User:Quidster4040/sandbox/FIFA Rimet Cup

The FIFA Jules Rimet Cup or the Rimet Cup is a proposed international association football competition contested by the senior men's national teams of the members of Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the sport's global governing body. The championship is for teams that fail to qualify for the respective year's World Cup. For retroactive reasons, the championship has been awarded every four years since the inaugural tournament in 1974. The current champion is Portugal, which won its fourth title at the 2014 tournament in China.

The current format of the competition involves a qualification phase, which currently takes place over the preceding three years, to determine which teams qualify for the tournament phase, which is often called the Silver Cup Finals. 32 teams, including the automatically qualifying host nation(s), compete in the tournament phase for the title at venues within the host nation(s) over a period of about a month.

The tournament is named in honor of the late FIFA president, Jules Rimet.

Format
32 teams qualify for the competition, which is allocated to the 31 best clubs in each confederation not to qualify for the FIFA World Cup. The teams are divided into eight groups of four, with the top two teams in each group advancing to the first round of the knockout stage. The eight winners meet the eight third place finishers of the FIFA World Cup group stage in the second round. Winners advance in a single-elimination format to the final.

Past winners

 * a.e.t.: after extra time
 * p: after penalty shoot-out


 * Notes

In all, 77 nations have played in at least one World Cup. Of these, eight national teams have won the World Cup, and they have added stars to their badges, with each star representing a World Cup victory. (Uruguay, however, choose to display four stars on their badge, representing their two gold medals at the 1924 and 1928 Summer Olympics and their two World Cup titles in 1930 and 1950).

With five titles, Brazil are the most successful World Cup team and also the only nation to have played in every World Cup (20) to date. Brazil were also the first team to win the World Cup for the third (1970), fourth (1994) and fifth (2002) time. Italy (1934 and 1938) and Brazil (1958 and 1962) are the only nations to have won consecutive titles. West Germany (1982–1990) and Brazil (1994–2002) are the only nations to appear in three consecutive World Cup finals. Germany has made the most top-four finishes (13), medals (12), as well as the most finals (8).



Teams reaching the top four

 * * = hosts
 * ^ = includes results representing West Germany between 1954 and 1990
 * # = states that have since split into two or more independent nations