Reliving The Biggest Stage of Football: World Cup 1934

The World Cup fever is about to unleash anytime soon as the 19th World Cup will be held in South Africa next summer.

Therefore, I started a series of Reliving The Biggest Stage of Football recently to relive the sweet and not so sweet memories of the past World Cups.

To read about World Cup 1930, click here.

The second World Cup in 1934 was held in Europe for the first time in history. Italy, the host nation competed with 15 other nations for glory. It was held from May 27 to June 10.

There was some changes made to the tournament then. The sixteen nations went into the knockout stage straightaway, the group stage system wasn't used then.

Leopold Kielhol of Switzerland was the first scorer of the tournament. His seventh minute strike was the first in the eight simultaneously held encounters.

Spain, Hungary, Switzerland, Italy, Czechoslovakia, Sweden, Austria, and Germany made the quarter-finals after overcoming Brazil, Egypt, Netherlands, USA, Romania, Argentina, France, and Belgium respectively.

Austria, Italy, Germany, and Czechoslovakia would then beat Hungary, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland to reach the semi-finals.

The simultaneously held semi-finals saw host nation Italy narrowly defeated Austria 1-0 as Czechoslovakia beat Germany 3-1.

The third placing match four days later saw Germany edged Austria 3-2 in a five-goal thriller.

Three days later, host nation Italy defeated Czechoslovakia 2-1 after extra time in Rome to win the World Cup for the first time. Angelo Schiavio was the hero of the match after scoring in the 95th minute.

Oldřich Nejedlý of Czechoslovakia was the top scorer of the tournament with 5 goals.

17 matches were played and 70 goals were scored by the participants in the process.

We've witnessed a little evolution to the World Cup 1934 from the previous one in 1930. Will there be more changes to the competition format in the coming World Cups?

More to come from this series. Hope you enjoy reading.