Uruguay hosted in 1930 and simply invited teams. Only four European sides made the weeks-long boat trip across the Atlantic.
Twenty white hexagons and twelve black pentagons form a truncated icosahedron, the shape that best approximates a sphere from flat pieces.
The ball crosses twelve yards in around 0.3 seconds, less than human reaction time, so keepers must guess before the kick.
More than a billion people tune in to one match, dwarfing any other regular broadcast on the planet.
