El Salvador for the first. Mexico defeated El Salvador in the final to win their first title. South America The South American qualifiers took place between April 23 and April 27, in the Argentinean capital, Buenos Aires. Brazil and hosts Argentina were the two finalists, meaning they both qualified for the World Cup. Brazil defeated Argentina in the final to win the title. Uruguay and Venezuela were knocked out in the semi finals and played each other in the third place play off. Uruguay beat Venezuela to claim the third berth at the World Cup. Oceania For the first and to date only time, no Oceanian qualifiers were held. The Oceania Football Confederation nominated the Solomon Islands as their representative in the World Cup, based on their results over the past two years, which showed that they were by far the strongest team in the confederation. Hosts France qualified automatically as the hosts. Teams These are the teams that qualified to the World Cup: Asian zone: African zone: European zone: (hosts) North, Central American and Caribbean zone: (First Appearance) Oceanian zone: South American zone: Players Venue A stadium on the Plage du Prado in southern Marseille was used known as the Stade du Prado or the Stadium of the Beach in English. The stadium hosted all 32 matches. Group stage The 16 teams present at the finals in Brazil were split into 4 groups of 4 teams. Each team played the other 3 teams in its group in a round-robin format, with the top two teams advancing to the quarter finals. The quarter finals, semi finals and the final itself was played in the form of a knockout tournament. All matches are listed as local time (UTC+1) Group A Note: France, Uruguay and Senegal were involved in a tie-break situation and therefore their matches against Iran were ignored and the nations were ranked by their goal difference in the matches against each other. Despite France having the worst overall goal difference, they had the best goal difference between the three teams involved in the tie-break and therefore finished in first place. Uruguay, with an equal number of goals scored and conceded, against France and Senegal finished second, and Senegal with a negative goal difference of -1, finished third. Group B Group C Group D Knockout stage Quarter finals Semi finals Third place play off Final Winners Awards Top scorers 13