World Cup winner. It was originally simply known as the World Cup or Coupe du Monde, but in 1946 it was renamed after the FIFA president Jules Rimet who set up the earliest tournament. In 1970, Brazil’s third victory in the tournament privy them to keep the trophy permanently. However, the trophy was stolen in 1983, and has never been recovered, apparently melted down by the thieves.
After 1970, a new trophy, known as the FIFA World Cup Trophy, was designed. The professionals of FIFA, next from seven multitude of countries, evaluated the 53 presented models, at length opting for the work of the Italian designer Silvio Gazzaniga. The new trophy is 36 cm (14.2 in) high, made of solid 18 carat (75%) gold and weighs 6.175 kg (13.6 lb). The base contains two layers of semi-precious malachite while the foot side of the trophy bears the engraved year and name of each FIFA World Cup winner since 1974. The description of the trophy by Gazzaniga was: “The lines spring out from the base, rising in spirals, stretching out to receive the world. From the remarkable dynamic tensions of the compact person of the sculpture inflate the figures of two athletes at the stirring second of victory.
This new trophy is not awarded to the thriving nation permanently. World Cup winners retain the trophy until the coming up tournament and are awarded a gold-plated replica rather as opposed to the solid gold original.
At the present, all workforces (players and coaches) of the top three teams receive winners’ (gold), runner-ups’ (silver), and third-place medals (bronze). Prior to the 1978 tournament, medals were merely awarded to the eleven players on the pitch at the end of the final and the third-place match. In November 2007, FIFA announced which all workers of World Cup-winning squads between 1930 and 1974 were to be retroactively awarded winners’ medals.
Format
Since the second World Cup in 1934, qualifying tournaments have been heard apprehended to thin the field for the concluding tournament.They are held through the six FIFA continental zones (Africa, Asia, North and Central America and Caribbean, South America, Oceania, and Europe), overseen by their respective confederations. For every tournament, FIFA decides the number of units awarded to each of the continental zones beforehand, generally established on the relative strength of the confederations’ teams.
The qualification procedure can start as the first part of as nearly 3 years before the final tournament and last within the duration of a two-year period. The formats of the qualification tournaments vary between confederations. Usually, one or two real estate are awarded to winners of foreign play-offs. For example, the winner of the Oceanian zone and the fifth-placed committe from the Asian zone entered a play-off for a spot in the 2010 World Cup. From the 1938 World Cup onwards, host nations obtained automatic qualification to the final tournament. This right was also granted to the defending champions between 1938 and 2002, but was withdrawn from the 2006 FIFA World Cup onward, requiring the champions to qualify. Brazil, winners in 2002, got the mainly defending champions to play in a qualifying match.
Final tournament
For the many formats used in previous tournaments, see History of the FIFA World Cup#Format of each ultimate tournament.
The current ultimate tournament features 32 countrywide teams contending over a month in the host nation(s). There are two stages: the group step tracked by the knockout stage.
In the group stage, teams compete within eight groups of four teams each. Eight teams are seeded, including the hosts, through the other seeded teams selected using a formula based on the FIFA World Rankings and/or performances in recent World Cups, and drawn to separate groups.The other teams are assigned to different “pots”, usually based on geographical criteria, and teams in every pot are drawn at random to the eight groups. Since 1998, constraints suffer been applied to the allure to ensure that no group contains greater number of as opposed to two European teams or a good deal more than one team from any further confederation.
Each group plays a round-robin tournament, in which each team is scheduled for three matches against other teams in the same group. The go on round of matches of each team is scheduled at the same time to preserve fairness among all four teams.The top two teams from each group advance to the knockout stage. Points are used to rank the teams within a group. Since 1994, 3 points have been awarded for a win, one for a appeal to and none for a reduction (before, winners received two points).
The ranking of each bunch in each group is determined as follows:
1. Greatest number of points in assembly matches
2. Greatest goal difference in group matches
3. Greatest number of goals scored in commission matches
4. If more than one team remain level after applying the above criteria, their ranking will be determined as follows:
1. Greatest number of points in head-to-head matches among those teams
2. Greatest intention difference in head-to-head matches among people teams
3. Greatest number of goals scored in head-to-head matches surrounded by persons teams
5. If any of the teams above continue rate after applying the above criteria, their ranking will be determined by the drawing of lots
The knockout evolution is a single-elimination tournament in that teams play each other in one-off matches, with supplementary time and penalty shootouts used to decide the winner if necessary. It begins with the “eigth-finals” (aka “round of 16″ or the time round) in which the winner of each team plays against the runner-up of another group. This is followed by the quarter-finals, the semi-finals, the third-place match (contested by the losing semi-finalists), and the final.
Hosts
Early World Cups were given to countries at meetings of FIFA’s congress. The choice of location gave appreciation to controversies, a consequence of the three-week boat journey between South America and Europe, the two centres of strength in football. The decision to hold the first World Cup in Uruguay, for example, led to sole four European nations competing.The next two World Cups got both held in Europe. The decision to have the second of these, the 1938 FIFA World Cup, in France was controversial, as the American countries had continued led to understand that the World Cup can rotate between the two continents. Both Argentina and Uruguay thus boycotted the tournament.
Since the 1958 FIFA World Cup, to avoid times ahead boycotts or controversy, FIFA began a pattern of alternating the hosts between the Americas and Europe, that kept on until the 1998 FIFA World Cup. The 2002 FIFA World Cup, hosted jointly by South Korea and Japan, was the first one seized in Asia, and the only tournament with multiple hosts. South Africa became the first African nation to host the World Cup in 2010. The 2014 FIFA World Cup plans to be hosted by Brazil, the first held in South America from the time of 1978, and will be the primarily occasion at which consecutive World Cups are held outside Europe.
2022 World Cups
The host country is now specific in a vote by FIFA’s Executive Committee. This is wrapped up under a single transferable vote system. The national football association of a globe desiring to host the event receives a “Hosting Agreement” from FIFA, which explains the steps and requirements that are expected from a firm bid. The bidding establishment also receives a form, the submission of which represents the official confirmation of the candidacy. After this, a FIFA designated group of inspectors visit the country to identify that the country meets the requirements needed to host the event and a projection on the country is produced. The decision on who will host the World Cup is usually made six or seven years in advance of the tournament. However, there have been occasions at which the hosts of a large amount of coming years tournaments got announced at the same time, as will be the case for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.
For the 2010 and 2014 World Cups, the final tournament is rotated between confederations, allowing simply countries out of the selected confederation (Africa in 2010, South America in 2014) to bid to host the tournament. The rotation policy was introduced after the controversy surrounding Germany’s victory over South Africa in the vote to host the 2006 tournament. However, the policy of continental rotation will not continue past 2014, so any country, not including those belonging to confederations that hosted the two preceding tournaments, can apply as hosts for World Cups starting from 2018.This is partly to avoid a similar scenario to the bidding approach for the 2014 tournament, where Brazil was the only official bidder.
Performances
See also: Results of host nations in the FIFA World Cup
Six of the seven champions have won one of such a titles additonally playing in the own homeland, the exception being Brazil, who ended as runners-up subsequent to losing the deciding match on home soil in 1950. England (1966) and France (1998) won their merely titles while trifling as host nations. Uruguay (1930), Italy (1934) and Argentina (1978) won their first titles as host nations but suffer gone on to win again, while Germany (1974) won their time title on residential structure soil.
Other nations have additionally carried on successful when hosting the tournament. Sweden (runners-up in 1958), Chile (third place in 1962), Korea Republic (fourth place in 2002), and Mexico (quarter-finals in 1970 and 1986) all have their best possible outcome when serving as hosts. So far, South Africa (2010) was the only host nation to fail to advance beyond the first and foremost round.
Organisation and media coverage
The World Cup was first televised in 1954 and is now the most widely viewed and trailed sporting event in the world, exceeding even the Olympic Games. The cumulative audience of all matches of the 2006 World Cup is predicted to be 26.29 billion. 715.1 million lendees watched the final match of this tournament (a ninth of the entire population of the planet). The 2006 World Cup draw, that decided the distribution of teams into groups, was watched by 300 million viewers.
Each FIFA World Cup since 1966 has its own mascot or logo. World Cup Willie, the mascot for the 1966 competition, was the first World Cup mascot.[42] Recent World Cups have furthermore featured official meet balls specially intended for each World Cup.
Records
Two players share the key in for playing in the a good number of World Cups; Mexico’s Antonio Carbajal (1950–1966) and Germany’s Lothar Matthäus (1982–1998) both played in five tournaments.Matthäus has played the most World Cup matches overall, amongst 25 appearances.Brazil’s Pelé is the only player to undergo won 3 World Cup winners’ medals (1958, 1962, and 1970),[56] with 20 other players who have won two World Cup medals.Germany’s Franz Beckenbauer (1966-74) is the only player to be named to three Finals All-Star Teams, and is also the only player to collect all three sorts of medals (gold, silver, bronze).
The overall top goalscorer in World Cups is Brazil’s Ronaldo, scorer of 15 goals (1998–2006). Germany’s Miroslav Klose (2002–2010) and Gerd Müller (1970–1974) are second, amid 14 goals.[58] The fourth placed goalscorer, France’s Just Fontaine, holds the record for the most goals scored in a single World Cup, as all his 13 goals were scored in the 1958 tournament.
Brazil’s Mário Zagallo and Germany’s Franz Beckenbauer are the only those of us to date to win the World Cup as both player and operated coach. Zagallo won in 1958 and 1962 as a player and in 1970 as head coach.[60] Beckenbauer won in 1974 as captain and in 1990 as head coach.Italy’s Vittorio Pozzo is the easily head coach to ever win two World Cups (1934 and 1938).All World Cup winning head coaches were natives of the country properties coached to victory.
Among the national teams, Germany have played the numerous World Cup matches, with 99[63], while Brazil have scored the most World Cup goals, with 210.[64] The two teams hold played each other only after in the World Cup, in the 2002 final.
Ten players experience been short-listed for the Golden Ball as top player at the World Cup. Chances are it will come lowered to Wesley Sneijder of the Netherlands and Xavi Hernandez of Spain. The 5-7 midfielders are towering figures today in the uppermost game of their lives.
Xavi, whose corner kick set up Carles Puyol’s lucrative header in the 1-0 semifinal win for the duration of Germany, personifies Spain’s patient, high- purchase offense. No player at the World Cup has passed additionally often or wrapped up more passes. He has yet to score, but the Spanish attack flows with him.
Sneijder has been more spectacular. His five goals are linked for tops in the tournament, and they include game-winners against Japan in the first round, Slovakia in the second sweet and Brazil in the quarterfinals. He was voted man of the match for the 3-2 semifinal win over Uruguay, as Xavi was for Spain in the victory through Germany.
Having spent three seasons providing Real Madrid, Sneijder is a familiar foil for Xavi and Spain’s other Barcelona-based players. He left before last season for Inter Milan, where he won the Italian league and cup championships as good as the European Champions League, helping knock off Barcelona along the way. He would become the primarily player to celebrate league, domestic cup, European and World Cup titles in the same year.
Sneijder and Xavi rather still personify what we have seen from their teams in South Africa. Xavi is all grace, skill and efficiency; Sneijder is cunning, surprise and opportunism. Xavi has designed frequent patches of brilliance but can’t match Sneijder when it comes to thrills.
Against Brazil, Sneijder delivered a cross based on information from the right side that eluded goalkeeper Julio Cesar, whose path was blocked by teammate Felipe Melo, and sailed into the net. Three minutes later, he scored what he claimed was the first went goal of his life.
Today, the two difference- makers meet with a chance for each to put his imprint on this World Cup. More than one trophy may be at stake.
The FIFA World Cup (also called the Football World Cup, the Soccer World Cup, or simply the World Cup) is an international association football competition contested by the senior men’s national teams of the members of Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the sport’s global governing body. The championship has been awarded every four years since the first tournament in 1930, except in 1942 and 1946 when it was not held because of the Second World War.
The current format of the tournament involves 32 teams competing for the title at venues within the host nation(s) over a period of about a month – this phase is often called the World Cup Finals. A qualification phase, which currently takes place over the preceding three years, is used to determine which teams qualify for the tournament together with the host nation(s).
The 18 tournaments that have been concluded have been won by seven different national teams. Brazil have won the World Cup a record five times, and they are the only team to have played in every tournament. Italy have won four titles, and Germany are next with three titles. The other former champions are Uruguay, winners of the inaugural tournament, and Argentina, with two titles each. England and France have won a single title each, both at home, while Spain or the Netherlands will win their first World Cup in South Africa, which will also be the first win for a European team in a finals tournament held outside of Europe.
The World Cup is the world’s most widely viewed sporting event; an estimated 715.1 million people watched the final match of the 2006 World Cup held in Germany.[1] The current World Cup is being held in South Africa from 11 June to 11 July 2010, and the 2014 World Cup will be held in Brazil.
Previous international competitions
The world’s first international football match was a challenge match played in Glasgow in 1872 between Scotland and England,with the first international tournament, the inaugural edition of the British Home Championship, taking place in 1884.At this stage the sport was rarely played outside the United Kingdom. As football grew in popularity in other parts of the world at the turn of the century, it was held as a demonstration sport with no medals awarded at the 1900 and 1904 Summer Olympics (however, the IOC has retroactively upgraded their status to official events), and at the 1906 Intercalated Games.
After FIFA was founded in 1904, it tried to arrange an international football tournament between nations outside the Olympic framework in Switzerland in 1906. These were very early days for international football, and the official history of FIFA describes the competition as having been a failure.
At the 1908 Summer Olympics in London, football became an official competition. Planned by The Football Association (FA), England’s football governing body, the event was for amateur players only and was regarded suspiciously as a show rather than a competition. Great Britain (represented by the England national amateur football team) won the gold medals. They repeated the feat in 1912 in Stockholm, where the tournament was organised by the Swedish Football Association.
With the Olympic event continuing to be contested only between amateur teams, Sir Thomas Lipton organised the Sir Thomas Lipton Trophy tournament in Turin in 1909. The Lipton tournament was a championship between individual clubs (not national teams) from different nations, each one of which represented an entire nation. The competition is sometimes described as The First World Cup,and featured the most prestigious professional club sides from Italy, Germany and Switzerland, but the FA of England refused to be associated with the competition and declined the offer to send a professional team. Lipton invited West Auckland, an amateur side from County Durham, to represent England instead. West Auckland won the tournament and returned in 1911 to successfully defend their title. They were given the trophy to keep forever, as per the rules of the competition.
In 1914, FIFA agreed to recognise the Olympic tournament as a “world football championship for amateurs”, and took responsibility for managing the event.This paved the way for the world’s first intercontinental football competition, at the 1920 Summer Olympics, contested by Egypt and thirteen European teams, and won by Belgium.Uruguay won the next two Olympic football tournaments in 1924 and 1928.
Estadio Centenario, the location of the first World Cup final in 1930 in Montevideo, Uruguay
Due to the success of the Olympic football tournaments, FIFA, with President Jules Rimet the driving force, again started looking at staging its own international tournament outside of the Olympics. On 28 May 1928, the FIFA Congress in Amsterdam decided to stage a world championship organised by FIFA. With Uruguay now two-time official football world champions (as 1924 was the start of FIFA’s professional era) and to celebrate their centenary of independence in 1930, FIFA named Uruguay as the host country of the inaugural World Cup tournament.
The national associations of selected nations were invited to send a team, but the choice of Uruguay as a venue for the competition meant a long and costly trip across the Atlantic Ocean for European sides. Indeed, no European country pledged to send a team until two months before the start of the competition. Rimet eventually persuaded teams from Belgium, France, Romania, and Yugoslavia to make the trip. In total thirteen nations took part: seven from South America, four from Europe and two from North America.
The first two World Cup matches took place simultaneously on 13 July 1930, and were won by France and USA, who defeated Mexico 4–1 and Belgium 3–0 respectively. The first goal in World Cup history was scored by Lucien Laurent of France.[10] In the final, Uruguay defeated Argentina 4–2 in front of a crowd of 93,000 people in Montevideo, and in doing so became the first nation to win the World Cup.
World Cups before World War II
After the creation of the World Cup, the 1932 Summer Olympics, held in Los Angeles, did not plan to include football as part of the schedule due to the low popularity of the sport in the United States, as American football had been growing in popularity. FIFA and the IOC also disagreed over the status of amateur players, and so football was dropped from the Games.Olympic football returned at the 1936 Summer Olympics, but was now overshadowed by the more prestigious World Cup.
The issues facing the early World Cup tournaments were the difficulties of intercontinental travel, and war. Few South American teams were willing to travel to Europe for the 1934 and 1938 tournaments, with Brazil the only South American team to compete in both. The 1942 and 1946 competitions were cancelled due to World War II and its aftermath.
World Cups after World War II
The 1950 World Cup, held in Brazil, was the first to include British participants. British teams withdrew from FIFA in 1920, partly out of unwillingness to play against the countries they had been at war with, and partly as a protest against foreign influence on football,[13] but rejoined in 1946 following FIFA’s invitation.[14] The tournament also saw the return of 1930 champions Uruguay, who had boycotted the previous two World Cups. Uruguay won the tournament again after defeating the host nation Brazil in one of the most famous matches in World Cup history, which was later called the “Maracanazo” (Portuguese: Maracanaço).
Map of countries’ best results
In the tournaments between 1934 and 1978, 16 teams competed in each tournament, except in 1938, when Austria was absorbed into Germany after qualifying, leaving the tournament with 15 teams, and in 1950, when India, Scotland and Turkey withdrew, leaving the tournament with 13 teams.[15] Most of the participating nations were from Europe and South America, with a small minority from North America, Africa, Asia and Oceania. These teams were usually defeated easily by the European and South American teams. Until 1982, the only teams from outside Europe and South America to advance out of the first round were: USA, semi-finalists in 1930; Cuba, quarter-finalists in 1938; Korea DPR, quarter-finalists in 1966; and Mexico, quarter-finalists in 1970.
Expansion to 32 teams
The tournament was expanded to 24 teams in 1982,[16] and then to 32 in 1998,allowing more teams from Africa, Asia and North America to take part. In recent years, teams from these regions have enjoyed more success, and those who have reached the quarter-finals include: Mexico, quarter-finalists in 1986; Cameroon, quarter-finalists in 1990; Korea Republic, finishing in fourth place in 2002; Senegal, along with USA, both quarter-finalists in 2002; and Ghana as quarter-finalists in 2010. Nevertheless, European and South American teams continue to dominate, e.g., the quarter-finalists in 1998 and 2006 were all from Europe or South America.
Two hundred teams entered the 2002 FIFA World Cup qualification rounds; 198 nations attempted to qualify for the 2006 FIFA World Cup, while a record 204 countries entered qualification for the 2010 FIFA World Cup.
Other FIFA tournaments
An equivalent tournament for women’s football, the FIFA Women’s World Cup, was first held in 1991 in the People’s Republic of China.[19] The women’s tournament is smaller in scale and profile than the men’s, but is growing; the number of entrants for the 2007 tournament was 120, more than double that of 1991.
Football has been included in every Summer Olympic Games except 1896 and 1932. Unlike many other sports, the men’s football tournament at the Olympics is not a top-level tournament, and since 1992, an under-23 tournament with each team allowed three over-age players.Women’s football made its Olympic debut in 1996, and is contested between full national sides with no age restrictions.
The FIFA Confederations Cup is a tournament held one year before the World Cup at the World Cup host nation(s) as a dress-rehearsal for the upcoming World Cup. It is contested by the winners of each of the six FIFA confederation championships, along with the FIFA World Cup champion and the host country.
FIFA also organises international tournaments for youth football (FIFA U-20 World Cup, FIFA U-17 World Cup, FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup, FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup), club football (FIFA Club World Cup), and football variants such as futsal (FIFA Futsal World Cup) and beach soccer (FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup)..
Trophy
From 1930 to 1970, the Jules Rimet Trophy was awarded to the World Cup winner. It was originally simply known as the World Cup or Coupe du Monde, but in 1946 it was renamed after the FIFA president Jules Rimet who set up the first tournament. In 1970, Brazil’s third victory in the tournament entitled them to keep the trophy permanently. However, the trophy was stolen in 1983, and has never been recovered, apparently melted down by the thieves.
After 1970, a new trophy, known as the FIFA World Cup Trophy, was designed. The experts of FIFA, coming from seven different countries, evaluated the 53 presented models, finally opting for the work of the Italian designer Silvio Gazzaniga. The new trophy is 36 cm (14.2 in) high, made of solid 18 carat (75%) gold and weighs 6.175 kg (13.6 lb). The base contains two layers of semi-precious malachite while the bottom side of the trophy bears the engraved year and name of each FIFA World Cup winner since 1974. The description of the trophy by Gazzaniga was: “The lines spring out from the base, rising in spirals, stretching out to receive the world. From the remarkable dynamic tensions of the compact body of the sculpture rise the figures of two athletes at the stirring moment of victory.
This new trophy is not awarded to the winning nation permanently. World Cup winners retain the trophy until the next tournament and are awarded a gold-plated replica rather than the solid gold original.
At the present, all members (players and coaches) of the top three teams receive winners’ (gold), runner-ups’ (silver), and third-place medals (bronze). Prior to the 1978 tournament, medals were only awarded to the eleven players on the pitch at the end of the final and the third-place match. In November 2007, FIFA announced that all members of World Cup-winning squads between 1930 and 1974 were to be retroactively awarded winners’ medals.
Format
Main article: FIFA World Cup qualification
Since the second World Cup in 1934, qualifying tournaments have been held to thin the field for the final tournament.They are held within the six FIFA continental zones (Africa, Asia, North and Central America and Caribbean, South America, Oceania, and Europe), overseen by their respective confederations. For each tournament, FIFA decides the number of places awarded to each of the continental zones beforehand, generally based on the relative strength of the confederations’ teams.
The qualification process can start as early as almost three years before the final tournament and last over a two-year period. The formats of the qualification tournaments differ between confederations. Usually, one or two places are awarded to winners of intercontinental play-offs. For example, the winner of the Oceanian zone and the fifth-placed team from the Asian zone entered a play-off for a spot in the 2010 World Cup. From the 1938 World Cup onwards, host nations received automatic qualification to the final tournament. This right was also granted to the defending champions between 1938 and 2002, but was withdrawn from the 2006 FIFA World Cup onward, requiring the champions to qualify. Brazil, winners in 2002, were the first defending champions to play in a qualifying match.
Final tournament
For the various formats used in previous tournaments, see History of the FIFA World Cup#Format of each final tournament.
The current final tournament features 32 national teams competing over a month in the host nation(s). There are two stages: the group stage followed by the knockout stage.
In the group stage, teams compete within eight groups of four teams each. Eight teams are seeded, including the hosts, with the other seeded teams selected using a formula based on the FIFA World Rankings and/or performances in recent World Cups, and drawn to separate groups.The other teams are assigned to different “pots”, usually based on geographical criteria, and teams in each pot are drawn at random to the eight groups. Since 1998, constraints have been applied to the draw to ensure that no group contains more than two European teams or more than one team from any other confederation.
Each group plays a round-robin tournament, in which each team is scheduled for three matches against other teams in the same group. The last round of matches of each group is scheduled at the same time to preserve fairness among all four teams.The top two teams from each group advance to the knockout stage. Points are used to rank the teams within a group. Since 1994, three points have been awarded for a win, one for a draw and none for a loss (before, winners received two points).
The FIFA World Cup (also called the Football World Cup, the Soccer World Cup, or simply the World Cup) is an international association football competition contested by the senior men’s national teams of the members of Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the sport’s global governing body. The championship has been awarded every four years since the first tournament in 1930, except in 1942 and 1946 when it was not held because of the Second World War.
The current format of the tournament involves 32 teams competing for the title at venues within the host nation(s) over a period of about a month – this phase is often called the World Cup Finals. A qualification phase, which currently takes place over the preceding three years, is used to determine which teams qualify for the tournament together with the host nation(s).
The 18 tournaments that have been concluded have been won by seven different national teams. Brazil have won the World Cup a record five times, and they are the only team to have played in every tournament. Italy have won four titles, and Germany are next with three titles. The other former champions are Uruguay, winners of the inaugural tournament, and Argentina, with two titles each. England and France have won a single title each, both at home, while Spain or the Netherlands will win their first World Cup in South Africa, which will also be the first win for a European team in a finals tournament held outside of Europe.
The World Cup is the world’s most widely viewed sporting event; an estimated 715.1 million people watched the final match of the 2006 World Cup held in Germany.[1] The current World Cup is being held in South Africa from 11 June to 11 July 2010, and the 2014 World Cup will be held in Brazil.
Previous international competitions
The world’s first international football match was a challenge match played in Glasgow in 1872 between Scotland and England,with the first international tournament, the inaugural edition of the British Home Championship, taking place in 1884.At this stage the sport was rarely played outside the United Kingdom. As football grew in popularity in other parts of the world at the turn of the century, it was held as a demonstration sport with no medals awarded at the 1900 and 1904 Summer Olympics (however, the IOC has retroactively upgraded their status to official events), and at the 1906 Intercalated Games.
After FIFA was founded in 1904, it tried to arrange an international football tournament between nations outside the Olympic framework in Switzerland in 1906. These were very early days for international football, and the official history of FIFA describes the competition as having been a failure.
At the 1908 Summer Olympics in London, football became an official competition. Planned by The Football Association (FA), England’s football governing body, the event was for amateur players only and was regarded suspiciously as a show rather than a competition. Great Britain (represented by the England national amateur football team) won the gold medals. They repeated the feat in 1912 in Stockholm, where the tournament was organised by the Swedish Football Association.
With the Olympic event continuing to be contested only between amateur teams, Sir Thomas Lipton organised the Sir Thomas Lipton Trophy tournament in Turin in 1909. The Lipton tournament was a championship between individual clubs (not national teams) from different nations, each one of which represented an entire nation. The competition is sometimes described as The First World Cup,and featured the most prestigious professional club sides from Italy, Germany and Switzerland, but the FA of England refused to be associated with the competition and declined the offer to send a professional team. Lipton invited West Auckland, an amateur side from County Durham, to represent England instead. West Auckland won the tournament and returned in 1911 to successfully defend their title. They were given the trophy to keep forever, as per the rules of the competition.
In 1914, FIFA agreed to recognise the Olympic tournament as a “world football championship for amateurs”, and took responsibility for managing the event.This paved the way for the world’s first intercontinental football competition, at the 1920 Summer Olympics, contested by Egypt and thirteen European teams, and won by Belgium.Uruguay won the next two Olympic football tournaments in 1924 and 1928.
Estadio Centenario, the location of the first World Cup final in 1930 in Montevideo, Uruguay
Due to the success of the Olympic football tournaments, FIFA, with President Jules Rimet the driving force, again started looking at staging its own international tournament outside of the Olympics. On 28 May 1928, the FIFA Congress in Amsterdam decided to stage a world championship organised by FIFA. With Uruguay now two-time official football world champions (as 1924 was the start of FIFA’s professional era) and to celebrate their centenary of independence in 1930, FIFA named Uruguay as the host country of the inaugural World Cup tournament.
The national associations of selected nations were invited to send a team, but the choice of Uruguay as a venue for the competition meant a long and costly trip across the Atlantic Ocean for European sides. Indeed, no European country pledged to send a team until two months before the start of the competition. Rimet eventually persuaded teams from Belgium, France, Romania, and Yugoslavia to make the trip. In total thirteen nations took part: seven from South America, four from Europe and two from North America.
The first two World Cup matches took place simultaneously on 13 July 1930, and were won by France and USA, who defeated Mexico 4–1 and Belgium 3–0 respectively. The first goal in World Cup history was scored by Lucien Laurent of France.[10] In the final, Uruguay defeated Argentina 4–2 in front of a crowd of 93,000 people in Montevideo, and in doing so became the first nation to win the World Cup.
World Cups before World War II
After the creation of the World Cup, the 1932 Summer Olympics, held in Los Angeles, did not plan to include football as part of the schedule due to the low popularity of the sport in the United States, as American football had been growing in popularity. FIFA and the IOC also disagreed over the status of amateur players, and so football was dropped from the Games.Olympic football returned at the 1936 Summer Olympics, but was now overshadowed by the more prestigious World Cup.
The issues facing the early World Cup tournaments were the difficulties of intercontinental travel, and war. Few South American teams were willing to travel to Europe for the 1934 and 1938 tournaments, with Brazil the only South American team to compete in both. The 1942 and 1946 competitions were cancelled due to World War II and its aftermath.
World Cups after World War II
The 1950 World Cup, held in Brazil, was the first to include British participants. British teams withdrew from FIFA in 1920, partly out of unwillingness to play against the countries they had been at war with, and partly as a protest against foreign influence on football,[13] but rejoined in 1946 following FIFA’s invitation.[14] The tournament also saw the return of 1930 champions Uruguay, who had boycotted the previous two World Cups. Uruguay won the tournament again after defeating the host nation Brazil in one of the most famous matches in World Cup history, which was later called the “Maracanazo” (Portuguese: Maracanaço).
Map of countries’ best results
In the tournaments between 1934 and 1978, 16 teams competed in each tournament, except in 1938, when Austria was absorbed into Germany after qualifying, leaving the tournament with 15 teams, and in 1950, when India, Scotland and Turkey withdrew, leaving the tournament with 13 teams.[15] Most of the participating nations were from Europe and South America, with a small minority from North America, Africa, Asia and Oceania. These teams were usually defeated easily by the European and South American teams. Until 1982, the only teams from outside Europe and South America to advance out of the first round were: USA, semi-finalists in 1930; Cuba, quarter-finalists in 1938; Korea DPR, quarter-finalists in 1966; and Mexico, quarter-finalists in 1970.
Expansion to 32 teams
The tournament was expanded to 24 teams in 1982,[16] and then to 32 in 1998,allowing more teams from Africa, Asia and North America to take part. In recent years, teams from these regions have enjoyed more success, and those who have reached the quarter-finals include: Mexico, quarter-finalists in 1986; Cameroon, quarter-finalists in 1990; Korea Republic, finishing in fourth place in 2002; Senegal, along with USA, both quarter-finalists in 2002; and Ghana as quarter-finalists in 2010. Nevertheless, European and South American teams continue to dominate, e.g., the quarter-finalists in 1998 and 2006 were all from Europe or South America.
Two hundred teams entered the 2002 FIFA World Cup qualification rounds; 198 nations attempted to qualify for the 2006 FIFA World Cup, while a record 204 countries entered qualification for the 2010 FIFA World Cup.
Other FIFA tournaments
An equivalent tournament for women’s football, the FIFA Women’s World Cup, was first held in 1991 in the People’s Republic of China.[19] The women’s tournament is smaller in scale and profile than the men’s, but is growing; the number of entrants for the 2007 tournament was 120, more than double that of 1991.
Football has been included in every Summer Olympic Games except 1896 and 1932. Unlike many other sports, the men’s football tournament at the Olympics is not a top-level tournament, and since 1992, an under-23 tournament with each team allowed three over-age players.Women’s football made its Olympic debut in 1996, and is contested between full national sides with no age restrictions.
The FIFA Confederations Cup is a tournament held one year before the World Cup at the World Cup host nation(s) as a dress-rehearsal for the upcoming World Cup. It is contested by the winners of each of the six FIFA confederation championships, along with the FIFA World Cup champion and the host country.
FIFA also organises international tournaments for youth football (FIFA U-20 World Cup, FIFA U-17 World Cup, FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup, FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup), club football (FIFA Club World Cup), and football variants such as futsal (FIFA Futsal World Cup) and beach soccer (FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup)..
Trophy
From 1930 to 1970, the Jules Rimet Trophy was awarded to the World Cup winner. It was originally simply known as the World Cup or Coupe du Monde, but in 1946 it was renamed after the FIFA president Jules Rimet who set up the first tournament. In 1970, Brazil’s third victory in the tournament entitled them to keep the trophy permanently. However, the trophy was stolen in 1983, and has never been recovered, apparently melted down by the thieves.
After 1970, a new trophy, known as the FIFA World Cup Trophy, was designed. The experts of FIFA, coming from seven different countries, evaluated the 53 presented models, finally opting for the work of the Italian designer Silvio Gazzaniga. The new trophy is 36 cm (14.2 in) high, made of solid 18 carat (75%) gold and weighs 6.175 kg (13.6 lb). The base contains two layers of semi-precious malachite while the bottom side of the trophy bears the engraved year and name of each FIFA World Cup winner since 1974. The description of the trophy by Gazzaniga was: “The lines spring out from the base, rising in spirals, stretching out to receive the world. From the remarkable dynamic tensions of the compact body of the sculpture rise the figures of two athletes at the stirring moment of victory.
This new trophy is not awarded to the winning nation permanently. World Cup winners retain the trophy until the next tournament and are awarded a gold-plated replica rather than the solid gold original.
At the present, all members (players and coaches) of the top three teams receive winners’ (gold), runner-ups’ (silver), and third-place medals (bronze). Prior to the 1978 tournament, medals were only awarded to the eleven players on the pitch at the end of the final and the third-place match. In November 2007, FIFA announced that all members of World Cup-winning squads between 1930 and 1974 were to be retroactively awarded winners’ medals.
Format
Main article: FIFA World Cup qualification
Since the second World Cup in 1934, qualifying tournaments have been held to thin the field for the final tournament.They are held within the six FIFA continental zones (Africa, Asia, North and Central America and Caribbean, South America, Oceania, and Europe), overseen by their respective confederations. For each tournament, FIFA decides the number of places awarded to each of the continental zones beforehand, generally based on the relative strength of the confederations’ teams.
The qualification process can start as early as almost three years before the final tournament and last over a two-year period. The formats of the qualification tournaments differ between confederations. Usually, one or two places are awarded to winners of intercontinental play-offs. For example, the winner of the Oceanian zone and the fifth-placed team from the Asian zone entered a play-off for a spot in the 2010 World Cup. From the 1938 World Cup onwards, host nations received automatic qualification to the final tournament. This right was also granted to the defending champions between 1938 and 2002, but was withdrawn from the 2006 FIFA World Cup onward, requiring the champions to qualify. Brazil, winners in 2002, were the first defending champions to play in a qualifying match.
Final tournament
For the various formats used in previous tournaments, see History of the FIFA World Cup#Format of each final tournament.
The current final tournament features 32 national teams competing over a month in the host nation(s). There are two stages: the group stage followed by the knockout stage.
In the group stage, teams compete within eight groups of four teams each. Eight teams are seeded, including the hosts, with the other seeded teams selected using a formula based on the FIFA World Rankings and/or performances in recent World Cups, and drawn to separate groups.The other teams are assigned to different “pots”, usually based on geographical criteria, and teams in each pot are drawn at random to the eight groups. Since 1998, constraints have been applied to the draw to ensure that no group contains more than two European teams or more than one team from any other confederation.
Each group plays a round-robin tournament, in which each team is scheduled for three matches against other teams in the same group. The last round of matches of each group is scheduled at the same time to preserve fairness among all four teams.The top two teams from each group advance to the knockout stage. Points are used to rank the teams within a group. Since 1994, three points have been awarded for a win, one for a draw and none for a loss (before, winners received two points).
The ranking of each team in each group is determined as follows:
1. Greatest number of points in group matches
2. Greatest goal difference in group matches
3. Greatest number of goals scored in group matches
4. If more than one team remain level after applying the above criteria, their ranking will be determined as follows:
1. Greatest number of points in head-to-head matches among those teams
2. Greatest goal difference in head-to-head matches among those teams
3. Greatest number of goals scored in head-to-head matches among those teams
5. If any of the teams above remain level after applying the above criteria, their ranking will be determined by the drawing of lots
The knockout stage is a single-elimination tournament in which teams play each other in one-off matches, with extra time and penalty shootouts used to decide the winner if necessary. It begins with the “eigth-finals” (aka “round of 16″ or the second round) in which the winner of each group plays against the runner-up of another group. This is followed by the quarter-finals, the semi-finals, the third-place match (contested by the losing semi-finalists), and the final.
Hosts
Early World Cups were given to countries at meetings of FIFA’s congress. The choice of location gave rise to controversies, a consequence of the three-week boat journey between South America and Europe, the two centres of strength in football. The decision to hold the first World Cup in Uruguay, for example, led to only four European nations competing.The next two World Cups were both held in Europe. The decision to hold the second of these, the 1938 FIFA World Cup, in France was controversial, as the American countries had been led to understand that the World Cup would rotate between the two continents. Both Argentina and Uruguay thus boycotted the tournament.
Since the 1958 FIFA World Cup, to avoid future boycotts or controversy, FIFA began a pattern of alternating the hosts between the Americas and Europe, which continued until the 1998 FIFA World Cup. The 2002 FIFA World Cup, hosted jointly by South Korea and Japan, was the first one held in Asia, and the only tournament with multiple hosts. South Africa became the first African nation to host the World Cup in 2010. The 2014 FIFA World Cup will be hosted by Brazil, the first held in South America since 1978, and will be the first occasion where consecutive World Cups are held outside Europe.
2022 World Cups
The host country is now chosen in a vote by FIFA’s Executive Committee. This is done under a single transferable vote system. The national football association of a country desiring to host the event receives a “Hosting Agreement” from FIFA, which explains the steps and requirements that are expected from a strong bid. The bidding association also receives a form, the submission of which represents the official confirmation of the candidacy. After this, a FIFA designated group of inspectors visit the country to identify that the country meets the requirements needed to host the event and a report on the country is produced. The decision on who will host the World Cup is usually made six or seven years in advance of the tournament. However, there have been occasions where the hosts of multiple future tournaments were announced at the same time, as will be the case for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.
For the 2010 and 2014 World Cups, the final tournament is rotated between confederations, allowing only countries from the chosen confederation (Africa in 2010, South America in 2014) to bid to host the tournament. The rotation policy was introduced after the controversy surrounding Germany’s victory over South Africa in the vote to host the 2006 tournament. However, the policy of continental rotation will not continue beyond 2014, so any country, except those belonging to confederations that hosted the two preceding tournaments, can apply as hosts for World Cups starting from 2018.This is partly to avoid a similar scenario to the bidding process for the 2014 tournament, where Brazil was the only official bidder.
Performances
See also: Results of host nations in the FIFA World Cup
Six of the seven champions have won one of their titles while playing in their own homeland, the exception being Brazil, who finished as runners-up after losing the deciding match on home soil in 1950. England (1966) and France (1998) won their only titles while playing as host nations. Uruguay (1930), Italy (1934) and Argentina (1978) won their first titles as host nations but have gone on to win again, while Germany (1974) won their second title on home soil.
Other nations have also been successful when hosting the tournament. Sweden (runners-up in 1958), Chile (third place in 1962), Korea Republic (fourth place in 2002), and Mexico (quarter-finals in 1970 and 1986) all have their best results when serving as hosts. So far, South Africa (2010) was the only host nation to fail to advance beyond the first round.
Organisation and media coverage
The World Cup was first televised in 1954 and is now the most widely viewed and followed sporting event in the world, exceeding even the Olympic Games. The cumulative audience of all matches of the 2006 World Cup is estimated to be 26.29 billion. 715.1 million individuals watched the final match of this tournament (a ninth of the entire population of the planet). The 2006 World Cup draw, which decided the distribution of teams into groups, was watched by 300 million viewers.
Each FIFA World Cup since 1966 has its own mascot or logo. World Cup Willie, the mascot for the 1966 competition, was the first World Cup mascot.[42] Recent World Cups have also featured official match balls specially designed for each World Cup.
Records
Two players share the record for playing in the most World Cups; Mexico’s Antonio Carbajal (1950–1966) and Germany’s Lothar Matthäus (1982–1998) both played in five tournaments.Matthäus has played the most World Cup matches overall, with 25 appearances.Brazil’s Pelé is the only player to have won three World Cup winners’ medals (1958, 1962, and 1970),[56] with 20 other players who have won two World Cup medals.Germany’s Franz Beckenbauer (1966-74) is the only player to be named to three Finals All-Star Teams, and is also the only player to collect all three types of medals (gold, silver, bronze).
The overall top goalscorer in World Cups is Brazil’s Ronaldo, scorer of 15 goals (1998–2006). Germany’s Miroslav Klose (2002–2010) and Gerd Müller (1970–1974) are second, with 14 goals.[58] The fourth placed goalscorer, France’s Just Fontaine, holds the record for the most goals scored in a single World Cup, as all his 13 goals were scored in the 1958 tournament.
Brazil’s Mário Zagallo and Germany’s Franz Beckenbauer are the only people to date to win the World Cup as both player and head coach. Zagallo won in 1958 and 1962 as a player and in 1970 as head coach.[60] Beckenbauer won in 1974 as captain and in 1990 as head coach.Italy’s Vittorio Pozzo is the only head coach to ever win two World Cups (1934 and 1938).All World Cup winning head coaches were natives of the country they coached to victory.
Among the national teams, Germany have played the most World Cup matches, with 99, while Brazil have scored the most World Cup goals, with 210. The two teams have played each other only once in the World Cup, in the 2002 final.
1. Greatest number of points in group matches
2. Greatest goal difference in group matches
3. Greatest number of goals scored in group matches
4. If more than one team remain level after applying the above criteria, their ranking will be determined as follows:
1. Greatest number of points in head-to-head matches among those teams
2. Greatest goal difference in head-to-head matches among those teams
3. Greatest number of goals scored in head-to-head matches among those teams
5. If any of the teams above remain level after applying the above criteria, their ranking will be determined by the drawing of lots
The knockout stage is a single-elimination tournament in which teams play each other in one-off matches, with extra time and penalty shootouts used to decide the winner if necessary. It begins with the “eigth-finals” (aka “round of 16″ or the second round) in which the winner of each group plays against the runner-up of another group. This is followed by the quarter-finals, the semi-finals, the third-place match (contested by the losing semi-finalists), and the final.
Hosts
Early World Cups were given to countries at meetings of FIFA’s congress. The choice of location gave rise to controversies, a consequence of the three-week boat journey between South America and Europe, the two centres of strength in football. The decision to hold the first World Cup in Uruguay, for example, led to only four European nations competing.The next two World Cups were both held in Europe. The decision to hold the second of these, the 1938 FIFA World Cup, in France was controversial, as the American countries had been led to understand that the World Cup would rotate between the two continents. Both Argentina and Uruguay thus boycotted the tournament.
Since the 1958 FIFA World Cup, to avoid future boycotts or controversy, FIFA began a pattern of alternating the hosts between the Americas and Europe, which continued until the 1998 FIFA World Cup. The 2002 FIFA World Cup, hosted jointly by South Korea and Japan, was the first one held in Asia, and the only tournament with multiple hosts. South Africa became the first African nation to host the World Cup in 2010. The 2014 FIFA World Cup will be hosted by Brazil, the first held in South America since 1978, and will be the first occasion where consecutive World Cups are held outside Europe.
2022 World Cups
The host country is now chosen in a vote by FIFA’s Executive Committee. This is done under a single transferable vote system. The national football association of a country desiring to host the event receives a “Hosting Agreement” from FIFA, which explains the steps and requirements that are expected from a strong bid. The bidding association also receives a form, the submission of which represents the official confirmation of the candidacy. After this, a FIFA designated group of inspectors visit the country to identify that the country meets the requirements needed to host the event and a report on the country is produced. The decision on who will host the World Cup is usually made six or seven years in advance of the tournament. However, there have been occasions where the hosts of multiple future tournaments were announced at the same time, as will be the case for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.
For the 2010 and 2014 World Cups, the final tournament is rotated between confederations, allowing only countries from the chosen confederation (Africa in 2010, South America in 2014) to bid to host the tournament. The rotation policy was introduced after the controversy surrounding Germany’s victory over South Africa in the vote to host the 2006 tournament. However, the policy of continental rotation will not continue beyond 2014, so any country, except those belonging to confederations that hosted the two preceding tournaments, can apply as hosts for World Cups starting from 2018.This is partly to avoid a similar scenario to the bidding process for the 2014 tournament, where Brazil was the only official bidder.
Performances
Six of the seven champions have won one of their titles while playing in their own homeland, the exception being Brazil, who finished as runners-up after losing the deciding match on home soil in 1950. England (1966) and France (1998) won their only titles while playing as host nations. Uruguay (1930), Italy (1934) and Argentina (1978) won their first titles as host nations but have gone on to win again, while Germany (1974) won their second title on home soil.
Other nations have also been successful when hosting the tournament. Sweden (runners-up in 1958), Chile (third place in 1962), Korea Republic (fourth place in 2002), and Mexico (quarter-finals in 1970 and 1986) all have their best results when serving as hosts. So far, South Africa (2010) was the only host nation to fail to advance beyond the first round.
Organisation and media coverage
The World Cup was first televised in 1954 and is now the most widely viewed and followed sporting event in the world, exceeding even the Olympic Games. The cumulative audience of all matches of the 2006 World Cup is estimated to be 26.29 billion. 715.1 million individuals watched the final match of this tournament (a ninth of the entire population of the planet). The 2006 World Cup draw, which decided the distribution of teams into groups, was watched by 300 million viewers.
Each FIFA World Cup since 1966 has its own mascot or logo. World Cup Willie, the mascot for the 1966 competition, was the first World Cup mascot.Recent World Cups have also featured official match balls specially designed for each World Cup.
Records
Two players share the record for playing in the most World Cups; Mexico’s Antonio Carbajal (1950–1966) and Germany’s Lothar Matthäus (1982–1998) both played in five tournaments.Matthäus has played the most World Cup matches overall, with 25 appearances.Brazil’s Pelé is the only player to have won three World Cup winners’ medals (1958, 1962, and 1970),[56] with 20 other players who have won two World Cup medals.Germany’s Franz Beckenbauer (1966-74) is the only player to be named to three Finals All-Star Teams, and is also the only player to collect all three types of medals (gold, silver, bronze).
The overall top goalscorer in World Cups is Brazil’s Ronaldo, scorer of 15 goals (1998–2006). Germany’s Miroslav Klose (2002–2010) and Gerd Müller (1970–1974) are second, with 14 goals.[58] The fourth placed goalscorer, France’s Just Fontaine, holds the record for the most goals scored in a single World Cup, as all his 13 goals were scored in the 1958 tournament.
Brazil’s Mário Zagallo and Germany’s Franz Beckenbauer are the only people to date to win the World Cup as both player and head coach. Zagallo won in 1958 and 1962 as a player and in 1970 as head coach.[60] Beckenbauer won in 1974 as captain and in 1990 as head coach.Italy’s Vittorio Pozzo is the only head coach to ever win two World Cups (1934 and 1938).All World Cup winning head coaches were natives of the country they coached to victory.
Among the national teams, Germany have played the most World Cup matches, with 9, while Brazil have scored the most World Cup goals, with 210.The two teams have played each other only once in the World Cup, in the 2002 final.