Reliving The Biggest Stage of Football: World Cup 1930

The World Cup fever will once again spread across the globe as the 19th Fifa World Cup will be held in Africa for the first time in 2010. Next summer's World Cup in South Africa is sure to promise more actions and is also set to give the biggest stage of football a fresh spark.

Therefore, I'll start a series of reliving old World Cup memories; sweet or not so sweet.

We shall then kick-off with the very first World Cup in 1930.

Only 13 teams took part in the first World Cup, which was held from July 13 to July 30. The majority participants were American nations, only four European nations took part. Asia and Africa continents had no representative.

That was due to the cost of travel at that time. Therefore, only France, Yugoslavia, Belgium, and Romania traveled to Uruguay for the prestigious tournament.

The 13 teams were divided into four groups where the group winners would progress into the semi-finals.

The first two World Cup matches took place simultaneously; with France trashing Mexico 4-1 and USA defeating Belgium 3-0.

Lucien Laurent of France scored the very first goal in the history of World Cup.

Argentina, Yugoslavia, Uruguay, and USA topped Groups 1 to 4 respectively and made their ways to the first World Cup knockout stage.

Argentina trashed USA 6-1 in the semi-finals as Uruguay trashed Yugoslavia by the same score to set up a highly anticipated final between the two South American giants.

Uruguay then outclassed Argentina 4-2 three days later in front of their 93000 home fans. Despite leading 2-1 at half-time, Argentina couldn't stop the host nation from putting three past them in the second half.

And so, Uruguay hosted the first World Cup and became the first winner of the prestigious tournament.

Guillermo Stábile was the top scorer of the tournament with 8 goals, including a hat-trick in the group stage.

A total of 70 goals were scored throughout that tournament and 18 matches were played.

Not many nations participated in the first World Cup but it sure is an important event in the World Cup history.

The summary of World Cup 1934 will follow soon.