5 of the Darkest moments in World cup history

#2 Il Duce’s dodgy dealings (1934)

Mussolini was a huge football fan

Italy won the rights to host the 2nd ever World cup in 1934 after a lengthy decision-making process in which the FIFA executives met eight times. It was finally won by Il Duce a.k.a Benito Mussolini’s Italy who sought this as an opportunity to promote fascism.

The Italian dictator was hell bound on winning the tournament, adding several South American players to the squad as well as paying of qualifying opponents Greece pre-tournament to ensure their safe passage to the finals.

In the tournament proper, it is believed that Mussolini himself appointed the officials for Italy’s games, meeting and greeting the referees before they took charge of the matches.

In the quarter-final against Spain, in what turned out to be an intense physical battle, the referee let many of Italy’s fouls go unpunished. Questions of biasing were also raised in the games against Austria and Yugoslavia with one journalist suggesting:

“The referee Baert behaved as if he was well aware where the game was taking place.”

In the absence of televisions those days, the reality of those matches was largely shaped by Fascist controlled media personalities, making people believe whatever they wanted to.