1906 FIFA World Cup

The **1906 FIFA World Cup** was the 1st FIFA World Cup and the first on an international scale. It took place between April 9 to May 13, 1906. FIFA selected France to host as FIFA had it headquarters there until 1912.

All of the FIFA nations at the time entered the tournament. The teams were divided into four groups of three with the winner progressing through to the semi-finals.

## Background

The first meeting of FIFA took place on the 21 May 1904 with eleven associations meeting up to talk about the international rules of the game in the hope of stability across the federation. One suggestion was the formation of a World Cup that would see all of the teams in the federation compete in one tournament. With the meeting complete, the creation of the FIFA World Cup was born with all of the federations being interested in competing for the title.

For Uruguay and Argentina, those two teams traveled together to Europe as they competed in some pre-tournament friendlies against local clubs as well as compete in the first Swiss Tri Tournament which was won by Argentina. For the other nine European teams, they either competed in a tournament or in pre WC friendlies before the tournament started on April 9.

## Group Stage

### Group 1

Uruguay surprised the European nations in Group 1 after they defeated Switzerland in the opening game of the World Cup when the Cespedes brothers scored all three goals in the match. This with a draw against Scotland got the team over the line to the semi-finals while Scotland could only wonder if they had scored another goal in the game against Switzerland.

### Group 2

Argentina showed the courage in Group 2 when they defeated their opponents in Wales and Belgium. This also surprised their more fancy European opponents as they were expected to be the easy beats of the group.

### Group 3

In Group 3, Austria finished on top of the group after drawing with France and defeating Ireland in their group. While France struggled on home turf finishing in last place with only the one point against Austria.

### Group 4

The final group, saw England going through at the expense of Netherlands and Hungary. This was after they defeated both opponents in what was a tough standard with the game against Hungary being tougher than the match it would be in 1908 when England would defeat them 6-0.

## Knockout stage

### Semi Finals

The semi-finals saw an upset with England having a shock lost in the first semi-final against Uruguay after Aniceto Camacho scored the only goal of the match to record the massive victory. The other semi saw Austria going through to the final after they defeated Argentina to qualify through to their first (and to date only) World Cup final.

### Final

The first World Cup final saw a crowd of 6000 people coming to watch the first World Cup final in Paris. What they saw was an Uruguay dominance with Carlos Cespedes scoring a double in the result which would give Uruguay the first ever World Cup title. For Austria, they was disapponited in the result with multiple chances not connecting hurting them in the long run.

## Goalscorers

4 goals
* File:Flag of Uruguay.svg Carlos Cespedes

3 goals
* File:Flag of Argentina (alternative).svg Carlos Carr Brown

2 goals
* File:Flag of Argentina (alternative).svg Pablo Frers
* File:Flag of Austria.svg Eduard Engl
* File:Flag of Austria.svg Adolf Muller
* File:Flag of England.svg Arthur Brown
* File:Flag of England.svg Dicky Bond
* File:Flag of Scotland.svg George Livingstone

1 goal
* File:Flag of Argentina (alternative).svg Juan Jose Moore
* File:Flag of Argentina (alternative).svg J Rodman
* File:Flag of Austria.svg Sepp Stansfield
* File:Flag of England.svg Albert Gosnell
* File:St Patrick's saltire.svg Thomas Waddell
* File:St Patrick's saltire.svg Harold Sloan
* File:St Patrick's saltire.svg Val Harris
* File:Flag of the Netherlands.svg Bela Sebestyen
* File:Flag of Switzerland.svg Eduard Garonne
* File:Flag of Uruguay.svg Bolivar Cespedes
* File:Flag of Uruguay.svg Aniceto Camacho
* File:Flag of Uruguay.svg Enrique Sardeson
* File:Flag of Wales 2.svg Edwin Hughes