1994 FIFA World Cup

The 1994 FIFA World Cup was the 15th FIFA World Cup, the world championship for men's national soccer teams. It was hosted by the United States and took place from June 17 to July 17, 1994, at nine venues across the country. The United States was chosen as the host by FIFA on July 4, 1988. Despite soccer's relative lack of popularity in the host nation, the tournament was the most financially successful in World Cup history. It broke tournament records with overall attendance of 3,587,538 and an average of 68,991 per game, figures that stand unsurpassed as of 2022, despite the expansion of the competition from 24 to 32 teams starting with the 1998 World Cup.
Brazil was crowned the winner after defeating Italy 3–2 in a penalty shootout at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, near Los Angeles, after the game had ended 0–0 after extra time. It was the first World Cup final to be decided on penalties. The victory made Brazil the first nation to win four World Cup titles. There were three new entrants in the tournament: Greece, Nigeria, and Saudi Arabia; Russia also appeared as a separate nation for the first time, following the breakup of the Soviet Union, and for the first time since 1938, a unified Germany took part in the tournament. It was also the defending champion, but was eliminated in the quarterfinals by Bulgaria. It was the first World Cup in which three points were awarded for a victory instead of two and also the first with the back-pass rule. This was done to encourage a more attacking style of soccer as a response to the criticism of the defensive tactics and low-scoring matches of the 1990 World Cup. This resulted in an average of 2.71 goals per match, compared to 2.21 in 1990.

Background and preparations

Bidding process

Three nations bid to host the event: United States, Brazil, and Morocco. The vote was held in Zurich on July 4, 1988, and only took one round with the United States bid receiving a little over half of the votes by the FIFA Executive Committee members. FIFA hoped that by staging the world's most prestigious tournament there, it would lead to a growth of interest in the sport.
An inspection committee also found that the proposed Brazilian stadiums were deficient, while the Moroccan bid relied on the construction of nine new stadiums. Conversely, all the proposed stadiums in the United States were already built and fully functioning; U.S. Soccer spent $500 million preparing and organizing the tournament, far less than the billions other countries previously had spent and subsequently would spend on preparing for this tournament. The U.S. bid was seen as the favorite and was prepared in response to losing the right to be the replacement host for the 1986 tournament following Colombia's withdrawal.
One condition FIFA imposed was the creation of a professional soccer league – Major League Soccer was founded in 1993 and began operating in 1996. There was some initial controversy about awarding the World Cup to a country where soccer was not a nationally popular sport, and at the time, in 1988, the U.S. no longer had a professional league; the North American Soccer League, established in 1967, had folded in 1984 after attendance faded. The success of the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, particularly the soccer tournament that drew 1.4 million spectators throughout the event, also contributed to FIFA's decision.
The United States had previously bid to host the 1986 FIFA World Cup, after Colombia withdrew as the host nation in November 1982 because of economic concerns. Despite a presentation led by former North American Soccer League players Pelé and Franz Beckenbauer, as well as former United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the executive committee selected Mexico. There were proposals by FIFA to introduce larger goals and breaks after every quarter instead of just at halftime in order to appease U.S. television advertisers. These proposals were met with resistance, and ultimately rejected.

Venues

The games were played in nine cities across the contiguous United States. All stadiums had a capacity of at least 53,000 and were occupied by professional or college American football teams.
Other host city candidates included Atlanta, Denver, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Miami, Minneapolis, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Seattle, and Tampa, as well as smaller communities such as Annapolis, Maryland; Columbus, Ohio; Corvallis, Oregon; and New Haven, Connecticut. Some sites, including Joe Robbie Stadium in Miami and Candlestick Park in San Francisco, were rejected because of conflicts with Major League Baseball. Stanford Stadium, southeast of San Francisco, and the Citrus Bowl in Orlando, Florida, were picked.
The Rose Bowl hosted the most matches with eight, four of them in the knockout stage, including the final. Giants Stadium hosted seven games including a semifinal; Foxborough Stadium, Stanford Stadium, and the Cotton Bowl hosted six games each, and Soldier Field, Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium, and the Citrus Bowl hosted five games each. Pontiac Silverdome, the first indoor stadium used in a World Cup, hosted four group-stage games, the fewest of any venue; it was also the only one of the nine used that did not host knockout-round games.
Aside from the oceanic coolness of Boston, the Mediterranean climate of San Francisco, and occasionally the coolness of Chicago, as they had been in Mexico in 1970 and 1986 most matches were played in hot and/or humid conditions, thanks to nearly all of the games being scheduled to be played during the day. This enabled European television broadcasters to air World Cup matches during late afternoon and evening hours. For example, matches that started at 12:30 PM EDT in New York would air at 6:30 PM in Paris, France. Although playing in the mostly dry heat and smoggy conditions of Los Angeles and the mixture of heat and humidity of Washington and New Jersey sometimes proved to be difficult, the cities with the most consistently oppressive conditions were Orlando and Dallas in the South, because of the combination of heat and extreme humidity. The Floridian tropical climate of Orlando meant all games there were played in temperatures of or above with dew points above 70 or more due to the mid-day start times. Dallas was not much different: in the humid heat of a Texas summer, temperatures exceeded during mid-day, when games there were staged in the open-type Cotton Bowl meant that conditions were just as oppressive there as they were in Orlando. Detroit also proved to be difficult: the Pontiac Silverdome did not have a working cooling system and because it was an air-supported stadium, the air could not escape through circulation, so temperatures inside the stadium would climb past with 40% humidity. United States midfielder Thomas Dooley described the Silverdome as "the worst place I have ever played at".

Participating teams

Qualification

Three teams—one African, one Asian, and one European—made their debuts at the 1994 tournament. Nigeria qualified from the African zone alongside Cameroon and Morocco as CAF was granted three spots as a result of the strong performances by African teams in 1986 and 1990. In the Asian zone, Saudi Arabia qualified for the first time by topping the final round group ahead of South Korea as both edged out Japan, which was close to making its own World Cup debut, but was denied by Iraq in what became known as the "Agony of Doha". In the European zone, Greece made its first World Cup appearance after topping a group from which Russia also qualified, competing independently for the first time after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
The defending champion, West Germany, was united with its East German counterpart, representing the unified Germany for the first time since the 1938 World Cup. Norway qualified for the first time since 1938, Bolivia for the first time since 1950, and Switzerland for the first time since 1966. Norway's 56-year gap between appearances in the final tournament equaled Egypt's record in the previous tournament as the longest. This record was later broken when Wales qualified for the 2022 tournament after a 64-year absence. Mexico had its first successful qualification campaign since 1978.
The qualification campaigns of both Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia were affected by political events. The nation of Czechoslovakia dissolved in 1993, completing its qualifying group under the name "Representation of Czechs and Slovaks", but failed to qualify for the finals, having been edged out by Romania and Belgium in Group 4. Yugoslavia was suspended from international competition in 1992 as part of United Nations sanctions against the country as a result of the Yugoslav Wars. The sanctions were not lifted until 1994, by which time it was no longer possible for the team to qualify. Chile's suspension from the 1990 FIFA World Cup, following the forced interruption of its qualification game against Brazil, extended to the 1994 qualifiers as well.

List of qualified teams

The following 24 teams, shown with their pre-tournament FIFA World Ranking from June 1994, qualified for the final tournamentː
;AFC

;CAF

;OFC

None qualified

;CONCACAF

;CONMEBOL

;UEFA

Squads

Teams were selected following usual FIFA rules with 22 players. Greece, Italy, Saudi Arabia, and Spain were the only countries that had all their players coming from domestic teams, while the Republic of Ireland and Nigeria had no players from domestic teams. Saudi Arabia was the only team with no players from European teams.

Referees