1914 FIFA World Cup

The 1914 FIFA World Cup was the third edition of the FIFA World Cup, a quadrennial football tournament for men's senior national teams. It was held in England from April 5 to 25, 1914 as it would be the last tournament before the first World War took place. Sixteen teams competed in the tournament which saw an increase to sixteen teams from fifteen in the previous edition.

The format of the tournament changed back to the group stage format that was successful in 1906 with the sixteen teams being grouped in four groups of four teams with the top two teams qualifying through to the knockout stage. The final saw upset  in the final in what some news outlets called the biggest boil-over in World Cup history with two goals in extra time securing Denmark their first (and to date only) major title.

Background
After the failure of the 1910 FIFA World Cup, FIFA elected to go back to the group stage format that had been successful in the 1906 edition. The hosting duties would then go to England who was the founding nation of modern football. The competition would have 16 teams competing in the World Cup for the first time which they would be split into four groups of four, with the top two going through to the knockout stage.

Qualification
For the first time in history, qualification had to be used to determent who would qualify through to the World Cup as the 20 teams that joined FIFA tried to qualify through to the World Cup. The top 12 teams automatically went through to the World Cup while the bottom four teams had to enter playoffs for the renaming four spots. The four teams to qualify were Scotland, Norway, Chile and Italy. For Chile and Italy, this would be the debut World Cup tournament for those teams.

Group A
The first match of the 1914 FIFA World Cup was held in Group A with hosts taking on  in London. For the English, they would get off to a good start with the scoring a hat-trick and  chipping in with a goal for himself. These goals would bring England a 4-2 victory on the opening day. The other match on the opening day, saw debutantes took on  at Manchester. Goals from and  gave the Swiss the victory by a score of 2-0.

The following matchday, England and Switzerland both booked their spot into the quarter-finals with comfortable wins. At Brighton, and Latheron each scored two goals in a 4-0 result over the South Americans in Chile. At Middlesbrough, Switzerland had a tougher time against Sweden with leveling the scores at 1-1 after Paul Wyss scored the opener for Switzerland. Switzerland would eventually get the victory in the 56th minute from a goal to give Switzerland a 2-1 result.

The deciding match for Group A ended in a goal from Fleming which gave the English, top spot in the group. For Switzerland though, it was a matter of what if's with chances being missed during the match. In the dead-rubber, Sweden recorded a 3-0 over Chile in Nottingham. Goals coming from, and  as Chile created history by being the worst team at the World Cup in history (until 1950) with a goal difference of negative nine.