1978 FIFA World Cup
11th FIFA World Cup, held in Argentina
The 1978 FIFA World Cup was the 11th edition of the FIFA World Cup, the quadrennial international football world championship tournament among the men's senior national teams. It was held in Argentina between 1 and 25 June.
The tournament was won by the host nation, Argentina, who defeated the Netherlands 3–1 in the final, after extra time. The final was held at River Plate's home stadium, Estadio Monumental, in the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires. This win was the first World Cup title for Argentina, who became the fifth team (after Uruguay, Italy, England, and West Germany) to be both hosts and world champions and the third South American team to win the World Cup. Argentina, the Netherlands, and Brazil were the gold, silver, and bronze medalists, respectively.
Iran and Tunisia made their first appearances in the tournament. The defending champions, West Germany, were eliminated in the second round (finishing third in their group). This was also the last World Cup tournament to use the original inclusion of 16 teams. Since the first World Cup in 1930, only 15 teams (plus the host, who automatically qualified) had been allowed to qualify (the reigning title holders also received automatic qualification from 1934 through 2002); but for the next World Cup, in Spain, FIFA expanded that tournament to 24 teams.
“1978 FIFA World Cup” enters the record as 11th FIFA World Cup, held in Argentina. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what FIFA, World and 11th can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q46943. VIAF identifies the subject as 305043294. The Library of Congress control number is no2013080017. Authority coordinates are -32.950, -60.650. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1978, 1930, 1934 and 2002.
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This entry incorporates text from “1978 FIFA World Cup” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.