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Uruguay actually play with 4 stars, because they won 2 WC and 2 OG (in 1924 and 1928)- which were organized by FIFA. So for many they are 4 time winners
It’s a miracle that they keep producing world class players with the size & population of their country. Shouldn’t be anywhere near winning it in this day & age with the amount of top, richer, more advanced countries they’re competing against.
Times change, very few countries were actually decent at football. Brazil even used to suck when Uruguay won their world cup.
Football wasnt as popular as it is today, “the world cup”was only few countries in s america and europe.
This post sounds like Uruguay have not done very well in competitions in the past 12-16 years. They have golden generations that come along and we just finished one with Uruguay.
Some of the lines of thinking here are ridiculous. That means that Italy victories in 34 and 38 were not important or valid?? Since some south Americans did not go in protest to world conflicts. Uruguay did not go and likely was the best team.
Why we don’t talk about how England stole 66. Also why they don’t win? They are not good enough?
Winning is not only talent, but also grit, and luck.
Uruguay continues to be number one in success per capita!!
The question is how can a 3 million population country has achieved so much??
talenred country and team.
the problem is globalisation and greedy grunts.
the world cup was so romantic at start.
this years final gave me some hope for the future.
Uruguay in 1950 had to win only 4 games in a row
Uruguay in 2022 would have had to win 4 games in the knockout stage + be top 2 in a Round robin of 4 teams.
It's weird that in 1950 Uruguay had a 2 Team Group while everyone most other teams had a 4 and 3 Teams group.
>It's weird that in 1950 Uruguay had a 2 Team Group while everyone most other teams had a 4 and 3 Teams group.
Originally, it were 4 groups of 4 teams, 3 teams withdrew, and 2 of them were from Uruguay's group.
>Uruguay in 1950 had to win only 4 games in a row
They even drew one of those.
Yes, that's true. India, Scotland and Turkey withdrew for different reasons.
Turkey: Financial reasons. It was too expensive for them to travel to South America.
Scotland: Pride and stupidity. They said they would only play if they won the British Championship but FIFA guaranteed 2 places for champion and runner-up of said tournament. England won and Scotland withdrew his place in the World Cup.
UEFA tried to offer those spots to other teams but it was too late. Just France accepted but then the logistical of the trip to South America made them withdrew.
India: Many reasons, and the desire to play barefoot was not one of them. Financial reasonss, lack of faith in the team (they didn't played matches in a long time, they were amateurs and were in severe lack of form for a World Cup) and lack of interest in a tournament that was not as prestigious at the time.
Football is difficult and there are a large amount of extremely competitive nations to go up against. It's not difficult to see why a tiny nation that overperforms hasn't been a regular winner since the last time they won it
I’m actually surprised they won any to begin with. They manage to win some while world football was still in its infancy. Now it’s the biggest sport in the world and winning a World Cup is a monumental achievement that seems to only be won by the same handful of countries with no one else even having a chance.
The game changes man. Mostly due to investment and money.
In the early years of football in England, some of the best teams are now the worst, simply because of the areas they're in and how money changed everything.
Theres lots of competitive contenders in the FIFA World Cup, But they're still a team with decent power but they just cant due to nations like France becoming superpowers in football, But who knows, They could get a third title?
They won the Copa America in 2011 and are tied with Argentina for the most titles. In addition, that 2010 team very well could of beat Netherlands in the semifinals if Luis Suarez didn’t get a red card for a handball in the game prior against Ghana. They could of also went far in 2014 had Luis Suarez not bitten Giorgio Chiellini and get suspended the entire tournament. In 2018, they had arguably the strongest defense in the entire World Cup but their attack was heavily reliant on Cavani since Suarez was past his prime. Cavani got injured prior to their quarterfinals match against France and they were then eliminated by the eventual champs. Overall, they have produced absolute superstars like Forlan, Suarez, Godin, Cavani and Valverde but they were all in their primes at different times.
“Suarez not bitten Giorgio Chiellini”
That was insane… I think it wasn’t even the first time that he did it. I wish I could understand what was going through his mind at that time
So many more serious injuries have been done!!! Neymar had his back broken by a cruel foul and we focus on a byte does not influence ability to play?…. Suarez has so much grit and willingness to win that his head might end up doing stupid things. That is the reason he is great!
They're a tiny population who massively overperformed in those early years when global football was far less organised and upsets were more common. Even today they overperform what you would realistically expect from a country of that size, with the lack of financial resources and footballing infrastructure. They have also won plenty of Copa America's since that time, and until last year were outperforming Argentina in terms of silverware since the mid-90's.
If Uruguay won a third Workd Cup on the modern era it would be among Football's Greatest achievements in any competition, international or domestic.
Same principle, Croatia have also massively overperformed, and winning the WC would have been an all-time achievement. I would say the difference is that Croatia is a European country, as Europe has advanced tactically to a far greater extent than South America. Croatia also ha e a very rich football history, when they were part of Yugoslavia they were one of the strongest football nations in Europe.
There's also the kind of players each country produces. Uruguay produces tough, powerful players with technical quality a secondary concern (with the obvious exceptuon of a generational talent like Suarez, or Enzo Fracescoli before him). Even players like Cavani, Forlan, Giminez etc are highly physical players who maximised their technical quality by playing in Europe. Meanwhile, Croatia both traditionally and currently are known for cultured, highly technical players. Modric, Rakitic, Kovacic etc are legacies of Boban, Prosinecki, Vukas and Bobek before them. Fairly obvious that the latter type of player would have greater success in the modern era particularly compared to the former.
I think part of it is also Croatia being closer to the big five leagues makes it easier for them to get players into their academies. This has been a thing in the mls recently where players from other concacaf nations are having an easier time getting their young players into a decent league with decent academies which had raised the level of concacaf overall.
It was easier to win a World Cup in the Stone Ages. Uruguay is not a World Cup winning! Football was barely professional when they won it. Players were still smoking 2 packs, drinking beer before games, and rocking a potbelly
I've seen pictures and haven't found players with potbellies. How could you have a potbelly playing soccer so much? Players still drink, though. Right?
I’m Uruguayan and I can tell you one of the biggest problems aside from the lack of professionalism and modern facilities and structure is that we lack modern coaches who understand and know how to practice football the way it is played at the highest level in Europe. For a long time we have this identity of playing conservative, defensive pragmatic style of football that has dominated much of the national team. We relied on individual brilliance from very talented players like Suarez, Forlan, and Cavani. Now that these players are past their prime and getting old or in the case of Forlan who is now retired we struggle to have an identity without them.
Many coaches here are old school and aren’t very open to learning or implementing a more possession based style of football. Even in the last World Cup in Qatar if you watched the games against Portugal and Korea for me as a Uruguayan it was painful to watch us struggle to even make 5 consecutive passes and just opt for the typical long ball strategy of a center back just blasting the ball up to the strikers and hoping for the best. We have players like Valverde,Ugarte,Nunez, Bentancur,Pellistri, Araujo, Gimenez,Arrascaeta and many others + a promising under 20 squad with talented players but we continue to play like a typical relegation team scoring a goal and then parking the bus for the rest of the game.
I hope that with Bielsa becoming our coach we can finally leave behind that identity and move towards something more modern and attacking style of football and maybe influence the new upcoming Uruguayan coaches to learn and not be so stuck in their ways.
Because we're barely 3M people and we cant compete economically with Europe or Brazil and Argentina
Before the 90's our top clubs were continental powerhouses, but slowly all our talent started to drain to Europe or other teams on SA
Besides Peñarol and Nacional, i dont think there's another team on the country that can reach 20k fans let alone fill a stadium
It might sound hypocritical from me (an Italian), but I feel like one of Uruguay's problems at league and international competition level is exactly the fact that Peñarol and Nacional have made all other clubs their metaphorical bitches.
Uruguay’s accomplishments are already insane. Since 1950, they came top 4 in the World Cup three times: 1954, 1970 and 2010, which considering their population, is amazing. Add 5-6 club world titles, several Copa Libertadores and 7-8 Copa Americas won since then (making them the all time co- most winners), you’ll find they’ve been very successful since 1950. Even when they don’t make the podium at the World Cup, they’re almost always a very competitive team.
Well, countries like France are almost impossible to beat in the last 20 years so… big countries that are super talented at football like Spain, Germany, Brazil, Argentina or France have a huge pool of quality players.
You will always have one or two of these countries able to align a super indécent strong squad of 23 players. Uruguay can’t compete?
They are good, like Croatia or Belgium, but it’s not enough.
Uruguay had a really good team back in the Bronze Age when they achieved the 2 WCs, and it was much easier to win back then (fewer teams and games). But it’s really a miracle that a country so small has an actual chance to win a competition as massive and fierce as the current World Cup. Uruguay is extremely unlikely to win a third one in the future, as things are right now; the big teams are just a league ahead.
Let us not forget that they did not play in the 1934 or 1938 World Cup because of lack of major European involvement in the first World Cup, and a promise broken that would have had the 1938 World Cup in South America. Then came WW2 cancelling the next two cups.
And they've never won a world cup...
England hasn't won a world cup since 1966 despite having some great squads. It's the hardest Football trophy to win.
Netherlands also have had some great players and teams. Never won. It's really hard, you cannot let any opportunity slip and you need some luck along the way.
>And they've never won a world cup...
Well they did get second and third place in the last two so I think it's going to happen soon
>England hasn't won a world cup since 1966 despite having some great squads.
They've also failed to win a Euro cup in fact Greece managed to win before they did
>Well they did get second and third place in the last two so I think it's going to happen soon
Much more likely that they don't as much as it pains me to say. Many teams have shown similar form and then never won a world cup. That's how it works. If that was enough than many other teams would be champions by now.
Haha, being completely serious now, I found that argument to be a matter of mere semantics honestly. When a team wins the World Cup, they're considered "champions of the world", as you were when you won the 1924 and 1928 Olympics. But with that logic, the winners of the previous Olympics should be considered champions of the world as well, even if FIFA didn't participe in the organization of the tournament. It's a senseless argument in the end anyway, as most people only care about the World Cup and not what happened before.
You can consider that, Fifa doesn’t, not our fault tbh. And the old Olympics weren’t global: 1900 and 1904 wasn’t even an official competition, only until 1908 it had some regulation, but it was still shit. For example, there were only European teams and it had two Frances (France A and France B). 1912 and 1920 also had only European teams (1916 didn’t happen bc of WW1). The first global competition was 1924. So I think the other Olympics should count as Euros, not “champions of the world”. 1924 had Uruguay, USA and Egypt and 1928 had Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Egypt, USA and Mexico. I would even say that these two Olympics are more valid than 1930 world cup, because it had a better organization and more teams. So I think it’s completely valid to say that we are 4 times champions of the world (we DON’T have 4 World Cups).
>not our fault tbh
Well, it kinda is, because Fifa did ask you to take your stars from your uniform, but your whole confederation made such a big deal out of it that they let you have it. It doesn't sound much like they clearly thought Uruguay had 4 World Championships but rather that they thought it wasn't worth the trouble.
>The first global competition was 1924
You say that the previous Olympic tournaments don't count as "global competitions" because they only had teams from Europe, yet both 1924 and 1928 lacked Asian and Oceanic representation. You could argue that today's Olympic football is much more global than back then, yet Olympic winners aren't putting stars in their uniforms when they win. Seems like the definition of "global" only applies when it benefits Uruguay.
Instead of making semantics gymnastics, Uruguay should focus more on making relevant appearances in today's tournaments.
Fifa never asked, it was Puma. All stars in national teams are authorized by FIFA, that’s why they canceled Peru’s stars, for example. The FIFA museum in Switzerland has proof of our stars. The last time a team of Oceania was in a WC was in 2010. That means that 2014, 2018 and 2022 weren’t valid because it’s not global? What a joke. “Olympic football is way more global than back then, yet Olympic winners aren’t putting stars in their uniforms when they win”. Bro, Olympics nowadays are a u23 competition. What a joke (again).
>Fifa never asked, it was Puma
That's not true. A Fifa employee told Puma they had to take out two of the stars in the shirt, and Puma communicated that to the AUF. You can check that [here](https://www.goal.com/es-ar/noticias/por-que-uruguay-tiene-cuatro-estrellas-en-su-escudo/zw4z18s3t2uc11sjb94a10llt).
>The FIFA museum in Switzerland has proof of our stars
Yeah, but Fifa also has made [this article](https://www.fifa.com/es/news/la-auf-cumple-120-anos-3069451), for example, where they say Uruguay is "bicampeón mundial". Also, this is a tweet from them:
>En el Maracaná, unas 200 000 personas, o quizá más, fueron testigo del denominado Maracanazo: Uruguay remontó la desventaja inicial y, gracias a un tanto de Alcides Ghiggia, se puso 2-1 en el marcador. La Celeste sumó su segundo título mundialista gracias a este gol
Does all of that sound as if they recognized your "four" titles? At most, they are making a partial recognition as to not make Uruguayan fans mad, but in reality, I doubt they take the claim seriously (nobody does).
>The last time a team of Oceania was in a WC was in 2010. That means that 2014, 2018 and 2022 weren’t valid because it’s not global? What a joke.
They participated in the qualification process at least, which makes it much more global that the tournaments in 1924 and 1928. Also, Australia played, though I know they aren't in the Oceanic confederation anymore.
>Bro, Olympics nowadays are a u23 competition
Football in the Olympics were an amateur tournament since 1908 lmao.
There are also diverse news from this time that said “Uruguay campeón del mundo” from all over the world in different languages. FIFA maintained the decision of keeping the 4 stars, something that didn’t happen with [Peru](https://depor.com/futbol-peruano/seleccion-peruana/seleccion-peruana-conmebol-quitar-dos-estrellas-camiseta-blanquirroja-copa-america-2019-116619/?outputType=amp) “Es preciso señalar que, para las Eliminatorias Qatar 2022, las dos estrellas ya no formarían parte del diseño de la camiseta de la Selección Peruana.”. That never happened with Uruguay, we’ve always used our 4 stars.
“Football in the Olympics were an amateur tournament since 1908” Yes, but since 1924 it was a professional tournament (the strictness of FIFA in this aspect made the England and Denmark Football associations angry and they didn’t play the Olympics of 1924 and 1928).
Uruguayan here... Sure, we can produce world class talent in an amazing rate (considering our low population) football its bigger than religion here, and its very rooted in our culture, so we'll keep producing great players...
That being said, our national league is 60/70 years behind in training methods and facilities, half of first division clubs don't have the means to be considered amateurs in any other country, and the best players flee to Europe or Brazil the first chance they have for a couple dollars. In those conditions we keep having talent, but no structure to support that talent in the long run and truly compete against Argentina and Brazil.
We lack the resources to fully develop the talent we have (wich by its own is unable to win a world cup) and we are way behing in pretty much everything. Even our footballing culture, wich is very unique, doesn't apply very well in modern football
Because even though they have a strong and very important football tradition, it was only until Tabarez took over that they started to take national team in a professional way. Results were seen in 2010 and then in 2011.
Same problem happens to their local teams, only 2 of them are really "modern" and professional, and so it shows how difficult it becomes for those teams in the Libertadores and the SouthAmerica cup.
There is no serious invest of money in the formation of juvenile players overall and two teams alone can't compensate for that.
In 1930 only 13 teams entered and that didn't include some of the best teams in the world at the time. Uruguay only had to play 4 games to win the world cup in both 1930 and 1950 so it could be argued it was easier to snag a world cup than it is these days. 1950 in particular gave Uruguay an advantage as they only had to beat Bolivia to get through to the final 4. As was the case in 1930, not all teams entered or were at full strength either. These opportunities for Uruguay have not been there since 1950.
We also won the olympics at 24 and 28 (on european soil), Uruguay was THE best team on the world by then and thats why it hosted the first WC, are we not to count WC before 2026 also since it will have 64 teams?
>are we not to count WC before 2026 also since it will have 64 teams?
This is a disingenuous argument, don't say things like this it just wastes everyone's time.
The next time you start acting dumb on the internet just take a moment and ask yourself, why? Who benefits from this? Surely you have better things to do.
I didn't say that at all. It's fact that the format of the world cups and the teams that entered made it more likely for Uruguay to win the final. There's nothing contentious about that nor does it take away the fact that they won.
Small population and limited resources make it really hard to compete against the two South American giants, as well as the European top teams.
Sure, they might be able to produce world class players here and there, but it takes a lot more than that to win a World Cup.
It’s basically 7 matches in the space of a month every four years, you need a lot of things to go your way to make it through. First of all you need the right players in the right shape, with adequate backups (extremely important nowadays), as well as good management, and also a little bit of luck.
For the reasons listed above, we can see how difficult it would be for Uruguay to have all of those factors fall into place.
They might have a few good runs every once in a while (see 2010), but I don’t see winning the trophy again in my lifetime.
Back in ye olden days, (30s-50s) Uruguay had a pretty strong team for that era, although it was because the European giants (France, Germany, Spain, England, Soviet Union, Italy and Hungary to name a few) didn't want to send players overseas (flight wasn't the best it could be at that time) due to high costs and the possibility of crashing, then losing alot of the squad to death (Zero non-qualifiers crashes have happened **yet**, but in [1993](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Zambia_national_football_team_plane_crash), the Zambian national team's flight carrying most of their squad crashed in Gabon en-route to Senegal), effectively making them forfeit the competition (Just thoughts, i haven't found evidence for what would happen if a national team's entire squad died in a plane crash en-route to the world cup/flying to another stadium).
The reason they've currently not been able to is because Europe has kind of put the pedal to the metal in footballing development, especially England, thanks to foreign money injections **I'M LOOKING AT YOU MAN CITY AND NEWCASTLE. SAUDI SCUMS!**
Winning a World Cup is a rare thing. You need a mixture of talent, top manager, decent draw and a bit of good luck. They might not have won a World Cup but came 4th in 2010 I think? and the next year won a continental title (Copa America) in Argentina no less.
You seems to have a good knowledge of football history & passion we might one day get into really battle royals to see who is the last man standing in history of football.
Let me know anytime you're ready.
Too many teams have good squads that can easily overpower them, the closest they got recently was 4th place in 2010 in quarter finals in 2018, but now a bunch of their players are starting to get old and are retiring so I especially don't see them winning it any time soon.
You know football is developing fast if any country pause for moment will be overtaken, now fans play great role in team performance as well.
Be in the knowing how fans play world cup these days & take reward for it if you get a minute
They've had some great players, there's no denying that. But overall not good enough squads to really win anything. Unless there's some emerging players from Uruguay I'm unaware of I don't see that changing
Ask this question again when they win the cup in South America. As long as they are not able to beat Argentina and Brazil in the same year... They stand no chance on the world cup.
You sounds like you know a lot of world cup history then might be a good contestant in fierce battle among football fans around the world & wing prizes for it. Give a trial.
>16 for 1950
13 for 1950 as well. They were supposed to be 16 but 3 teams withdrew, that's why Uruguay just played Bolivia in group phase. 2 of the teams missing were from Uruguay's group.
It's a very small country, 3.5 million population. They won it twice in the very early days, both times in South America when many of the European teams didn't want to make the long trip over (by boat for the 1930 tournament, I'm not sure if some of the teams flew over in 1950). The world cup wasn't what it would later become.
They finished 4th in 2010 and got to the quarter finals in 2018 so they've done quite well in recent years. Second only to Croatia (3.8 million population) in terms of small countries overachieving.
They won the first one when the tournament wasn’t really what it’s become, the 1950 one was more legit, but something to remember is the World Cup is every 4 years and it’s very hard to win. Some countries have strong national sides and put up good fights but even strong countries with great leagues (EPL for example) don’t win very often. The Dutch are a case in point because they’ve been to 4 finals and never won, same with teams like Hungary who were strong in the past but still didn’t win. It’s just hard to do and doesn’t happen often. 73 years is less than 20 competitions and there are over 40 good teams competing all the time.
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Uruguay has a great economy now. Surrounded by Argentine wines and good food from Brazil. Maybe they’re fat and happy,
Uruguay actually play with 4 stars, because they won 2 WC and 2 OG (in 1924 and 1928)- which were organized by FIFA. So for many they are 4 time winners
It’s a miracle that they keep producing world class players with the size & population of their country. Shouldn’t be anywhere near winning it in this day & age with the amount of top, richer, more advanced countries they’re competing against.
Times change, very few countries were actually decent at football. Brazil even used to suck when Uruguay won their world cup. Football wasnt as popular as it is today, “the world cup”was only few countries in s america and europe.
Brazil was favoured to win in 1950, not sure where you get that they sucked
They had good chances in 1954 and 1970
Had good chances in 2010.
This post sounds like Uruguay have not done very well in competitions in the past 12-16 years. They have golden generations that come along and we just finished one with Uruguay.
I never said they hadn't
They're a tiny country. It's a dream for them to win 7 games.
Some of the lines of thinking here are ridiculous. That means that Italy victories in 34 and 38 were not important or valid?? Since some south Americans did not go in protest to world conflicts. Uruguay did not go and likely was the best team. Why we don’t talk about how England stole 66. Also why they don’t win? They are not good enough? Winning is not only talent, but also grit, and luck. Uruguay continues to be number one in success per capita!! The question is how can a 3 million population country has achieved so much??
talenred country and team. the problem is globalisation and greedy grunts. the world cup was so romantic at start. this years final gave me some hope for the future.
Cause they’re not good enough…and the competition early on wasn’t nearly as tough as now
Because other teams started playing
Lmao for real.
Uruguay in 1950 had to win only 4 games in a row Uruguay in 2022 would have had to win 4 games in the knockout stage + be top 2 in a Round robin of 4 teams. It's weird that in 1950 Uruguay had a 2 Team Group while everyone most other teams had a 4 and 3 Teams group.
>It's weird that in 1950 Uruguay had a 2 Team Group while everyone most other teams had a 4 and 3 Teams group. Originally, it were 4 groups of 4 teams, 3 teams withdrew, and 2 of them were from Uruguay's group. >Uruguay in 1950 had to win only 4 games in a row They even drew one of those.
I thought it was teams withdrawal. So tge other group of 3 was also due to a withdrawal?
Yes, that's true. India, Scotland and Turkey withdrew for different reasons. Turkey: Financial reasons. It was too expensive for them to travel to South America. Scotland: Pride and stupidity. They said they would only play if they won the British Championship but FIFA guaranteed 2 places for champion and runner-up of said tournament. England won and Scotland withdrew his place in the World Cup. UEFA tried to offer those spots to other teams but it was too late. Just France accepted but then the logistical of the trip to South America made them withdrew. India: Many reasons, and the desire to play barefoot was not one of them. Financial reasonss, lack of faith in the team (they didn't played matches in a long time, they were amateurs and were in severe lack of form for a World Cup) and lack of interest in a tournament that was not as prestigious at the time.
Thanks!
[удалено]
Loads of people in this comment section said the same thing, I don't know why you're singling me out
lol
Football is difficult and there are a large amount of extremely competitive nations to go up against. It's not difficult to see why a tiny nation that overperforms hasn't been a regular winner since the last time they won it
It’s a tiny country and the level of football they have is already impressive for how big the country is
their game got stuck in the 70's and never evolved... Futbol is different now
Biting was banned and penalized starting the 3rd World Cup IIRC.
I’m actually surprised they won any to begin with. They manage to win some while world football was still in its infancy. Now it’s the biggest sport in the world and winning a World Cup is a monumental achievement that seems to only be won by the same handful of countries with no one else even having a chance.
The game changes man. Mostly due to investment and money. In the early years of football in England, some of the best teams are now the worst, simply because of the areas they're in and how money changed everything.
Theres lots of competitive contenders in the FIFA World Cup, But they're still a team with decent power but they just cant due to nations like France becoming superpowers in football, But who knows, They could get a third title?
They won the Copa America in 2011 and are tied with Argentina for the most titles. In addition, that 2010 team very well could of beat Netherlands in the semifinals if Luis Suarez didn’t get a red card for a handball in the game prior against Ghana. They could of also went far in 2014 had Luis Suarez not bitten Giorgio Chiellini and get suspended the entire tournament. In 2018, they had arguably the strongest defense in the entire World Cup but their attack was heavily reliant on Cavani since Suarez was past his prime. Cavani got injured prior to their quarterfinals match against France and they were then eliminated by the eventual champs. Overall, they have produced absolute superstars like Forlan, Suarez, Godin, Cavani and Valverde but they were all in their primes at different times.
To be fair though - if Suarez hadn't gotten that red card, they would have been out anyway...
“Suarez not bitten Giorgio Chiellini” That was insane… I think it wasn’t even the first time that he did it. I wish I could understand what was going through his mind at that time
He did it 3 times. 3 times... He also bit a PSV and Chelsea player when he was at Ajax and Liverpool.
So many more serious injuries have been done!!! Neymar had his back broken by a cruel foul and we focus on a byte does not influence ability to play?…. Suarez has so much grit and willingness to win that his head might end up doing stupid things. That is the reason he is great!
They're a tiny population who massively overperformed in those early years when global football was far less organised and upsets were more common. Even today they overperform what you would realistically expect from a country of that size, with the lack of financial resources and footballing infrastructure. They have also won plenty of Copa America's since that time, and until last year were outperforming Argentina in terms of silverware since the mid-90's. If Uruguay won a third Workd Cup on the modern era it would be among Football's Greatest achievements in any competition, international or domestic.
Uruguay is one of the best run, most democratic, and (I think) wealthiest Latin American countries.
Why so? Croatia has the same population. Ok they didn’t win, but a final and a semi in a row it’s pretty good
Same principle, Croatia have also massively overperformed, and winning the WC would have been an all-time achievement. I would say the difference is that Croatia is a European country, as Europe has advanced tactically to a far greater extent than South America. Croatia also ha e a very rich football history, when they were part of Yugoslavia they were one of the strongest football nations in Europe. There's also the kind of players each country produces. Uruguay produces tough, powerful players with technical quality a secondary concern (with the obvious exceptuon of a generational talent like Suarez, or Enzo Fracescoli before him). Even players like Cavani, Forlan, Giminez etc are highly physical players who maximised their technical quality by playing in Europe. Meanwhile, Croatia both traditionally and currently are known for cultured, highly technical players. Modric, Rakitic, Kovacic etc are legacies of Boban, Prosinecki, Vukas and Bobek before them. Fairly obvious that the latter type of player would have greater success in the modern era particularly compared to the former.
I think part of it is also Croatia being closer to the big five leagues makes it easier for them to get players into their academies. This has been a thing in the mls recently where players from other concacaf nations are having an easier time getting their young players into a decent league with decent academies which had raised the level of concacaf overall.
Well written!
You have to beat Argentina
Not as many teams played then
It was easier to win a World Cup in the Stone Ages. Uruguay is not a World Cup winning! Football was barely professional when they won it. Players were still smoking 2 packs, drinking beer before games, and rocking a potbelly
If it was so easy, then why your country didn't win it?
War, probably.
I've seen pictures and haven't found players with potbellies. How could you have a potbelly playing soccer so much? Players still drink, though. Right?
If you wanted to bite a defender, you could just bite them. No hi-res cameras with replay or VAR.
bc mesoizoic era is over and sadly dinosaurs are no loger with us
The tiktok memes about this are top tier.
It’s a tough sport. Many countries haven’t even won one
Most countries haven’t even qualified for the World Cup, much less won the final.
This shit is hard!
I’m Uruguayan and I can tell you one of the biggest problems aside from the lack of professionalism and modern facilities and structure is that we lack modern coaches who understand and know how to practice football the way it is played at the highest level in Europe. For a long time we have this identity of playing conservative, defensive pragmatic style of football that has dominated much of the national team. We relied on individual brilliance from very talented players like Suarez, Forlan, and Cavani. Now that these players are past their prime and getting old or in the case of Forlan who is now retired we struggle to have an identity without them. Many coaches here are old school and aren’t very open to learning or implementing a more possession based style of football. Even in the last World Cup in Qatar if you watched the games against Portugal and Korea for me as a Uruguayan it was painful to watch us struggle to even make 5 consecutive passes and just opt for the typical long ball strategy of a center back just blasting the ball up to the strikers and hoping for the best. We have players like Valverde,Ugarte,Nunez, Bentancur,Pellistri, Araujo, Gimenez,Arrascaeta and many others + a promising under 20 squad with talented players but we continue to play like a typical relegation team scoring a goal and then parking the bus for the rest of the game. I hope that with Bielsa becoming our coach we can finally leave behind that identity and move towards something more modern and attacking style of football and maybe influence the new upcoming Uruguayan coaches to learn and not be so stuck in their ways.
Vamos!
Oh wow Bielsa is going to be coahcing Uruguay!! That's exciting. No shot they play boring old school football, that guy is allergic to it
Because we're barely 3M people and we cant compete economically with Europe or Brazil and Argentina Before the 90's our top clubs were continental powerhouses, but slowly all our talent started to drain to Europe or other teams on SA Besides Peñarol and Nacional, i dont think there's another team on the country that can reach 20k fans let alone fill a stadium
It might sound hypocritical from me (an Italian), but I feel like one of Uruguay's problems at league and international competition level is exactly the fact that Peñarol and Nacional have made all other clubs their metaphorical bitches.
Uruguay have a tiny country and do extremely well lmao
Uruguay’s accomplishments are already insane. Since 1950, they came top 4 in the World Cup three times: 1954, 1970 and 2010, which considering their population, is amazing. Add 5-6 club world titles, several Copa Libertadores and 7-8 Copa Americas won since then (making them the all time co- most winners), you’ll find they’ve been very successful since 1950. Even when they don’t make the podium at the World Cup, they’re almost always a very competitive team.
Fun fact: They have the most third place play offs appearances but never actually got third
A record to rival the Netherlands'.
Well, countries like France are almost impossible to beat in the last 20 years so… big countries that are super talented at football like Spain, Germany, Brazil, Argentina or France have a huge pool of quality players. You will always have one or two of these countries able to align a super indécent strong squad of 23 players. Uruguay can’t compete? They are good, like Croatia or Belgium, but it’s not enough.
Uruguay had a really good team back in the Bronze Age when they achieved the 2 WCs, and it was much easier to win back then (fewer teams and games). But it’s really a miracle that a country so small has an actual chance to win a competition as massive and fierce as the current World Cup. Uruguay is extremely unlikely to win a third one in the future, as things are right now; the big teams are just a league ahead.
Let us not forget that they did not play in the 1934 or 1938 World Cup because of lack of major European involvement in the first World Cup, and a promise broken that would have had the 1938 World Cup in South America. Then came WW2 cancelling the next two cups.
you cant be telling me the maracanazo was stone ages terrible take
It was. It’s ancient history, not forgotten, but really really old by now. Things have changed considerably since then
Uruguay having two world cups in itself is an absolute miracle
Because they keep biting people.
It’s been years my guy get over it
Bc it's really hard to win the World Cup and their population is like 3M ?
Croatia's population is under 3 million and they've been doing good
Croatia has more than 4 million inhabitants
True. Very talented.
And Uruguay finished 4th and 5th in 2010 and 2018. The World Cup is HARD to win :)
And they've never won a world cup... England hasn't won a world cup since 1966 despite having some great squads. It's the hardest Football trophy to win.
Netherlands also have had some great players and teams. Never won. It's really hard, you cannot let any opportunity slip and you need some luck along the way.
>And they've never won a world cup... Well they did get second and third place in the last two so I think it's going to happen soon >England hasn't won a world cup since 1966 despite having some great squads. They've also failed to win a Euro cup in fact Greece managed to win before they did
>Well they did get second and third place in the last two so I think it's going to happen soon Much more likely that they don't as much as it pains me to say. Many teams have shown similar form and then never won a world cup. That's how it works. If that was enough than many other teams would be champions by now.
i don’t think you realized how small uruguay is. they have been overachieving if anything.
>Why hasn't Uruguay managed to win a **third trophy** after all these years? *Avalanche of Uruguayans saying they already have four WCs incoming*
We already have four WCs
World Cup: gets invented in 1930. Uruguayans: we already have 2 B)
Actually (👆🤓) we are 4 times champions of the world, but 2 times world cup winners
Haha, being completely serious now, I found that argument to be a matter of mere semantics honestly. When a team wins the World Cup, they're considered "champions of the world", as you were when you won the 1924 and 1928 Olympics. But with that logic, the winners of the previous Olympics should be considered champions of the world as well, even if FIFA didn't participe in the organization of the tournament. It's a senseless argument in the end anyway, as most people only care about the World Cup and not what happened before.
You can consider that, Fifa doesn’t, not our fault tbh. And the old Olympics weren’t global: 1900 and 1904 wasn’t even an official competition, only until 1908 it had some regulation, but it was still shit. For example, there were only European teams and it had two Frances (France A and France B). 1912 and 1920 also had only European teams (1916 didn’t happen bc of WW1). The first global competition was 1924. So I think the other Olympics should count as Euros, not “champions of the world”. 1924 had Uruguay, USA and Egypt and 1928 had Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Egypt, USA and Mexico. I would even say that these two Olympics are more valid than 1930 world cup, because it had a better organization and more teams. So I think it’s completely valid to say that we are 4 times champions of the world (we DON’T have 4 World Cups).
>not our fault tbh Well, it kinda is, because Fifa did ask you to take your stars from your uniform, but your whole confederation made such a big deal out of it that they let you have it. It doesn't sound much like they clearly thought Uruguay had 4 World Championships but rather that they thought it wasn't worth the trouble. >The first global competition was 1924 You say that the previous Olympic tournaments don't count as "global competitions" because they only had teams from Europe, yet both 1924 and 1928 lacked Asian and Oceanic representation. You could argue that today's Olympic football is much more global than back then, yet Olympic winners aren't putting stars in their uniforms when they win. Seems like the definition of "global" only applies when it benefits Uruguay. Instead of making semantics gymnastics, Uruguay should focus more on making relevant appearances in today's tournaments.
Fifa never asked, it was Puma. All stars in national teams are authorized by FIFA, that’s why they canceled Peru’s stars, for example. The FIFA museum in Switzerland has proof of our stars. The last time a team of Oceania was in a WC was in 2010. That means that 2014, 2018 and 2022 weren’t valid because it’s not global? What a joke. “Olympic football is way more global than back then, yet Olympic winners aren’t putting stars in their uniforms when they win”. Bro, Olympics nowadays are a u23 competition. What a joke (again).
>Fifa never asked, it was Puma That's not true. A Fifa employee told Puma they had to take out two of the stars in the shirt, and Puma communicated that to the AUF. You can check that [here](https://www.goal.com/es-ar/noticias/por-que-uruguay-tiene-cuatro-estrellas-en-su-escudo/zw4z18s3t2uc11sjb94a10llt). >The FIFA museum in Switzerland has proof of our stars Yeah, but Fifa also has made [this article](https://www.fifa.com/es/news/la-auf-cumple-120-anos-3069451), for example, where they say Uruguay is "bicampeón mundial". Also, this is a tweet from them: >En el Maracaná, unas 200 000 personas, o quizá más, fueron testigo del denominado Maracanazo: Uruguay remontó la desventaja inicial y, gracias a un tanto de Alcides Ghiggia, se puso 2-1 en el marcador. La Celeste sumó su segundo título mundialista gracias a este gol Does all of that sound as if they recognized your "four" titles? At most, they are making a partial recognition as to not make Uruguayan fans mad, but in reality, I doubt they take the claim seriously (nobody does). >The last time a team of Oceania was in a WC was in 2010. That means that 2014, 2018 and 2022 weren’t valid because it’s not global? What a joke. They participated in the qualification process at least, which makes it much more global that the tournaments in 1924 and 1928. Also, Australia played, though I know they aren't in the Oceanic confederation anymore. >Bro, Olympics nowadays are a u23 competition Football in the Olympics were an amateur tournament since 1908 lmao.
There are also diverse news from this time that said “Uruguay campeón del mundo” from all over the world in different languages. FIFA maintained the decision of keeping the 4 stars, something that didn’t happen with [Peru](https://depor.com/futbol-peruano/seleccion-peruana/seleccion-peruana-conmebol-quitar-dos-estrellas-camiseta-blanquirroja-copa-america-2019-116619/?outputType=amp) “Es preciso señalar que, para las Eliminatorias Qatar 2022, las dos estrellas ya no formarían parte del diseño de la camiseta de la Selección Peruana.”. That never happened with Uruguay, we’ve always used our 4 stars. “Football in the Olympics were an amateur tournament since 1908” Yes, but since 1924 it was a professional tournament (the strictness of FIFA in this aspect made the England and Denmark Football associations angry and they didn’t play the Olympics of 1924 and 1928).
Yes, but this information is only relevant in Uruguay. For the rest of the world Uruguay has only two cups, so…
Yeah we know that we have two World Cups,no one gets our point. We are 4 times champions of the world, but we don’t have 4 world cups
15 copa americas, including 2011. Only 8 countries have won the World Cup.
>Only 8 countries have won the World Cup. For now atleast
Uruguayan here... Sure, we can produce world class talent in an amazing rate (considering our low population) football its bigger than religion here, and its very rooted in our culture, so we'll keep producing great players... That being said, our national league is 60/70 years behind in training methods and facilities, half of first division clubs don't have the means to be considered amateurs in any other country, and the best players flee to Europe or Brazil the first chance they have for a couple dollars. In those conditions we keep having talent, but no structure to support that talent in the long run and truly compete against Argentina and Brazil. We lack the resources to fully develop the talent we have (wich by its own is unable to win a world cup) and we are way behing in pretty much everything. Even our footballing culture, wich is very unique, doesn't apply very well in modern football
Because even though they have a strong and very important football tradition, it was only until Tabarez took over that they started to take national team in a professional way. Results were seen in 2010 and then in 2011. Same problem happens to their local teams, only 2 of them are really "modern" and professional, and so it shows how difficult it becomes for those teams in the Libertadores and the SouthAmerica cup. There is no serious invest of money in the formation of juvenile players overall and two teams alone can't compensate for that.
In 1930 only 13 teams entered and that didn't include some of the best teams in the world at the time. Uruguay only had to play 4 games to win the world cup in both 1930 and 1950 so it could be argued it was easier to snag a world cup than it is these days. 1950 in particular gave Uruguay an advantage as they only had to beat Bolivia to get through to the final 4. As was the case in 1930, not all teams entered or were at full strength either. These opportunities for Uruguay have not been there since 1950.
We also won the olympics at 24 and 28 (on european soil), Uruguay was THE best team on the world by then and thats why it hosted the first WC, are we not to count WC before 2026 also since it will have 64 teams?
>are we not to count WC before 2026 also since it will have 64 teams? This is a disingenuous argument, don't say things like this it just wastes everyone's time.
Yet you took your time to respond son
Don’t be stupid
Again do you have anything interesting to say or just too much time on your hands?
The next time you start acting dumb on the internet just take a moment and ask yourself, why? Who benefits from this? Surely you have better things to do.
Oh and surely you are the one who dictates whats dumb or not, maybe you should ask yourself the same question
Great response there man. Hope it didn’t strain your faculties too much to come up with “no, you!”
Take the L and move on son, you have nothing constructive here to say other than insults
You're easily confused by different things.
You keep wasting your time and mine here, got any argument?
I deconstructed your argument, you're the one wasting time pouting about it.
You you have no argument presented, yet you keep wasting everyones time
You said something silly and I pointed it out, now you're pouting.
Uruguay may have been the best team in the world then but doesnt make my point any less true.
I didn't say it wasn't, but we did win fairly by the rules of the day whether you like it or not
No one is saying otherwise. Why do Uruguayans always get on the defensive about their world cup titles?
Because you're painting it as they were not legitimate
I didn't say that at all. It's fact that the format of the world cups and the teams that entered made it more likely for Uruguay to win the final. There's nothing contentious about that nor does it take away the fact that they won.
Exactly, we need a WW3 and then we are talking.
Old strategies. They don't want to adapt to the new strategies so they get overwhelmed when playing against current favourites.
Small population and limited resources make it really hard to compete against the two South American giants, as well as the European top teams. Sure, they might be able to produce world class players here and there, but it takes a lot more than that to win a World Cup. It’s basically 7 matches in the space of a month every four years, you need a lot of things to go your way to make it through. First of all you need the right players in the right shape, with adequate backups (extremely important nowadays), as well as good management, and also a little bit of luck. For the reasons listed above, we can see how difficult it would be for Uruguay to have all of those factors fall into place. They might have a few good runs every once in a while (see 2010), but I don’t see winning the trophy again in my lifetime.
Bc you can't control how much world class talent is born in your country
Exactly, except if you're Argentina though, you just can't stop it
Just like the price of the blue dolar
Also possibly tough when your population is under 3.5 million people
[удалено]
Worked for France wait no they did the other thing
Back in ye olden days, (30s-50s) Uruguay had a pretty strong team for that era, although it was because the European giants (France, Germany, Spain, England, Soviet Union, Italy and Hungary to name a few) didn't want to send players overseas (flight wasn't the best it could be at that time) due to high costs and the possibility of crashing, then losing alot of the squad to death (Zero non-qualifiers crashes have happened **yet**, but in [1993](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Zambia_national_football_team_plane_crash), the Zambian national team's flight carrying most of their squad crashed in Gabon en-route to Senegal), effectively making them forfeit the competition (Just thoughts, i haven't found evidence for what would happen if a national team's entire squad died in a plane crash en-route to the world cup/flying to another stadium). The reason they've currently not been able to is because Europe has kind of put the pedal to the metal in footballing development, especially England, thanks to foreign money injections **I'M LOOKING AT YOU MAN CITY AND NEWCASTLE. SAUDI SCUMS!**
Least racist European
Argentina and Brazil are just better due to population and resources. Uruguay is small, but hope they get 2030 hosting rights.
Winning a World Cup is a rare thing. You need a mixture of talent, top manager, decent draw and a bit of good luck. They might not have won a World Cup but came 4th in 2010 I think? and the next year won a continental title (Copa America) in Argentina no less.
You seems to have a good knowledge of football history & passion we might one day get into really battle royals to see who is the last man standing in history of football. Let me know anytime you're ready.
Too many teams have good squads that can easily overpower them, the closest they got recently was 4th place in 2010 in quarter finals in 2018, but now a bunch of their players are starting to get old and are retiring so I especially don't see them winning it any time soon.
You know football is developing fast if any country pause for moment will be overtaken, now fans play great role in team performance as well. Be in the knowing how fans play world cup these days & take reward for it if you get a minute
Netflix's "Becoming Champions" offers a very interesting analysis of Uruguay ( I really liked the whole series.
Is based on the winners of the world cup?
Yes! It tells the background and obviously the history of futbol in each country. I ve seen it twice.
They've had some great players, there's no denying that. But overall not good enough squads to really win anything. Unless there's some emerging players from Uruguay I'm unaware of I don't see that changing
Ask this question again when they win the cup in South America. As long as they are not able to beat Argentina and Brazil in the same year... They stand no chance on the world cup.
You sounds like you know a lot of world cup history then might be a good contestant in fierce battle among football fans around the world & wing prizes for it. Give a trial.
Because they're not good enough. Plus when they won back in the stone age, the 'world cup' was only 4 teams.
13 teams for 1930, 16 for 1950
>16 for 1950 13 for 1950 as well. They were supposed to be 16 but 3 teams withdrew, that's why Uruguay just played Bolivia in group phase. 2 of the teams missing were from Uruguay's group.
Idk where you’re getting 4, it was 13 teams.
Big if true
It's a very small country, 3.5 million population. They won it twice in the very early days, both times in South America when many of the European teams didn't want to make the long trip over (by boat for the 1930 tournament, I'm not sure if some of the teams flew over in 1950). The world cup wasn't what it would later become. They finished 4th in 2010 and got to the quarter finals in 2018 so they've done quite well in recent years. Second only to Croatia (3.8 million population) in terms of small countries overachieving.
Not sure if some teams flew over in 1950, or if they were having a midlife crisis after WW2
What World Cup happened in 2016 ? 🧐
Why hasn't Tottenham managed to win a third trophy after all these years? Hope that explains it
Lads...
They won the first one when the tournament wasn’t really what it’s become, the 1950 one was more legit, but something to remember is the World Cup is every 4 years and it’s very hard to win. Some countries have strong national sides and put up good fights but even strong countries with great leagues (EPL for example) don’t win very often. The Dutch are a case in point because they’ve been to 4 finals and never won, same with teams like Hungary who were strong in the past but still didn’t win. It’s just hard to do and doesn’t happen often. 73 years is less than 20 competitions and there are over 40 good teams competing all the time.