1938 FIFA World Cup

The 1938 FIFA World Cup was the third round of the World Cup, played from 4 to 19 June 1938 in France. In the final, Italy has kept the championship intact, defeating Hungary 4–2. Teams from Italy were the only ones to have won two World Cups under the same manager, Vittorio Pozzo in 1934 and 1938. On 13 August 1936, FIFA voted France as host nation at Berlin. During the first round of elections France was preferred over Argentina and Germany. The plan to stage a second consecutive tournament in Europe created confusion in South America where the site was thought to be alternating between the two continents. It was the last World Cup held until the beginning of World War II. Due to dissatisfaction at the decision to stage a second consecutive World Cup in Europe, neither Uruguay nor Argentina joined the competition Spain has been hesitant to participate due to the raging Spanish Civil War in the meantime. The hosts, France, and the title winners, Italy, both won overwhelmingly and is the first time they both met. From 1938 until 2002, game winners were granted direct entry into the World Cup, following which they were removed. For the remaining 14 positions, 11 are assigned to Europe, 2 to the Americas and 1 to Asia. As a result, it included only three non-European countries: Nicaragua, Cuba and the Dutch East Indies. This is the lowest number of teams allowed to participate in a FIFA World Cup outside of the host country. Austria qualified for World Cup but the Anschluss merged Austria with Germany after the qualifying was complete. Austria then withdrew from the competition, replacing the German squad with some Austrian players, but not even Austrian main player Matthias Sindelar, who declined to compete with the reunited side. Latvia was the runner-up in the qualification division of Austria, but was not permitted to take part; then Austria's position remained vacant, and by implication Sweden, who was expected to be Austria's first competitor, advanced straight to the second round. The tournament saw the first, and only, participation of Cuba and Dutch East Indies in a World Cup match as of 2018. It has already seen debuts in Poland and Norway at the World Cup. Until 1970 Romania had not qualified for another World Cup, Poland and the Netherlands would not reappear in a final tournament until 1974 and until 1994 Norway would not qualify for another World Cup final. Before 1994, a single team from Germany emerged again, while Austria returned in 1954 and came in sixth. It had maintained the format of the event in 1934. If a match has been drawn so after 90 minutes, 30 minutes of extra time will be played. If after extra time the score was still level so the match will repeat. It was the first World Cup event to employ a single elimination system. At Paris on 5 March 1938 Germany, France, Italy, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Cuba and Brazil were seeded for games. Thanks to Austria's exit Sweden got a bye. Five of the first seven round matches have taken extra time to crack the deadlock; two games have already gone to a replay. In one replay Cuba advanced into the next round, at Romania's expense. On the other replay, Germany, who led 1–0 against Switzerland in the first round, led 2–0 but was finally defeated by 2–4. This loss, which happened in front of a angry, bottle-throwing audience in Paris, was blamed by German coach Sepp Herberger for the defeatist nature of the five Austrian players he was forced to include; a German journalist subsequently reported that "Germans and Austrians seem to be competing against each other as though they are in the same group."