Football History - Previous International Competitions

Part Three

In 1872 the world’s first international football match was a challenging match which one played in Glasgow between Scotland and England. In 1884, the inaugural edition of the British Home Championship took place with the first international tournament. The sport was seldom played outside the United Kingdom. As football began to increase 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 year 1900 and 1904 and at the year 1906 Interrelated Games.

There was an attempt made by FIFA to arrange an international football tournament after FIFA was founded in 1904 between nations outside of the Olympic framework in Switzerland in 1906. For the international football, these were very early days and the official history of FIFA describes the competition as having been a failure.

Football became an official contest at the 1908 Summer Olympics in London which one planned by The Football Association and England’s football government body that the event was or amateur players only. It was regarded doubtfully as a show rather than a competition.

In 1909, Sir Thomas Lipton organized the Sir Thomas Lipton Trophy tournament in Turin with the Olympic event continuing to be contested only between amateur teams. The Lipton tournament was a championship between individual clubs from different nations and each one of which represented an entire nation. The competition is sometimes described while The First World Cup and beside featured the most prestigious professional club from Italy, Germany and Switzerland.

FIFA agreed to recognize the Olympic tournament in 1914 as a World Football Championship for Amateurs and took the best responsibility for managing the incident. This cemented a way for the world’s first global football competition which was held at the 1920 Summer Olympics. It was contested by Egypt and thirteen European teams and won by Belgium. Beside Uruguay won the next two Olympic football tournaments in 1924 and 1928.

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