Uruguay four times World champion? Understand the controversy involving Celeste

Uruguay arrives at another World Cup sporting four stars on its chest. But why doesn't the celestial team use just two, since it has two World titles?

Recently, striker Federico Viñas said that Uruguay are "four times world champions" after being asked why he should believe in the team in this edition.

The Celeste player's comments ended up having repercussions on social media and caused fans to question the team's true position on the list of champions.

Uruguay's four stars
The situation with Uruguay's four stars goes back to the origins of FIFA and the World Cup. Football's highest entity, founded in 1904, follows the growth of the sport as an amateur sport at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th.

Football had already participated in the 1900 and 1904 Olympic Games as a demonstration sport and, from 1908, at the London Olympics, it became official in the IOC's planning.

From 1914 onwards, FIFA began to recognize the sport at the Olympics as a "world amateur football championship" and assumed responsibility for the management and organization of the event. Even so, the entity's dream was to create a tournament between national confederations, outside the Olympic cycle.

The competitions, still within the Olympics, in 1920, 1924 and 1928, proved to be a success and paved the way for the emergence of the World Cup.

The history of Uruguay, as one of the greatest teams in world football, begins during this period of the sport. In the 1924 and 1928 Olympic Games, FIFA accepted the call for professional players to join the tournament - previously, only amateur athletes competed in the Olympics. In both years, the Uruguayan team won the Olympic gold medal.

The confederations, FIFA and the press at the time recognized that, in 1924 and 1928, the Olympic football tournaments were equivalent to the professional world championships as they take place today.

So much so that, in 1930, Uruguay received the honor of hosting the first World Cup, as it was the current "two-time world champion". In this edition, they defeated Argentina in the final 4-2 and won the first title of the modern World Cup era.

In 1950, the Uruguayan team also became world champions, after beating Brazil 2-1 in the final quadrangular, in the match that became known as "Maracanazo".

"The four stars symbolize the gold medals from the 1924 and 1928 Olympic Games and the 1930 and 1950 World Cups," said the Uruguayan Federation, in a statement in 2021.

There is no specific rule for stars on the uniform in friendlies and competitions between teams that are not organized by FIFA. However, in the World Cup, the entity allows only teams that have already become world champions to display five-pointed stars on their emblem.

Brazil, in this case, has five stars, in reference to the fifth championship.

In 2018, at the World Cup in Russia, for example, the Egyptian team was unable to wear the seven stars on its shirt, in reference to the seven titles won at the African Cup of Nations.

Uruguay is the only team that breaks this rule. Since 1992, the Uruguayan Football Association (AUF) has used four stars on its shield, without objections from FIFA or Conmebol.

Source: CNN