1978 FIFA World Cup Netherlands and Brazil were the gold, silver and bronze medalists, respectively. Iran and Tunisia made their first appearances in the tournament. This was also the last World Cup tournament to use the original inclusion of 16 teams. Since the first World Cup in 1930, only 15 teams (plus the host, who automatically qualified) had been allowed to qualify (the reigning title holders also received automatic qualification from 1934 through 2002); but for the next World Cup, in Spain, FIFA expanded that tournament to 24 teams. The official match ball was the Adidas Tango. Argentina was chosen as the host nation
2006 FIFA World Cup qualification (UEFA) transitioned from the Asian Football Confederation to UEFA after the end of the 2002 FIFA World Cup, debuted in the European qualifiers. The teams in each group would play against each other in a home and away basis. The team with the most points in each group would qualify to the World Cup. The runners up would be ranked. For the sake of fairness, in groups with seven teams, results against the seventh placed team were ignored. The two best ranked runners up would also qualify to the World Cup. The other six runners up were drawn into three home