FIFA World Cup hosts second of these, the 1938 FIFA World Cup, in France was controversial, as the South American countries had been led to understand that the World Cup would rotate between the two continents. Both Argentina and Uruguay thus boycotted the tournament. The first tournament following World War II, held in Brazil in 1950, had three teams withdraw for either financial problems or disagreements with the organization. To avoid any future boycotts or controversy, FIFA began a pattern of alternation between the Americas and Europe, which continued until the 2002 FIFA World Cup in Asia. The system evolved so that the host
History of the FIFA World Cup to host the 1942 FIFA World Cup at the 23rd FIFA Congress on 13 August 1936 in Berlin. In June 1939, Brazil also applied to host the tournament. The beginning of European hostilities in September 1939 prompted further plans for the 1942 World Cup to be cancelled, before a host country was selected. The FIFA tournament did not take place. During World War II, FIFA struggled to keep itself afloat, and it had no financial or personnel resources with which to plan a peacetime tournament for when hostilities ended. When the war ended in 1945, it was clear that FIFA