"It was after the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam that Jules Rimet decided enough was enough. The French president of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) had watched the sport he oversaw attract more spectators at those Games than any other event—despite, to his long-running frustration, the banning from participation of professional players. Rimet moved decisively to create a new international soccer competition, run by FIFA and called the World Cup, in which each nation taking part would field a team comprised of its foremost footballers, bar none.
A date was set, and Uruguay—a country then flush with Jazz Age wealth from grain and leather—was chosen to act as host because its government offered to pay travel costs for all involved. Rimet commissioned the sculpting of a small golden trophy for the winner. And then, placing that trophy in his bag, he boarded a boat for Montevideo, together with three of the four European nations that, in the summer of 1930, agreed to take part in a tournament whose inaugural edition, to the delight of its hosts and the lasting trauma of Argentines who crossed the muddy Río de la Plata to watch their team lose the final, was won by Uruguay."
