🏆 No joke: why we could see a new world champion crowned today | OneFootball

Sweden is World Champion!

Normally, we would all just laugh at this statement. After all, we followed the 2022 World Cup in Qatar and still have the images of Lionel Messi holding his first World Cup trophy in his hands after the final victory in the penalty shootout against France fresh in our minds. This statement—surely it could only come from someone who really has no idea about football, right? Not at all!

With a 4-3 victory over Algeria in June, Sweden actually secured a world champion title—albeit only the unofficial one. Because yes, this title really does exist! Previously, Algeria was allowed to call itself the unofficial world champion.

While a national team has to successfully complete at least a group stage, several knockout rounds, and finally the final to win a real world champion title, things are different with the unofficial trophy. Some would say it’s easier, because: To become the “unofficial world champion,” you only have to beat a single team—the current titleholder.

The idea for this fictional competition comes from England. Until 1950, you searched in vain for an English team at the real World Cups. The British simply didn’t participate; instead, in Great Britain, the winner of the British Home Championship was considered the best team in the world. From 1950, England was part of the official World Cups and finally won the title in 1966. When Scotland beat the reigning world champion England in 1967, they said to themselves: “We beat the best team in the world—so we must actually be better and therefore world champions ourselves, even if only unofficially.”

A nice thought, which at first remained just that. Only much later—in 2003—did this thought experiment attract enough attention that a journalist created a website listing all international football matches since 1872 and evaluating them according to the simple knockout system: If a team beats the reigning unofficial world champion, it can henceforth call itself the unofficial world champion.

The teams that had won this title up to that point had no idea about it until this listing—but from then on, they could mentally place this trophy in their display cabinet. A look at history showed: The very first “unofficial football world champion” was England, which beat Scotland in 1873.

Since the introduction of the title in 2001, the “unofficial world championship” has also been at stake in the present. So it happens that boring friendly matches suddenly aren’t so boring anymore, because now there’s “something real at stake.”

Moreover, the titleholder doesn’t change only every four years—quite the opposite. Sometimes, it happens very quickly. For example, in 1957, Argentina lost the title to Peru, but regained it just three days later in their next encounter.

📸 Raul Sifuentes - 2025 Getty Images

Even nations that don’t participate in official tournaments very often—and certainly not as favorites—have the chance to call themselves “world champion” at least once. In total, this joy has already been granted to 53 national teams. The most unofficial finals have—of course—been won by England and Scotland, with Argentina in third place. Germany, with 31 title match victories, is at least in ninth place.

Even where the official World Cup only brings pain—for example, because a team was eliminated in the group stage—the unofficial title rarely lets you down. Because, of course, matches at the real World Cups also count. That’s how it happened that Colombia, although eliminated in the group stage at the World Cup, at least snatched the unofficial title with a win over Switzerland.

Even if many players, coaches, and fans may not even know it, in many matches that at first seem more or less irrelevant, it’s actually about glory, honor—and the (fake) world championship!

Most recently, in the friendly match between Sweden and Algeria. Sweden was already leading 4-0 after 56 minutes—and it was probably Algeria’s sheer determination to defend the unofficial world champion title that led to a spectacular comeback attempt, which ultimately came to nothing: the match ended 4-3—and Sweden is the official unofficial world champion for the ninth time. Congratulations!

This fun, exciting knockout competition, which we owe entirely to Scottish humor, continues tonight: Sweden will defend the title against Slovenia. Slovenia could become the unofficial world champion for the first time—the match promises pure excitement!

What do you think of this unofficial competition? Pointless or actually kind of funny?

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇩🇪 here.

📸 CHRISTINE OLSSON/TT