Soccer History | Estadio Pocitos — The First World Cup Goal, in Front of 4,444 People

Four thousand four hundred and forty-four people paid to get in. That is the recorded attendance for the afternoon World Cup football started. Estadio Pocitos, Montevideo, 13 July 1930. France beat Mexico 4-1, and in the 19th minute Lucien Laurent volleyed in Ernest Libérati's cross for the first goal in the competition's history. Laurent spent the rest of his life declining to make much of it. Asked about the goal he tended to say only that Libérati put the cross in, and that nobody rolled around on the ground, because nobody realised history was being made. Calling this the first World Cup match takes more care. Two fixtures kicked off at the same hour that afternoon: this one, and the United States against Belgium at the Gran Parque Central across the city. Four teams can fairly claim to have been among the first to play. Only the goal is unambiguous. The second in World Cup history came in the 23rd minute of the other match, from the American winger Bart McGhee. The conditions were not what a July fixture suggests to a northern reader. It was winter in the southern hemisphere, snow had fallen before the tournament, and the ground was cold. France lost their goalkeeper as well. Alex Thépot was kicked in the jaw in the first half and left the field, and since substitutions did not exist, the halfback Augustin Chantrel finished the match in goal. Domingo Lombardi of Uruguay refereed. One more detail the record quietly contradicts: the tournament's official poster advertised 15 July to 15 August. The FIFA Museum has pointed out that those dates never matched what happened. The stadium is gone. The site is the blocks around the junction of Charrúa and Coronel Alegre, and on that corner, outside a launderette, a small stone marker stands where the centre of the pitch used to be. Sources: Wikipedia; FIFA; FIFA Museum; Britannica; The Ringer. Cover photo: Archivo del Centro de Fotografía de Montevideo, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Second image: Beatriz Verzeri, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.