I’ve never seen it called, but I have heard of that rule. That’s why I asked if soccer has something similar; could a referee award a goal if one is clearly blocked by a deliberate hand ball.
Apparently not.
Actually, I thought of a better football/soccer analogy.
Clock is running down, last play of the game, and the quarterback throws a pass to a wide-open receiver in the end zone for an apparent game-winning touchdown. But a defender tackles the receiver before he can catch the ball. Clear violation of the rules, a flag is thrown for defensive pass interference, and the offense gets another chance to win the game.
Very similar to a blatant handball to stop a game-winning goal, yes?
Now, as @Velocity stated, perhaps it’s time to end this hijack and get back to the World Cup discussion.
Thanks. I completely butchered the question, but I meant “champions that won every game they played in a single World Cup WITHOUT needing Extra Time or penalties”.
Someone mentioned Brazil in 1970, that was before my time and I really don’t know, but in the recent past Germany came close in 2014. They had one draw in the group stage against Ghana and of course needed extra time to win the final, but it was close to a perfect tournament. Thinking back makes me even more bitter about the present outcome.
Now we can’t even like them? Why kind of theocracy is this?
You can ‘like them’, but don’t *like them, like them’.
¡Ep! ¡Cuidado! ¡Que llamo a Carles Puyol para la final contra Argentina!
translation: Be careful what you say or I’ll call Carles Puyol back for the final against your team, and then you’ll be sorry!
From the German Wiipedia page “World Championships/Records”, tranlated with Deepl:
Only at the 1954 World Cup in Switzerland did no team go undefeated. The 1974, 1978 and 2010 world champions also lost a match in the preliminary round, but each time a different team went out undefeated. In all other tournaments, an undefeated team became world champion.
It’s not exactly the answer, but close: undefeated may include draws, extra time and penalties.
Portugal surprised me today. I think this World Cup has been great for soccer. The traditional dominant teams, while good, have all been surprised with no one winning all three games. A lot of surprise upsets will fuel improvement in countries as diverse as Japan, Saudi Arabia, Cameroon and Costa Rica. It’s exciting when goal scoring becomes relevant, and I like the offside technology since it is so integral to the sport. Sure, a yellow card for taking off your shirt is daft. But without that rule none of the primadonnas would ever keep them on. 
Who will win? When the gap between better and best has narrowed, there are a dozen teams that could do it. Which is great, especially now Canada and Mexico are not contenders.
The other good thing about genuinely elevated play has been a lack of crap games. There were years where terrible teams played very defensively against dominant competitors essentially trying to waste time the whole game with boring defensive play. I am unaware of any game this year where that’s been a thing, and the unexpected wins means anyone could be beaten and to simply expect the unexpected.
I started doing the research but got stuck of the first one in 1930. It was bizarre! Some of this stuff I knew, like there were only 13 teams (and excluded Europe’s best) and that the US made the semis. There were 3 groups of 3 teams (2 games in round robin stage) and 1 group of 4 teams (3 games in round robin). But these were unknown to me:
Not a single game ended in a draw after 90 minutes (every single game in the tournament had a winner in regulation time)
All 4 teams that made the semi-finals (Uruguay, Argentina, Yugoslavia, USA) were undefeated. Based on the prior fact, you couldn’t have a loss in the group stage and advance anyway, except perhaps in the group with 4 teams.
The US lost 6-1 in the semis, but were down to 9 men due to injury. I guess there were no substitutions allowed for any reason.
Well it seems that half of the ‘World Cup Spirit’ I do have may interfere with the other. The drinking part, I am well underway with, which,may, in realty,* interfere with the fact that I finally just realized that the FREAKIN’ game is at 10AM tomorrow.
- stupid commas all over the place trying to convey the sense that is so easy when I say it in my head, with tonal emphasis, look psychopathic written out.
Substitutions came much later, I think the first time at the Mexico WC in 1970. The yellow and red cards came as late as 1974. Sometimes we forget that not everything is chiseled into stone in football.
So what did they do for hard fouls? Automatic ejection?
One more fact that folks may not know about 1930, is that an American became the first ever to score a World Cup hat trick.
Exactly this. The refs could give someone a verbal warning instead of a yellow card like “next time you’re out” and eject a player for an especially egregious foul on the spot, but there were no official procedures like yellow and red cards. Banning players for yellow cards in subsequent games even came later. The two yellows=red for the game rule even after that.
I.ve just looked up the history of Red/Yellow cards. I was born in the UK in the 1970s and if you asked me I’d have said that they were completely ubiquitous my entire life. They weren’t used for most of the 1980s.
I wonder if going back to this would reduce all the diving and histrionics.
Maybe, but you’d pay with much more foul play allowed. At least there used to be much more uncalled fouls before yellow and red cards were introduced.
That is largely why there is such a cult of Pele. He got criminally mugged every run down the field, but just got up and limped back to position and made another run.
Yes. Of course that was before my time, but exceptional strikers like Pele, Eusebio, Di Stefano or Puskas must have been attacked and fouled relentlessly, in every game, hardly protected by the refs. But even I remember some defenders from the 70s and 80s that were mostly known as bone-crushers, though I don’t remember many names (which is not surprising because those guys usually don’t end up in any hall of fame). Maradona too still had to suffer a lot.
Referees had the power to warn or eject players for violent or illegal conduct long before the cards appeared. I can remember when match reports would talk about “bookings” (official warnings = yellow card) and “sendings off” (= red card). But it wasn’t always clear on the pitch, let alone in the stands, whether a player had been formally booked or just given an unofficial warning and the cards were introduced as a clear visual signal of what action had been taken.
I thought they were inspired by an incident at the 1966 World Cup, where a Russian referee (who spoke no Spanish) sent off an Argentine player (who spoke no English, let alone Russian) and an ad-hoc interpreter was needed to sort out the mess, but this site suggests that the inspiration was even earlier, when an English referee was in charge of an Italy-Chile game in 1962.