Since 1930, 21 senior men’s World Cup tournaments have been played. Of those 21 tournaments, just eight countries have had the pleasure of winning the quadrennial tournament and becoming the best soccer team in the world.
Netflix, with FIFA’s support, has a new series about those eight countries. Titled Becoming Champions, the nine episode series looks at the stories behind these World Cup winning teams.
https://twitter.com/FIFAWorldCup/status/1078391817937276929
The series is ordered by when each country won their first and each country has one episode regardless of how many World Cups they have won. So episode one begins with the first champs Uruguay (1930, 1950) and then goes to Italy (1934, 1938, 1982, 2006), Germany (1954, 1974, 1990, 2014), Brazil (1958, 1962, 1970, 1994, 2002), England (1966), Argentina (1978, 1986), France (1998, 2018) and Spain (2010).
While FIFA is rather terrible at telling their own story as an organization, they do have a vast library that’s great for a documentary series such as this. If the filmmakers were to do a season two, they could do a story on the Women’s World Cup winners like United States, Norway, Germany and Japan or a series about the teams who fell just short of winning. This series looks good and whether you’re a new fan or a diehard soccer historian, it looks like everyone will learn something they didn’t previously know before.
About Phillip Bupp
Producer/editor of the Awful Announcing Podcast and Short and to the Point. News editor for The Comeback and Awful Announcing. Highlight consultant for Major League Soccer as well as a freelance writer for hire. Opinions are my own but feel free to agree with them.
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