The History of Football

As the spotlight falls on Qatar for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, we tell the story of how the world's biggest sporting spectacle began, in Uruguay in 1930.

How did a small South American nation of just two million people, thousands of miles from football's centre of power in Europe, come to launch this major global competition? We discuss the fractious international relations, the political cunning, and the sporting excellence behind the successful bid.

We learn how football helped shape a nation riven by civil war for much of its short existence, and hear about the tournament itself - the unfinished stadium, the dodgy refereeing decisions and, for some of the teams, the sheer ordeal of just getting there.

Rajan Datar is joined by Andreas Campomar, a writer and publisher from London and author of Golazo! A History of Latin American Football; Dr Philippe Vonnard, a historian specialising in the internationalisation of sport at the University of Fribourg and the University of Lausanne, both in Switzerland; and Brenda Elsey, a professor of Latin American sports and cultural history at Hofstra University, New York.

Producer: Simon Tulett

(Picture: Stamp issued by the Hungarian Post to commemorate the 1930 World Cup final between Uruguay and Argentina. Credit: Fototeca Gilardi/Getty Images)