The growth of international football

When the first international match was played in 1872, only two countries had a national team. By the time the first World Cup was held in 1930, 13 national teams took part and many more existed but did not enter. By the 2020s, FIFA had 211 member associations, each with at least a men's national team and most with a women's national team as well. International football has grown across the period in the number of teams, tournaments, matches and spectators.

The growth has come in several waves. The early twentieth century saw South America create the first major regional national-team tournament, and the interwar period saw the World Cup established. The 1950s and 1960s saw the continental confederations form and more continental championships develop. The 1990s and 2000s saw the women's international game grow substantially. Each wave added something new to the international calendar.

The first World Cup, in 1930, had 13 teams. The next two — 1934 and 1938 — had 16 each. The 1950 tournament had 13 again, after several withdrawals, and the post-war pattern of 16 teams settled in from 1954 onwards. The competition stayed at 16 teams until 1982, when it expanded to 24, then to 32 from 1998. From 2026, the World Cup uses 48 teams, with 12 groups of four. The top two teams in each group and the eight best third-placed teams advance to a round of 32.

Each expansion brought more confederations into the tournament. The early World Cups were heavily European and South American; later tournaments have included more nations from Africa, Asia and CONCACAF. The expansion to 48 teams gave every confederation more places than in the 32-team era, and was intended to broaden the World Cup's reach further while keeping the competition's format manageable.

The major continental national-team tournaments have all grown across the second half of the twentieth century. UEFA's European Championship, first held in 1960 with four teams in the final stage, grew through eight, 16 and 24-team formats. The Africa Cup of Nations expanded from a small founding field in 1957 to a 24-team format. The AFC Asian Cup grew from four teams to 24. The Copa América expanded its field through guest sides, and CONCACAF's main championship developed into the Gold Cup and later expanded its field.

The pattern was the same in each case. As more national teams became strong enough to support larger tournaments, the tournaments grew to accommodate them, with longer formats and more matches. Continental tournaments became central parts of the international calendar, giving each region its own regular championship alongside World Cup qualifying.

Women's international football was held back for decades by restrictions and bans imposed by several national associations, including the English FA's 1921 ban on women playing on FA-affiliated grounds. Most of those bans were lifted in the early 1970s, after which women's national teams began to be set up and women's international fixtures began to be played in earnest.

The FIFA Women's World Cup was first held in 1991, in China, with 12 teams. It expanded to 32 teams from 2023, with a 48-team format approved from 2031. UEFA's women's European Championship began in the 1980s, the African women's national-team tournament was established in 1991, and continental women's tournaments developed across all six confederations. Women's football was added to the Olympic programme from 1996. The combination of these tournaments has built a substantial women's international calendar, with its own World Cup, continental tournaments and qualifying campaigns.

FIFA had seven founding members in 1904. Membership grew steadily through the early twentieth century as more national associations formed and joined, reaching around 60 members by 1950. The big jumps came after decolonisation, as newly independent African and Asian nations set up football associations and joined FIFA, and after the breakup of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia in the 1990s, which produced more than 20 new members.

By the 2020s, FIFA had 211 member associations, making it larger by membership than the United Nations. Most of those associations have men's national teams capable of taking part in international fixtures, and most also have women's national teams. The membership remains national associations rather than countries, which is why some FIFA members — such as the four British associations, or the Faroe Islands and Gibraltar — represent regions that are not independent states.

By the modern era, the structure of international football was broadly settled. FIFA runs the men's and women's World Cups every four years and several other tournaments. The six confederations each run their own national-team championship, normally every two to four years, plus continental qualifying for the World Cup. Friendly matches and shorter tournaments fill in the rest of the calendar. The result is an international game with regular fixtures across much of the year, alongside major tournament periods.

The relationship between the international and the club game is one of the continuing tensions in football's modern structure. Top players play heavily packed domestic seasons in the leading European leagues, with international duty added on top during FIFA windows. The balance between the two has shifted across the decades and has continued to change. Across the period from the first match in 1872 to the modern tournament calendar, the international game's growth is one of football's clearest historical stories.