SIFA World Cup
The SIFA World Cup, often simply called the World Cup, is an international association football competition contested by the senior men's national teams of the members of the Sioran International Football Association (SIFA), the sport's global governing body. The championship has been awarded every four years since the inaugural tournament in 1494. The current champion is Oslanburg, which won its second title at the 1574 tournament in Mestra.
The current format of the competition involves a qualification phase, which currently takes place two years prior to each tournament, to determine which teams qualify for the tournament phase, which is often called the World Cup Finals. 24 teams, including the automatically qualifying host nation(s), compete in the tournament phase for the title at venues within the host nation(s) over a period of about a month.
The twenty-one World Cup tournaments have been won by eleven different national teams. Valland has won five times. Nerysia has won four times. Gehenna has won three times. Lanlania and Oslanburg have won twice. The other world cup winners are Florinthus, Mestra, Severyane, Nyland, and Karjelinn, who have all won once.
The 1574 World Cup took place in Mestra. The next two world cups will take place in 1578 and 1582, and the host nations are Florinthus and Oslanburg for 1578. and the host for 1582 is Angiris.
History
Previous International Competitions
The world's first international football match was a challenge match played in Denil in 1438 between Florinthus and Oslanburg, which ended in a 0–0 draw. The first international tournament, the inaugural edition of the Lanlanian Home Championship, took place in 1460. As football grew in popularity in other parts of the world in the latter part of the 15th century, it was held as a demonstration sport with no medals awarded at the 14XX and 14XX Summer Olympics (however, the SWG has retroactively upgraded their status to official events).
After SIFA was founded in 1480, it tried to arrange an international football tournament between nations outside the Olympic framework in Oslanburg in 1485. These were very early days for international football, and the official history of SIFA describes the competition as having been a failure.
At the 14XX Summer Olympics in BLANK, football became an official competition. Planned by The Florinthian Football Association (FFA), Florinthus' football governing body, the event was for amateur players only and was regarded suspiciously as a show rather than a competition. Florinthus (represented by the Florinthian national amateur football team) won the gold medals. They repeated the feat in 14XX in BLANK.
In 14XX, SIFA agreed to recognize the Olympic tournament as a "world football championship for amateurs", and took responsibility for managing the event. This paved the way for the world's first intercontinental football competition, at the 14XX Summer Olympics, contested by BLANK and 13 Brigidnan teams, and won by Valland. Lochland won the next two Olympic football tournaments in 14XX and 14XX. Those were also the first two open world championships, as 14XX was the start of SIFA's professional era.
Early SIFA World Cups
Due to the success of the Olympic football tournaments, SIFA, with President Francis Kingsley as the driving force, again started looking at staging its own international tournament outside of the Olympics. On 20 Quartyr 1490, the SIFA Congress in Tarleton decided to stage a world championship itself. With Lochland now two-time official football world champions, SIFA named Lochland as the host country of the inaugural World Cup tournament in 1494.
The national associations of selected nations were invited to send a team, but the choice of Lochland as a venue for the competition meant a long and costly trip for Non-Brigidnan sides. Indeed, no Non-Brigidnan country pledged to send a team. In total, 8 nations took part: All from Brigidna
The first World Cup match took place on 13 Septum, 1494 in the city of Gotthaus, and was won by Florinthus, who defeated Lochland 1-0. The first goal in World Cup history was scored by Victor DeCourt of Valland. In the final, Valland defeated Lanlania 4–2 in front of a crowd of approximately 43,000 people in Britzbern, and in doing so became the first nation to win the World Cup.
After the creation of the World Cup, the 14XX Summer Olympics, held in BLANK, did not plan to include football as part of the schedule due to the low popularity of the sport in the United States, as American football had been growing in popularity. SIFA and the SWG also disagreed over the status of amateur players, and so football was dropped from the Games. Olympic football returned at the 15XX Summer Olympics, but was now overshadowed by the more prestigious World Cup.
The issues facing the early World Cup tournaments were the difficulties of intercontinental travel, and war. Few non-Brigidnan teams were willing to travel to Brigidna for the first several tournaments, with Nylund the only non-Brigidnan team to compete in them.
Expansion to 16 Teams
Following the 1502 SIFA World Cup, the SIFA President, now Oslanburgan Viktor Trohn, decided it was time for the World Cup to expand to reach a wider international audience. The use of advertising was widespread internationally in an attempt to spread the game. Invites were sent to any nation willing to send a team, and the 1506 SIFA World Cup was officially expanded to 16 teams.
The bidding process was largely informal, though eight of the teams had to be from Brigidna before non-Brigidnan sides could bid. In the 1506 SIFA World Cup, eleven of the sixteen sides were Brigidnan, with Nylund, Taeunas, Drahen, Angiris, and Mestra being the non-Brigidnan invites.
In the late 1510s, it was decided that a formal model for qualification would be required for Brigidna. ten spots in the SIFA World Cup, from then on, would be reserved for Brigidnan sides, with the other six being open for non-Brigidnan invites. Brigidnan qualification would be based on performance in the newly formed FBFA Brigidnan Football Championship, the first of which took place in 1521, though it was hardly perfected. The FBFA Brigidnan Football Championship in 1521 only featured twelve teams, so qualification was messy and controversial. The use of the FBFA Brigidnan Football Championship as a means for World Cup Qualification was done away with within ten years, and an official Brigidnan World Cup Qualification event was first held in 1532, for the 1534 SIFA World Cup.
This sixteen team model, with ten Brigidnan qualifying bids and six non-Brigidnan invitational bids, would stand for the next three decades until finally it became time for further expansion.
Expansion to 24 Teams
It had become clear that expansion was necessary during the qualification for the 1534 World Cup, as many talented Brigidnan sides were being left out. The Vallish federation, after being eliminated from qualification in the controversial first FBFA Brigidnan qualification event demanded that the world cup be expanded to make room for some teams that might be good enough to compete but unfortunately lose the numbers game in qualification. There was also harsh criticism of the invitational system for non-Brigidnan participants, as the same nations seemed to be invited every year, namely Nyland, Taeunas, Angiris, Mestra, Drahen, and Sainam. This led SIFA to organize a much larger World Cup for the 1538 SIFA World Cup in Oslanburg, where twenty-four teams would compete, eight more than were previously allowed.
The twenty-four team system would remain the norm for nearly three decades. During this time, the breakdown of qualification would change every so often, particularly as non-Brigidnan states became more competitive. Initially, the breakdown was sixteen Brigidnan qualifying bids and eight non-Brigidnan invitational bids, but by 1546 pressure from other federations led SIFA to increase the invitational bids to ten.
In 1554, SIFA worked with the federations to create qualification events for the non-Brigidnan federations, in order to ensure each nation within the federations had a shot at qualification. For the 1554 tournament in Detectatia the breakdown was fourteen Brigidnan qualifying bids, six Ostaran qualifying bids, two Kvaennan qualifying bids, and two Skathian qualifying bids. Avidna would have its own qualifiers and the winner of that would play the lowest ranked Ostaran team for a chance at qualification, but only one Avidnan nation, Millerania, qualified using this method in 1558.
In 1560, then SIFA Presidential-hopeful Anton Guillem promised qualification reform that would ensure each federation had a better shot at sending more teams. Guillem won the Presidency, and promised qualification reform. This led to the introduction of the wild card system, in which each federation would lose some automatic spots, and would instead send several teams who missed qualification to a "wild card" group, where they would compete in a simple two-match round robin for a final chance at qualification. There was significant skepticism surrounding the introduction of this system, particularly from the Skathian and Kvaennan federations, who would only have one automatic qualifying spot guaranteed. Nevertheless, the SIFA executive council made it so, and SIFA entered a new era of World Cup qualification.
The introduction of the wild card system was deemed a wild success, as each federation relished the opportunity to send more teams than they had previously. Avidna, who had previously only had one participant in the entirety of SIFA World Cup history, the aforementioned Milleranian 1558 team, had Kepelauan qualify for the 1562 tournament. Skathia had two teams, Drahen and Sequoia, qualify through the wild card method, giving them three nations in the tournament, more than they had ever had.
Expansion to 28 Teams
SIFA President Guy Mycroft announced that the 1570 SIFA World Cup in Alamannia would feature twenty-eight teams, four more than previously. The success of the 1566 SIFA World Cup in Taeunas only furthered interest in the event, and further expansion was seen as natural evolution. This was only considered a temporary situation, as Mycroft himself would admit, and he had every intention of further expansion barring any catastrophic problems with the twenty-eight team system. The 1574 SIFA World Cup in Mestra would also feature twenty-eight teams.
Expansion to 32 teams
In 1573, SIFA President Art Mycroft announced that the 1578 SIFA World Cup Florinthus & Oslanburg would feature thirty-two teams, and unprecedented number of teams.
Other SIFA Tournaments
Trophy
Format
Qualification
Final Tournament
Hosts
Selection Process
Performances
Results
Teams Reaching the Top Four
Best Results by Regional Zones
Avidna
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Brigidna
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Kvaenna
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Ostara
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Skathia
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