1998 FIFA World Cup

Lore & Background

France's 1998 triumph is inseparable from the identity of a nation that had only recently embraced football as a unifying force. A squad brimming with players of African and Caribbean heritage—Zidane, Deschamps, Petit, Djorkaeff, Lizarazu—gave the team a multicultural character that mirrored the country itself. The 3-0 final was not merely a scoreline; it was a statement that France could win on the grandest stage with a style that blended technical French tradition with the physicality and creativity of the wider world.

The tournament's format shift to 32 teams, inherited from the 1994 expansion, gave smaller nations a realistic pathway to the knockout rounds. Croatia's run to the semi-final—where they lost to the hosts—was the most visible beneficiary, and Davor Šuker's six goals earned him the Golden Boot. The group stage, with its eight groups of four, produced a wider spread of competitive fixtures and made the Round of 16 a genuine spectacle rather than a formality.

The final itself carries a shadow. Hours before kickoff, Brazil's talismanic forward Ronaldo suffered a medical episode that left him visibly shaken. He started the match but was unable to replicate the form that had carried him to the Golden Ball. Zidane, by contrast, was incandescent, and his three goals—two from the air, one from the spot—sealed a victory that France still treats as the defining moment of its footballing identity.

In Their Own Story

The Stade de France hummed under a July sky, 80,000 voices a single chord. In the Brazil dressing room, the air was thick with silence; Ronaldo sat on the bench, eyes fixed on nothing, his hands still trembling from the episode hours before. Across the corridor, Zidane laced his boots with the calm of a man who had already decided what the evening would look like. The whistle blew. And within ninety minutes, the blue-and-white captain would be lifting the trophy above a sea of Tricolour, the solid gold gleaming under the floodlights while the Brazilian bench sat in a stunned, collective exhale. The scoreboard read 3-0. The world would never quite look at that number the same way again.

Reader's Guide

The FIFA World Cup Trophy, designed by Italian sculptor Silvio Gazzaniga and in use since 1974, was the prize at stake in 1998. Standing 36 cm tall and weighing 6.175 kg, it is crafted from 18-carat gold over a platinum base, encircled by a band of malachite. France, as champions, received a replica; the original remains in FIFA's vault in Zurich.

The individual awards followed the traditional triad. The Golden Ball, recognising the tournament's best player, went to Ronaldo despite Brazil's final defeat—a nod to his five goals and the aura he carried through the group and knockout stages. The Golden Boot, awarded to the top scorer, was claimed by Croatia's Davor Šuker with six goals, a record for a player whose team did not win the tournament. The Golden Glove went to France's Fabien Barthez for his clean-sheet record.

The 1998 format was the first to field 32 teams, split into eight groups of four. The top two from each group advanced to a 16-team single-elimination bracket: Round of 16, quarter-finals, semi-finals, and the final. This structure, introduced in 1998 and retained since, added a full knockout round compared to the 24-team era and increased the total match count to 64. The change broadened continental representation and made the group stage a genuine battle for progression rather than a formality for the favourites.

Did You Know?

• The 1998 tournament was the first World Cup to feature 32 teams, expanding from the 24-team format used in 1994 and adding a full Round of 16 to the knockout stage.
• Croatia reached the semi-finals in their very first World Cup appearance, a run that remains one of the greatest debut campaigns in the competition's history.
• Zinedine Zidane's hat-trick in the final made him the first player to score three goals in a World Cup final since Pelé in 1958.
• The tournament was the first to be hosted by a nation that had never previously qualified for the World Cup finals as a host (France had qualified in 1938 and 1958, but 1998 was their first as hosts of the modern 32-team