National team appearances in the FIFA World Cup a group stage, with the final 16 progressing to knockout stages to decide the winner. As of the 2018 FIFA World Cup, 79 national teams have competed at the final tournaments. Brazil are the only team to have appeared in all 21 tournaments to date, with Germany having participated in 19, Italy in 18, Argentina in 17 and Mexico in 16. To date, eight nations have won the tournament. The inaugural winners in 1930 were Uruguay; the current champions are France. The most successful nation in the competition are currently Brazil, who have won the cup on five occasions. Five
History of the FIFA World Cup clubs (not national teams), each one of which represented an entire nation. For this reason, neither was really a direct forerunner of the World Cup, but notwithstanding that, the Thomas Lipton Trophy is sometimes described as "The First World Cup", at the expense of its less well-known Italian predecessor. In 1914, FIFA agreed to recognise the Olympic tournament as a "world football championship for amateurs", and took responsibility for organising the event. This led the way for the world's first intercontinental football competition, at the 1920 Summer Olympics, won by Belgium. Uruguay won the tournaments in 1924 and 1928. In