Queen Elizabeth II dead: Qatar 2022 will be the first World Cup without her

Queen Elizabeth II attended all editions of the FIFA World Cup until Russia 2018. She was queen for 17 World Cups and, due to the Qatar 2022 date change, she couldn’t live one more.

On May 21, 1904, FIFA was founded in Paris, France, the greatest body in world football, which in 1930 would achieve its ultimate goal of organizing a global tournament.

A little over 16 years after the creation of the body that governs football, on 13 July 1930, in Montevideo, Uruguay, Mexico and France they played the inaugural match of the great dream of Jules Rimet, the third president of the organization based in Switzerland.

For her part, on April 21, but in 1926, in London, England, Elizabeth Alexandra Mary was born, later Queen of Great Britain.

The stories seem distant and unrelated to each other. Even until February 6, 1952, when Isabella became British monarch, after the death of her father. In those days after World War II, FIFA was about to reach another great milestone: the return of the World Cup after the interruption due to the war.

For the 50th anniversary of the football regulatory body, the chosen location was Switzerland. The tournament began on June 16, 1954 with Yugoslavia-France and Brazil-Mexico matches. The throne had a new owner just two years and four months ago, but the shared history between the Queen and the World Cup would last another 70.

The land of banking, chocolate and neutrality saw West Germany lift the cup for the first time after defeating Hungary. That was the first final that Isabel witnessed with the crown on her head.

He experienced the appearance of Pele in 1958, in Sweden, when he surprised the world of football at the age of 17, without the English, creators of the game, still managing to win the increasingly precious Jules Rimet trophy.

Chile 1962 was another Brazilian performance, which was once again crowned champion in the most violent tournament in history. Pele, O Rei, was the favorite target of matches afflicted with kicks and elbows.

In total, there were five fractured players. Three in the legs, one in the hip, and one ended up with a broken nose.

Four years later, the top tournament arrived in his “home” and was the first to be broadcast in color. She was the first to have a pet and in which doping controls were carried out. The trophy was stolen three months before the start of the championship and was found by a dog a week before the opening match.

Elizabeth, of Buckingham Palace, was aware of it and celebrated with legends such as Bobby Moore, Gordon Banks and Bobby Charlton the only consecration of “The Three Lions”.

Then came Mexico 1970, the last of Pelé in Brazil of the five number 10, which paved the way for A Clockwork Orange who lost the finals of Germany ’74 and Argentina ’78, a race won by the team of César Luis Menotti, with Jorge Rafael Videla in the box and blindfolded by FIFA.

The next World Cup event was in Spain, in 1982, while England had Margaret Thatcher in charge of Downing 10 as prime minister and her troops in the Falkland Islands. The Argentines, meanwhile, were commanded by the dictator Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri.

The title went to Italy, who tried to defend it unsuccessfully in Mexico in 1986. The year in which Diego Armando Maradona became a legend, not only for having raised the Cup, which had already been changed to another model and renamed in 1970 ” Copa FIFA World Cup “, at the Azteca Stadium. Four years after the war, the eternal “Hand of God” appeared and the second goal of that game, “the most wonderful of all time”, as Víctor Hugo Morales baptized it in his iconic story.

Italy 1990 was the German revenge at the Rome Olympics, with an English team falling back into oblivion, very close to the finalist against Carlos Salvador Bilardo’s men.

Four years later, Isabel saw, out of the corner of her eye, the first World Cup in North America. the first major show in the history of football with a record number of spectators and the beginning of merchandising. But England did not qualify.

Joao Havelange, hitherto president of FIFA, had warned: “I came to present a product called football”.

The sporting phenomenon became the top 10 of the world’s largest global businesses, but the queen and her family couldn’t enjoy it as they expected in 1998, as new frustration came after losing to Argentina on penalties.

The expansion of the sport’s flagship product reached Korea and Japan in 2002, where the British lost to Brazil. This was the first competition organized by two countries. Elizabeth celebrated 50 years as a British monarch. Even the jubilees of that time did not have the icing on the cake that fans of the still young Premier League, founded in 1992, expected.

The World Cup returned to Germany in 2006 and traveled to Africa for the first time in 2010. Brazil 2014 found her on the throne at the age of 62 and just stepped off the set with James Bond for the party of opening of the London 2012 Olympic Games.

Russia 2018 was the last he experienced. Qatar 2022, if it had not taken place until November-December due to the prohibitive temperatures of those lands in June-July, could have been assisted by Isabel. But, unknowingly, the sports business prevented him from doing so.

The history between Great Britain and Argentina has many chapters in common, the fruit of war and football. Maradona’s debut as a national team manager was one of them: it was against Scotland, who welcomed him as a hero for his goals against England in Mexico.

Qatar 2022 will be the first without the two great symbols of both. Neither Maradona nor Isabel will be witnesses, in life, of what happens in the first game played in the Middle East.

DB