Lab Life
Eleven countries, eleven very different relationships with the world’s game, and one lab where all of it comes up in conversation more often than you’d expect from a biomedical optics group.
A bit more than a dozen lab members, eleven nationalities: Brazil, Mexico, Spain, Iran, England, Scotland, Colombia, Venezuela, Germany, China, and India. With the World Cup theme in the air, we went digging through some historical facts shared over lunch during these World Cup days.
Where it all began
The world’s first official international football match wasn’t a World Cup fixture at all. It was Scotland against England, played on 30 November 1872 at Hamilton Crescent in Glasgow, and it ended 0-0. England’s Football Association had been founded nine years earlier, in 1863, making the two countries the oldest rivals in the sport by a wide margin.
The host with the most
Mexico is the only country to host the World Cup three times: 1970, when Pelé’s Brazil lifted the trophy, 1986, when Maradona announced himself to the world, and now 2026, alongside the USA and Canada. The Estadio Azteca in Mexico City is the first stadium to stage matches in three separate World Cups.
Comebacks and shocks
Germany’s first World Cup title, in 1954, is still known at home as the “Miracle of Bern.” West Germany had been thrashed 8-3 by Hungary earlier in the same tournament, then somehow beat that same Hungarian team, one of the greatest sides never to win it, 3-2 in the final.
Spain has its own giant-killing story. In 1929, in the two countries’ very first meeting, Spain beat England 4-3 in Madrid, making them the first team from continental Europe ever to beat England, who had gone 23 matches unbeaten against foreign opposition up to that point.
Politics on the pitch
Few matches carried more weight off the pitch than Iran against the USA at France 1998. With diplomatic relations between the two countries frozen, FIFA officials had to broker the pre-match handshake, and Iranian players handed their American counterparts white roses as a gesture of peace before the game kicked off. Iran won 2-1, still their only World Cup victory over the United States.
The ever-present
Brazil is the only country to have played in every single World Cup since the first tournament in 1930, and their five titles remain the record. It is genuinely hard to imagine the tournament without them, which is presumably the point.
The pirate league
For a few brief years starting in 1949, Colombia’s domestic league, El Dorado, broke away from FIFA entirely. Suspended from international football but freed from having to pay transfer fees, its clubs went on a spending spree, luring stars like Alfredo Di Stéfano away from Europe and South America with wages nobody else could match. A peace deal wound the era down from 1951, but for a moment Bogotá genuinely rivalled the best leagues in the world.
Colombian goalkeeping has produced its own moment of madness too. In a 1995 friendly against England at Wembley, René Higuita cleared a cross with an overhead “scorpion kick,” flicking the ball away with his heels from behind his own head, still considered one of the most audacious pieces of skill ever seen on a football pitch.
Still chasing the dream
Not every football story ends in glory. Venezuela remains the only CONMEBOL nation never to have reached a men’s World Cup, despite producing plenty of talent over the years. China has appeared exactly once, in 2002, losing all three group matches without scoring a single goal.
India’s story is stranger still. The country qualified for the 1950 World Cup and then withdrew before playing a match. For decades the popular explanation was that FIFA had banned India’s players from competing barefoot. The real reasons, it turns out, were far more mundane: travel costs, a tight turnaround, and a federation that prioritised the Helsinki Olympics instead.
