Under Mussolini’s watch
As soon as Italy snatched the organization of the World Cup from the clutches of the Swedes, it even thought about being crowned and positioning itself as a global football power, and turned the World Cup into a major business as well, so it issued postage stamps specifically for the World Cup, and whenever it presented an advertisement for cigarettes, it said that smoking would be wonderful in Italy’s stadiums. Jules Rimet, President of the International Federation of Association Football, made an effort to allow Africans and Asians to enter the world of the World Cup, and he succeeded in convincing Palestine, which participated on behalf of Asia. In the qualifiers, Egypt achieved the first African and Arab presence in the competition, and Italy succeeded in hunting journalists from all countries of the world, as twenty-seven journalists arrived from France, and they had completely missed the first round. One of the funniest things that happened in the 1934 World Cup was that an Argentine player named Luigi Montu participated in the 1930 World Cup with his national team, Argentina, and reached the final and lost to Uruguay, so he decided to change nationality and his participation was accepted in colors. The Italian team reached the final, and won the cup that was deprived of it in the colors of Argentina.
It is also strange that the champion of the 1930 tournament, Uruguay, was absent from the competition, as were the various countries of the American continent, as only three of them participated, and new teams entered the World Cup that were a major football power, such as Hungary, as well as Sweden, Austria and Switzerland. As for the Egyptian team, it left immediately after the final whistle of the first match against Hungary, where it lost by four goals to two, and the Egyptians held out throughout the first half in which they compensated for the loss they started the match with, as Adel Rahman Fawzi scored two goals, but the Pharaohs They collapsed in the second half with two Hungarian goals, so the Egyptians returned by ship from Milan to Alexandria. For the first time, extra time was used in the World Cup in the match between Austria and the French team, after the confrontation ended with two goals for each team. The French received a third goal in the 117th minute and exited the tournament. The system was also forcing the tied players to replay the match without resorting to penalty kicks. The Italians began the tournament with a seven-to-one win against the Americans in the presence of their fascist leader Mussolini, who He wanted the cup to remain in Rome.
The Italian tournament was characterized by a large public presence, as nearly seven thousand supporters entered Italy, and the Austrians and Swiss found more than 10,000 supporters on their side, but the Italian enthusiasm outweighed everyone in the eight cities that hosted the competition, and because the tournament did not go along with the group stage but rather the knockout stage, the first round witnessed the elimination of the teams from the American continent in the first round, and the Europeans remained alone competing for the title, which returned to the Italians in the final match against the Czechoslovakian team, which was They won until the 80th minute, when the Italians turned the tables and scored two goals that pleased Mussolini and Italy.
