1998 FIFA World Cup

The 1998 FIFA World Cup was the 16th FIFA World Cup, the football world championship for men's national teams. The finals tournament was held in France from 10 June to 12 July 1998. The country was chosen as the host nation by FIFA for the second time in the history of the tournament, defeating Morocco in the bidding process. It was the second time that France staged the competition (the first was in 1938) and the ninth time that it was held in Europe. Spanning 32 days, it is the longest World Cup tournament ever held.

Qualification for the finals began in March 1996 and concluded in November 1997. For the first time in the competition, the group stage was expanded from 24 teams to 32, with eight groups of four. 64 matches were played in 10 stadiums in 10 host cities, with the opening match and final staged at the newly built Stade de France in the Parisian commune of Saint-Denis.

The tournament was won by host country France, who beat defending champions Brazil 3–0 in the final. France won their first title, becoming the seventh nation to win a World Cup, and the sixth (after Uruguay, Italy, England, West Germany and Argentina) to win the tournament on home soil. Croatia, Jamaica, Japan and South Africa made their first appearances in the finals.

Host selection

France was awarded the 1998 World Cup on 2 July 1992 by the executive committee of FIFA during a general meeting in Zürich, Switzerland. They defeated Morocco by 12 votes to 7. Switzerland withdrew, due to being unable to meet FIFA's requirements. This made France the third country to host two World Cups, after Mexico and Italy in 1986 and 1990 respectively. France previously hosted the third edition of the World Cup in 1938. England, who hosted the competition in 1966 and won it, were among the original applicants, but later withdrew their application in favour of an ultimately successful bid to host UEFA Euro 1996.

Bribery and corruption investigations

On 4 June 2015, while co-operating with the FBI and the Swiss authorities, Chuck Blazer confirmed that he and other members of FIFA's executive committee were bribed during the 1998 and 2010 World Cups host selection process. Blazer stated that "we facilitated bribes in conjunction with the selection of the host nation for the 1998 World Cup". Since France won the selection process it was initially thought the bribery came from its bid committee. It eventually transpired that the bribe payment was from the failed Moroccan bid.

Qualification

The qualification draw for the 1998 World Cup finals took place in the Musée du Louvre, Paris on 12 December 1995. As tournament hosts, France was exempt from the draw as was defending champion Brazil, but it was also France's first World Cup since 1986. 174 teams from six confederations participated, 24 more than in the previous round. Fourteen countries qualified from the European zone (in addition to hosts France). Ten were determined after group play – nine group winners and the best second-placed team; the other eight group runners-up were drawn into pairs of four play-off matches with the winners qualifying for the finals as well. CONMEBOL (South America) and CAF (Africa) were each given five spots in the final tournament, while three spots were contested between 30 CONCACAF members in the North and Central America and the Caribbean zone. The winner of the Oceanian zone advanced to an intercontinental play-off against the runner-up of the Asian play-off, determined by the two best second-placed teams.

Four nations qualified for the first time: Croatia, Jamaica, Japan and South Africa. The last team to qualify was Iran by virtue of beating Australia in a two-legged tie on 29 November 1997. It marked their first appearance in the finals since 1978, the last time Tunisia also qualified for the tournament. Chile qualified for the first time since 1982, after serving a ban that saw them miss out on the two previous tournaments. Paraguay and Denmark returned for the first time since 1986. Austria, England, Scotland and Yugoslavia returned after missing out on the 1994 tournament, with the Balkan team now appearing under the name of FR Yugoslavia. Among the teams who failed to qualify were two-time winners Uruguay (for the second successive tournament); Portugal (their last absence as of 2022); Sweden, who finished third in 1994; Russia (who failed to qualify for the first time since 1978 after losing to Italy in the play-off round); and the Republic of Ireland, who had qualified for the previous two tournaments. The highest-ranked team not to qualify was the Czech Republic (ranked 3rd), while the lowest-ranked team that did qualify was Nigeria (ranked 74th).

As of 2022, this was the last time Austria, Bulgaria, Norway, Romania and Scotland qualified for a FIFA World Cup finals, and the only time Jamaica have qualified.

List of qualified teams

The following 32 teams, shown with final pre-tournament rankings, qualified for the final tournament.

;AFC (4)
*  (42)
*  (12)
*  (34)
*  (20)
; CAF (5)
*  (49)
*  (13)
*  (74)
*  (24) 
*  (21)
; OFC (0)
* ''None qualified''

;CONCACAF (3)
*  (30)
*  (4)
*  (11)
; CONMEBOL (5)
*  (6)
*  (1)
*  (9)
*  (10)
*  (29)

;UEFA (15)
*  (31)
*  (36)
*  (35)
*  (19)
*  (27)
*  (5)
*  (18) (hosts)
*  (2)
*  (14)
*  (25)
*  (7)
*  (22)
*  (41)
*  (15)
* FR Yugoslavia (8)

Venues

France's bid to host the World Cup centered on a national stadium with 80,000 seats and nine other stadiums located across the country. When the finals were originally awarded in July 1992, none of the regional club grounds were of a capacity meeting FIFA's requirements – namely being able to safely seat 40,000. The proposed national stadium, colloquially referred to as the 'Grand stade', met with controversy at every stage of planning; the stadium's location was determined by politics, finance and national symbolism. As Mayor of Paris, Jacques Chirac successfully negotiated a deal with Prime Minister Édouard Balladur to bring the Stade de France, as it was now called, to the commune of Saint-Denis just north of the capital city. Construction on the stadium started in December 1995 and was completed after 26 months of work in November 1997 at a cost of ₣2.67 billion.

The choice of stadium locations was drafted from an original list of 14 cities. FIFA and CFO monitored the progress and quality of preparations, culminating in the former providing final checks of the grounds weeks before the tournament commenced. Montpellier was the surprise inclusion from the final list of cities because of its low urban hierarchy in comparison to Strasbourg, who boasted a better hierarchy and success from its local football team, having been taken over by a consortium. Montpellier however was considered ambitious by the selecting panel to host World Cup matches. The local city and regional authorities in particular had invested heavily into football the previous two decades and were able to measure economic effects, in terms of jobs as early as in 1997. Some of the venues used for this tournament were also used for the previous World Cup in France in 1938. The Stade Vélodrome in Marseille, the Stade Municipal in Toulouse, the Gerland in Lyon, the Parc Lescure in Bordeaux and the Parc des Princes in Paris received the honour of hosting World Cup matches once again in 1998 as they had all done in 1938.

10 stadiums in total were used for the finals; in addition to nine matches being played at the Stade de France (the most used stadium in the tournament), a further six matches took place in Paris Saint-Germain's Parc des Princes, bringing Paris's total matches hosted to 15. France played four of their seven matches in the national stadium; they also played in the country's second and third largest cities, Marseille (hosting 7 total matches) and Lyon (hosting 6 total matches), as well as a Round of 16 knockout match in the northern city of Lens (also hosting 6 total matches). Nantes, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Montpellier and Saint-Etienne also hosted 6 matches in total; all of the stadiums used also hosted knockout round matches.

Innovations

Technologies

This was the first FIFA World Cup where fourth officials used electronic boards, instead of cardboard.

Rule changes

This was the first World Cup since the introduction of golden goals,France 1998.
Sport24, 5 May 2010 12:12. banning of tackles from behind that endanger the safety of an opponent and allowance of three substitutions per game.

Match officials

34 referees and 33 assistants officiated in the 1998 World Cup. As a result of the extension to 32 teams in the finals, there was an increase of 10 referees and 11 officials from the 1994 World Cup.

; CAF (5)
* Said Belqola
* Gamal Al-Ghandour
* Lucien Bouchardeau
* Lim Kee Chong
* Ian McLeod

;AFC (4)
* Abdul Rahman Al-Zaid
* Ali Bujsaim
* Masayoshi Okada
* Pirom Un-Prasert

;UEFA (15)
* Marc Batta
* Günter Benkö
* Pierluigi Collina
* Hugh Dallas
* Paul Durkin
* José María García-Aranda
* Bernd Heynemann
* Nikolai Levnikov
* Urs Meier
* Vítor Melo Pereira
* Kim Milton Nielsen
* Rune Pedersen
* László Vágner
* Mario van der Ende
* Ryszard Wójcik

;CONCACAF (3)
* Esfandiar Baharmast
* Arturo Brizio Carter
* Ramesh Ramdhan

; OFC (1)
* Eddie Lennie

; CONMEBOL (6)
* Javier Castrilli
* Epifanio González
* Márcio Rezende de Freitas
* Mario Sánchez Yanten
* Alberto Tejada Noriega
* John Toro Rendón