Winning a football World Cup is one of the most difficult feats to achieve, but managing to win it twice in a row is an even rarer feat: in the history of the World Cup only two national teams have achieved it. Vittorio Pozzo’s Italy won the 1934 and 1938 editions, while Brazil won the title in 1958 and 1962, becoming the last team capable of confirming itself as world champion for two championships in a row. Since 1962 no selection has managed to defend the title in the next edition of the tournament. In the final of the 2026 World Cup, Lionel Scaloni’s Argentina, reigning world champion after the success in Qatar in 2022, will have the opportunity to enter the same small group 64 years after the last national team capable of doing so. To do so they will have to beat Spain in this evening’s final at 9pm (Italian time) at the MetLife Stadium in New York.
Vittorio Pozzo’s Italy: the first national team to win two consecutive World Cups
The first case in the history of the World Cup dates back to Italy in the 1930s. After winning the 1934 tournament played on home soil, beating Czechoslovakia 2-1 in the final, the national team led by Vittorio Pozzo arrived at the 1938 World Cup in France with the aim of defending the title, and succeeded in doing so. The Azzurri got through the first round by beating Norway, eliminated hosts France in the quarter-finals and Brazil in the semi-finals, before winning the final against Hungary 4-2 at the Yves-du-Manoir stadium in Colombes. With that success, Pozzo became the first and still today the only coach capable of winning two World Cups, a record that Argentina coach Lionel Scaloni could equal in the 2026 World Cup final.
That success still retains today a unique feature in the history of the World Cup: the Italy of 1938 is the only national team to have won the World Cup without keeping a clean sheet in even one match. In fact, the Azzurri conceded at least one goal in all four matches played during the tournament.
The success of 1938, however, was not the fruit of an isolated exploit, but the result of a cycle built over time. Vittorio Pozzo in fact managed to maintain a group very similar to the one that had triumphed four years earlier, based on players such as Giuseppe Meazza and Giovanni Ferrari, creating a team with a precise tactical identity and great continuity of performance. Between 1935 and 1939 Italy remained unbeaten for 30 consecutive matches, also winning the gold medal at the 1936 Olympic football tournament in Berlin and confirming itself as the dominant national team of that period. The outbreak of the Second World War then led to the cancellation of the 1942 and 1946 editions of the World Cup: when the tournament returned in 1950, Italy was eliminated in the group stage, seeing their dream of winning a third consecutive world title ended.
From Pelé’s first triumph to his encore in 1962: how Brazil became World Champions twice in a row
After Vittorio Pozzo’s Italy, Brazil became the second national team in the history of the World Cup capable of winning two consecutive editions. There Selection he won his first world title in 1958 in Sweden, in a tournament that marked Pelé’s definitive explosion on the international scene. In the quarter-finals against Wales, the young Santos striker scored the decisive goal to make it 1-0, becoming, at 17 years and 239 days, the youngest goalscorer in the history of the World Cup, a record still unbeaten. A few days later he scored a hat-trick in the semi-final against France and was also a protagonist in the last act of the tournament: in the final on 29 June 1958 against Sweden, won by Brazil 5-2 at the Råsunda stadium in Solna, he scored two goals, becoming the youngest footballer to have won a World Cup, at just 17 years and 249 days.
Four years later, Brazil showed up at the 1962 World Cup in Chile with the aim of defending their title. The encore, however, arrived in different conditions compared to Pozzo’s Italy: the Selection in fact he changed technical commissioner, going from Vicente Feola to Aymoré Moreira. Despite the change in the bench, Brazil managed to maintain extraordinary continuity thanks to a player base that remained almost unchanged: 14 players took part in both the winning expedition of 1958 and that of 1962, a fundamental element for understanding the solidity of that generation. Even today, Brazil of 1962 is the only national team to have successfully defended the world title after changing coach between one edition of the World Cup and another.
The path to a second consecutive title seemed to get complicated when Pelé was injured in the second match against Czechoslovakia in the group stage, forcing him to miss the rest of the tournament. Brazil still managed to confirm itself as world champion thanks above all to Garrincha, Vavá and Amarildo. In the final, played on 17 June 1962 at the National Stadium in Santiago, the Selection beat Czechoslovakia 3-1 and became the second national team in history, after Italy, to win two consecutive World Cups.
The national teams that came close to a second World Cup: three finals lost after the title
Winning a World Cup is difficult, but confirming it four years later is even more difficult. Since 1962 no national team has managed to defend the title won in the previous edition. In this period, sixteen editions of the World Cup have been held, but no national team has managed to confirm itself as champion. After Italy and Brazil, the only teams capable of completing an encore, only Argentina, Brazil and France reached the final of the following edition as reigning world champions, without however managing to repeat the feat.
Argentina was the first to come close to the feat since Brazil in 1962. After the 1986 triumph with Diego Armando Maradona, the Albiceleste reached the final again at Italia 1990, but lost 1-0 against West Germany, who had been beaten four years earlier in the final by the South Americans.
Eight years later, Brazil was one step away from an encore. There Selectionworld champion in 1994 in the United States, reached the final of France 1998, but was beaten by the hosts 3-0 at the Stade de France. The last national team to come close to the record was France. After the 2018 victory in Russia, Les Bleus once again reached the final stage of the World Cup in Qatar 2022, where they lost to Argentina on penalties after a 3-3 draw between regulation and extra time.
The reason why a second World Cup is so rare also emerges when looking at the performance of the title-holders: on six occasions a national team that won the previous tournament did not even manage to get past the group stage in the following edition. It also happened in recent times to France in 2002, Italy in 2010, Spain in 2014 and Germany in 2018.
