Although it was still uncommon for the sport to be played outside of Great Britain at the time, Scotland and England competed in the first ever official international football match in Glasgow in 1872[1].
At the end of the 19th century, matches between top English and Scottish clubs were regarded as the "football world championship," such as Sunderland A.F.C.'s victory over Heart of Midlothian F.C. in 1895.
Football had become more popular worldwide by the turn of the 20th century, and national football associations were beginning to form. Uruguay and Argentina squared off in the first official international game played outside of the British Isles at Montevideo in July 1902. On May 22, 1904, football associations from France, Belgium (the two teams before it had played their first national match against one another earlier in the month), Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland, with Germany pledging to join, formed the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) in Paris. Football was played as an Olympic sport at the 1900 and 1904 Summer Olympics, as well as the 1906 Intercalated Games, as its popularity began to soar. Football then transitioned to an official FIFA-supervised Olympic tournament with the 1908 Summer Olympics. [9] The event, which was put on by the English Football Association and was only open to amateur players, was viewed with suspicion as a performance rather than a match. Both in 1908 and 1912, the event was won by the England national amateur football team. In 1906, FIFA made an attempt to host an international football competition between nations outside of the Olympic framework, and this event was held in Switzerland. The competition was deemed a failure in FIFA's official history, which was written during the very early years of international football. Since the Olympic sport was still only played out between amateur teams, competitions involving professional teams soon started to emerge. The torneo internazionale Stampa sportiva, which took place in Turin in 1908, was one of the first. The Sir Thomas Lipton Trophy was held in Turin the next year according to Sir Thomas Lipton's planning. Both competitions featured individual clubs, not national teams, with each club representing a different nation. The Thomas Lipton Trophy is sometimes referred to as The First World Cup even though neither of these events actually functioned as a precursor to the World Cup. FIFA accepted responsibility for organizing the event in 1914 and agreed to recognize the Olympic competition as a "global football championship for amateurs"[11]. This paved the stage for the first intercontinental football match, which Belgium won in the 1920 Summer Olympics. [12] The competitions were won by Uruguay in 1924 and 1928.
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