Flying Down to Rio, Flight 40

We all love a good conspiracy tale. It does not have to make sense just sound good. Be it an Asian betting ring was really behind pasta-gate, the moon landings were faked and filmed just outside Hyderabad or that Daniel Levy was implicated in the shooting of John F Kennedy.  So what better way to spend your Sunday.

So where you aware that there was a World Cup in 1942 and that the 1958 competition never happened ? And there’s film to prove it.

This is the story of two of the strangest hoax’s concerning the World Cup. Lets start with the 1958 competition. Despite all you read earlier in this series a Swedish TV documentary disclosed that the competition never actually occurred. The whole event was indeed faked by the CIA with the help of FIFA and the Swedish government as part of the cold war with the then Soviet Union. 

The TV film footage showed games being played and you can see houses, where they have never stood. The programme analyzed how the shadows of the players in the field were falling and were angled in a way that is not possible in Sweden if you study the position of the sun at the time. The film showed ‘informers’ including three of the Swedish team, members of the organizing committee, the president of UEFA at the time and several sports writers.

It was only after the programme had aired that the TV company revealed it was indeed a hoax. There intention was to show how history can be re -written. Why not check it out for yourself on youtube.

Then there is the World Cup that FIFA refuse to comment upon, in fact they would even admit it took place!

"After years of meticulous research, exploring the intricate history of 20th Century soccer and walking that delicate line between rigorous documentary style and the spirit of true cinema, this film finally presents the true story of the 1942 World Soccer Championship. The story never acknowledged by the official sports organizations, shrouded for decades in legend without any real winner being stated, is finally fully revealed."  Or so the producers claim. It was first shown at the Argentina film festiva and the Venice film festival. It later won an award at the Berlin film festival

The film reveals that a Hungarian Jew approached FIFA in 1942 and proposed a world cup be held in South America to try and bring the nations of the world together. When FIFA reject the offer he arranges a 12 team competition. The film shows lost footage, and interviews people involved. It even manages to include Gary Lineker in the story, (so surely it must be true). The film reveals the discover of the remains of some of the people involved.

Teams made up of a few professional players mixed together with immigrants from around the world, laborers and miners, engineers and former gold prospectors, circus acrobats, exiled revolutionaries, Nazi soldiers and Mapuche Indians native to the area.

The story continues to reveals that the son of Butch Cassidy, who died (or didn’t) in Bolivia was the referee and used a gun rather than a whistle.

You can check it out at -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyUTFaG887k and

http://www.argentinefilmfestival.com/lostworldcup.html

Well they do say truth is stranger than fiction, and then again some people say it never happened !

About the author:
Keith Harrison,

Nilgiris, TN
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Follow Keith on Twitter @keith16024542