Football World Cup 1962 » Winner – Teams – Statistics – History

Participating Teams of the 1962 World Cup Finals

The 7th FIFA World Cup saw 57 teams enter the 1962 World Cup Qualifiers. Of those who took part, 16 teams went on to qualify for the finals tournament. Ten were from Europe; five were from South America and one from the Americas.

There were no qualifying teams from the Asian Football Confederation or the Confederation of African Football in the finals tournament. As with previous World Cup events, two of the teams automatically qualified for the finals tournament. They were Chile, the host nation and Brazil, the defending champions.

All teams can be seen in their groups below:

Group 1

Soviet Union (-1991)

Yugoslavia (-2003)

Uruguay

Colombia

Group 2

West Germany (-1989)

Chile

Italy

Switzerland

Group 3

Brazil

Czechoslovakia (-1992)

Mexico

Spain

Group 4

Hungary

England

Argentina

Bulgaria

For Columbia and Bulgaria, it was the first time that they were able to get through to the World Cup finals tournament.

Winner of the World Cup 1962

Held on 17th June 1962, the World Cup final took place at the Estadio Nacional stadium in Santiago. It saw the defending champions; Brazil go up against Czechoslovakia. Brazil went on to win the match 3 – 1. In doing so, it was a back-to-back World Cup win, the second time this feat has been achieved in World Cup history and as yet not since repeated. At the time there was only one other team that had been successful in defending their World Cup title.

The match was noteworthy for the reason that both sides had already played each other during the group stage matches. The result was a goalless draw. It was the second time when teams in the final had already played against each other in the group stage. The first time had been the 1954 World Cup final.

The Story of 1962 FIFA World Cup

In 1956 three countries applied to host the 1962 World Cup. One of the countries was West Germany. The others were the South American countries, Chile and Argentina. Europe had hosted the previous two World Cup competitions. Because of this, there was some concern about the possibility of Europe hosting the contest for the third successive time. To address this concern, West Germany agreed to withdraw their application.

Argentina were the favourites to host the tournament because of their strong interest in football. Chile was able to convince FIFA that they should be the ones to host the 1962 World Cup competition. As the host nation for the 7th FIFA World Cup, work was well underway when an earthquake struck Chile in May 1960. Although it resulted in major damage to the infrastructure and fatalities, Chile remained the host nation. What it did mean was that changes had to be made to plans for the tournament venues. Chile was able to put in place the necessary infrastructure. The tournament went ahead without any delays taking place in May and June of 1962.

Of the 57 teams that competed for entry to the World Cup finals tournament only 16 teams qualified. Two of those teams were Chile, the host nation and Brazil, the defending team. Brazil went into the competition looking to retain the title that they won in 1958. They were without their star player, Pele for most of the tournament. By the end, Brazil had retained their title as World Cup champions. Czechoslovakia were the runners-up to Brazil. Chile, the host nation was the surprise in that they came third in the competition.

Unlike previous competitions, this one was unusual because there was far more violence both on and off the pitch. Chile’s first-round game against Italy on June 2nd was a sad day in all the years that the tournament had been running. When Chile met Italy, the game was marred by violence throughout. It led to the game becoming known as the Battle of Santiago. Chile won the game 2-0.

During the 1962 World Cup, there were a total of 89 goals scored in all of the games. Of the goals scored, there were six top goal scorers. Each of them scoring four goals apiece. Nearly 900,000 visitors watched the 32 games played over the 19 days of the competition.