History of Qualification- 1930

With Belize's future still looking very shakey (its even caught the bbc's attention- http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/13830127.stm ) we are left with a bit of a break before qualifying starts for real. I will fill this, and future gaps by reviewing the previous world cup qualifying campaigns.

And so to the first, 1930. Only there wasn't a qualification campaign. The first world cup didn't quite have the draw of the current one, so the likes of Montserrat, American Samoa and Scotland weren't interested in competing. It was supposed to be by "invitation of the hosts", Uruguay, but it turned out to be more like "who can be pursuaded to turn up". Certainly not the Home Nations, who were above such things- not members of FIFA, but eventually got a letter when the numbers were looking poor, which was snootily refused. Those from the Americas were more keen- Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru and the United States all accepted. This was an espeically good idea for the likes of Bolivia, who have only qualified for two more world cups since, and the USA, who got a nice semi final appearance to their name.

Sadly, response was a bit worse from Europe. Exactly zero teams accepted by the deadline- to be fair, it meant a fifteen day boat trip there and back, and a possibility of losing their jobs for the amateur players. A few strings were pulled- Jules Rimet himself managed to get the French to go, and the FIFA Vice-President, from Belgium, got them involved. Even more impressive was that King Carol the Second of Romania decided to make sure they were involved. Some people say he even was involved in coaching the team. The nutter. They all got on a boat together and sailed off to Uruguay, picking up the Brazilians on the way, which sounds quite sweet really, everyone having fun together, sailing across the Atlantic. Yugoslavia were miserable and went on their own.

And that's about it. A grand total of 13 teams entered the first world cup. Romania only had two games, won one and went out. Probably not worth King Carol's efforts, or the happy fun multi-national boat ride. And when it was all over, Uruguay were the first World Cup champions, but were so pissed off with most of the Europeans not entering that they had a twenty year strop from world cup football. Ok, that might have been extended because of World War Two a bit, but it was still two world cups. Get over it.

Well that's the story of the qualification for the first world cup- not a bad story considering there wasn't any. Come back soon for the first actual world cup qualification, 1934! It involves Luxembourg, Cuba and Palestine! And of course any breaking news on this Belize crisis.