If the Football/Soccer World Cup was played in the 19th century

TruthfulPanda

Gone Fishin'
Well, The Game was less widespread than today ... so I'd go with the very end of the Century - I'd even suggest 1900 but there'd be howls of protest that this is the XXth already, so 1899 ...
From outside Europe there'd be Argentina - not sure if any other country?
From Europe you could have up to a dozen - four Home Countries alone, remember? :) - plus Belgium, Netherlands, maybe also France, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Italy, Denmark, Sweden ...

England would be favourite, so they lose to Malta or some other Iceland equivalent of the era :)
 
FIFA was born in 1904, so if it were to hold a small tournament to celebrate its founding, and every national team of the time were to attend, the competing teams would be, according to this website:

Europe: England (2), Austria (3), Scotland (4), Hungary (5), Bohemia (7), Belgium (8), France (9), Ireland (10), Wales (11)

South America: Argentina (1), Uruguay (6)

The numbers are Elo ratings.

Among the founding members of FIFA there were, as well, the football associations of Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

That's 16 teams in total, or four groups of four. I think the four Home Nations teams would be put in a different group each, just like the two South American teams and the three Habsburg teams, so...

Group A

Bohemia
Denmark
England
Uruguay

Group B

Argentina
Hungary
Netherlands
Scotland

Group C

Austria
Belgium
Ireland
Spain

Group D

France
Sweden
Switzerland
Wales
 
FIFA was born in 1904, so if it were to hold a small tournament to celebrate its founding, and every national team of the time were to attend, the competing teams would be, according to this website:

Europe: England (2), Austria (3), Scotland (4), Hungary (5), Bohemia (7), Belgium (8), France (9), Ireland (10), Wales (11)

South America: Argentina (1), Uruguay (6)

The numbers are Elo ratings.

Among the founding members of FIFA there were, as well, the football associations of Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

That's 16 teams in total, or four groups of four. I think the four Home Nations teams would be put in a different group each, just like the two South American teams and the three Habsburg teams, so...

Group A

Bohemia
Denmark
England
Uruguay

Group B

Argentina
Hungary
Netherlands
Scotland

Group C

Austria
Belgium
Ireland
Spain

Group D

France
Sweden
Switzerland
Wales

In hindsight, it is quite surprising that Italy is not there.
 
In hindsight, it is quite surprising that Italy is not there.
Or Germany and France (Edit: I am sure I read that list a couple times, how could I miss France?:oops:), for that matter.
Interesting how the Austro-Hungarian nations are concurring separately: I expected it from Hungary, not from Bohemia.
 
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In hindsight, it is quite surprising that Italy is not there.

What is now the FIGC entered FIFA in 1905, and Italy's first international match was in 1910; an Italian national team in 1904 would probably be built around Genoa players:

GK Luigi Durante (Juventus)
DF Riccardo Pippo (Andrea Doria)
DF Edoardo Pasteur (Genoa)
DF Oscar Schöller (Genoa)
DF Guido Moda (Milan)
MF Giovanni Foffani (Genoa)
MF Vieri Arnaldo Goetzlof (Genoa)
MF Paolo Rossi (Genoa)
MF Alfredo Ferraris (Juventus)
FW Vittorio Ansaldo (Andrea Doria)
FW Enrico Pasteur (Genoa)

(Based on the team rosters from the 1904 season on Wikipedia)

There's quite a lot of nobility and upper bourgeoisie there... if you told those guys that nowadays football is a stereotypically working class sport their monocles would probably drop into their cups of coffee.
 
Or Germany and France, for that matter.
Interesting how the Austro-Hungarian nations are concurring separately: I expected it from Hungary, not from Bohemia.
France is present. Germany's absence is odd too, though I have half-expected them to play as "Saxony", "Prussia", "Bavaria" under the Kaiserreich. Bohemia was unexpected too.
 
In France, some football clubs were founded very early on (in Le Havre and Paris) but overall, the sport was slow to gain popularity. The French national team was terrible until the 1930s (when it progressed to being mediocre). In the XIX century it would not have been competitive at all.
 
France is present. Germany's absence is odd too, though I have half-expected them to play as "Saxony", "Prussia", "Bavaria" under the Kaiserreich. Bohemia was unexpected too.

The national team of Schaumburg-Lippe would've been... huh... interesting.
 
You’ve just got to mention this, haven’t you ;)

Henning Wehn said:
Henning’s favourite joke:

Person 1 is there any football on the box tonight?

Person 2 who's playing?

Person 1 Austria-Hungary

Person 2 against who?

"See it shows comic timing, the timing on this joke means it should have been told between 1867 & 1918 when they had a dual monarchy. The funny part is that television wasn't invented until 1930."
 
No different from the Lichtensteins, San Marinos, Gibraltars or Faroes cluttering up international competitions.

Yeah, except Thuringia alone would've been full of Liechtensteins, unless they decided to compete as an unified team like the West Indies do in cricket; in fact, there aren't any such arrangements in the association football world, even though there are many such arrangements in other sports. An Australasian team wouldn't be that hard to get, with an early enough POD, and there could be a West Indies analogue as well, even though it'd basically be Jamaica and Friends.
 

TruthfulPanda

Gone Fishin'
Yeah, except Thuringia alone would've been full of Liechtensteins, unless they decided to compete as an unified team like the West Indies do in cricket; in fact, there aren't any such arrangements in the association football world, even though there are many such arrangements in other sports.
And this pisses me off ... where's the RAGE! emoticon when you need it?
There should be separate competitions for the diddies ...
 
And this pisses me off ... where's the RAGE! emoticon when you need it?
There should be separate competitions for the diddies ...

Well, excluding them from international play altogether would be size-based discrimination, but they could be made to compete in groups whose winner would be able to advance to the next stage, in a way similar to how OFC qualification works: in each Euro qualifier there could be a preliminary group with Andorra, Malta, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and San Marino for example.
 

TruthfulPanda

Gone Fishin'
they could be made to compete in groups whose winner would be able to advance to the next stage, in a way similar to how OFC qualification works: in each Euro qualifier there could be a preliminary group with Andorra, Malta, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and San Marino for example.
My wet dream for years :)
Great Minds :D
Although I envision the winners of the "diddy group" winning promotion to "normal" group in the next WC/regional Championship eliminatories. Keeps the calendar sane :)
 
Well, The Game was less widespread than today ... so I'd go with the very end of the Century - I'd even suggest 1900 but there'd be howls of protest that this is the XXth already, so 1899 ...
From outside Europe there'd be Argentina - not sure if any other country?
From Europe you could have up to a dozen - four Home Countries alone, remember? :) - plus Belgium, Netherlands, maybe also France, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Italy, Denmark, Sweden ...

England would be favourite, so they lose to Malta or some other Iceland equivalent of the era :)

You'd have a reasonable case for Scotland being the World Cup favourites for a nineteenth century competition.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/England–Scotland_football_rivalry
 
Another football POD I've always wondered about: what if the Bosman ruling were somewhat different, allowing players in the EU to move to another club at the end of a contract without a transfer fee being paid, as in OTL, but also allowing individual leagues to have their own rules on foreign players as before the OTL ruling?
 
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