Search: 'World Cup 1954'

With the Soviet national team causing huge disappointment at the 1952 Olympics, Sasha Goryunov explains how the fallout had huge ramifications for the Soviet league

The long-term significance
This was a year of upheaval for Soviet football. After a hiatus of 17 years the national side took to the field again and participated in its first ever official international tournament, the 1952 Olympics. In losing to Tito’s Yugoslavia in the first round, the team failed in both sporting and political terms with grave consequences for the reigning champions, CDSA. The famous “Lieutenants’ Team” had dominated post-war USSR football, with five titles in seven years, but was held responsible for what happened in Helsinki and disbanded. This opened the door for Spartak Moscow, who went on to dominate the domestic scene for the next dozen years.

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James Calder recalls a time when the Colombian championship was dominated by well-paid foreign players

The long-term significance
The beginning of the end of El Dorado, the great Colombian gold rush. Blacklisted by FIFA following its foundation in 1948, the national professional league attracted some of the world’s leading players, lured by high wages funded by the country’s economic boom, massive attendances and a conservative government anxious to divert attention away from widespread and bloody political and social unrest.

Angered by the continuing exodus of its stars, the Argentinian FA complained of “piracy”, leading FIFA to expel Colombia in 1951. The dispute was ended shortly afterwards by the Pacto de Lima, an agreement by which an increasingly cash-strapped league agreed to let its well-paid imports return to their clubs of origin by October 15, 1954, in return for readmission to the international fold. The Colombian free-for-all also had an impact on the English game, the defection of a handful of players resulting in two sizeable increases in the maximum wage, which was eventually abolished in 1961.

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Three years ago, Jens Heilmann began a project to photograph the footballs used in every World Cup final. From the introduction to a new book, The World Cup Balls, Norbert Thomma describes how they were painstakingly tracked down

Internet searches on World Cup footballs showed only that they had been badly photographed. There was scant information about the originals. Apparently the world was only interested in goals and artistic overhead kicks, in saved penalties and vicious fouls, in posing winners and fallen idols. But the single item they all fight over was often ignored.

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No other World Cup hosts have been knocked out in such extreme circumstances as Switzerland in 1954. Paul Joyce looks back at the tournament's highest-scoring match

The 1954 World Cup is mainly remembered for West Germany’s 3-2 victory over favourites Hungary in the final. But the quarter-final between Switzerland and Austria, the so-called Hitzeschlacht von Lausanne (Heat Battle of Lausanne), is if anything even more noteworthy. Not only was it played in intolerable weather conditions but it remains the highest-scoring game in World Cup finals history.

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Winning the Welsh Cup was an achievement but a run in Europe was how a now-defunct team from Llandudno Junction made history. Owen Amos remembers Borough FC's outing in the 1963 Cup-Winners Cup

The first Welsh club to win a European tie wasn’t Cardiff, Swansea or even Wrexham. It was Borough United, in the 1963-64 European Cup-Winners Cup. The Welsh Cup winners entered the Cup-Winners Cup every year, bar the first tournament, in 1960-61, when only ten teams entered. In 1961 Swansea Town (they became City in 1970) were beaten by East Germany’s Motor Jena. The year after Bangor City were beaten by Napoli, despite winning the first leg 2-0. Then came Borough.

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