The 1974 FIFA World Cup, the tenth staging of the World Cup, was held in West Germany (including West Berlin ) from 13 June to 7 July. The tournament marked the first time that the current trophy, the FIFA World Cup Trophy, created by the Italian sculptor Silvio Gazzaniga, was awarded. The previous trophy, the Jules Rimet Trophy, had been won for the third time by Brazil in 1970 and awarded permanently to the Brazilians. The host nation won the title beating the Netherlands in the final, 2–1. The victory was the second for West Germany, who had also won in 1954.

West Germany was chosen as the host nation by FIFA in London, England on July 6, 1966. Hosting rights for the 1978 and 1982 tournaments were awarded at the same time. West Germany agreed a deal with Spain by which Spain would support West Germany for the 1974 tournament, and in return West Germany would allow Spain to bid for the 1982 World Cup unopposed.

Ninety-eight countries took part in the qualifying tournament, and some of football's most successful nations did not qualify. Alongside the champions of the 1966 tournament, England; France, the USSR, Hungary and Spain were knocked out. First-time qualifiers included East Germany, Haiti, Australia and Zaire, the first team from sub-Saharan Africa to reach the World Cup finals. The Netherlands and Poland qualified for the first time since 1938, while Australia would not qualify again until the next time the tournament was held in Germany, in 2006.

The FIFA World Cup, often simply the World Cup, is an international association football competition contested by the senior men's national teams of the members of Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the sport's global governing body. The championship has been awarded every four years since the inaugural tournament in 1930, except in 1942 and 1946 when it was not held because of the Second World War. The current champions are Spain, who won the 2010 tournament.

The current format of the tournament involves 32 teams competing for the title at venues within the host nation(s) over a period of about a month  this phase is often called the World Cup Finals. A qualification phase, which currently takes place over the preceding three years, is used to determine which teams qualify for the tournament together with the host nation(s).

The 19 World Cup tournaments have been won by eight different national teams. Brazil have won five times, and they are the only team to have played in every tournament. The other World Cup winners are Italy, with four titles; Germany, with three titles; Argentina and inaugural winners Uruguay, with two titles each; and England, France, and Spain, with one title each.

A World Cup is a type of sporting competition.

World Cup commonly refers to:

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Franz Anton Beckenbauer [fʁants ˈbɛkənˌbaʊ̯ɐ] (born 11 September 1945 in Munich) is a German football coach, manager, and former player, nicknamed Der Kaiser ("The Emperor") because of his elegant style, his leadership, his first name "Franz" (reminiscent of the Austrian emperors), and his dominance on the football pitch. He is generally regarded as the greatest German footballer of all time and one of the greatest and most decorated footballers in the history of the game. Beckenbauer was a versatile player who started out as a midfielder but made his name as a defender. He is often credited as having invented the role of the modern sweeper or libero.

Twice selected the European Footballer of the Year, he appeared 103 times for West Germany and played in three World Cups. He lifted the World Cup trophy as captain in 1974, and repeated the feat as a manager in 1990. With the club Bayern Munich, he won three consecutive European Cups from 1974 to 1976, and the Cup Winners' Cup in 1967. He is one of only two footballers, along with Brazil's Mário Zagallo, to have won the World Cup both as a player and as a coach. Beckenbauer is one of two players (along with Carles Puyol) to captain three European Cup winning sides. He went on to become coach and president of the institution. He is also a member of the National Soccer Hall of Fame.

Gerhard "Gerd" Müller (German pronunciation: [ˈɡɛɐt ˈmʏlɐ]; born 3 November 1945 in Nördlingen) is a former German football player and one of the most prolific goalscorers of all time.

With national records of 68 goals in 62 international appearances, 365 goals in 427 Bundesliga games and the international record of 66 goals in 74 European Club games, he was one of the most successful goalscorers of his era. Müller is now 8th on the list of all time international goalscorers despite playing fewer matches than every player in the top 15. His nicknames are “Bomber der Nation” (the nation's Bomber) and “kleines dickes Müller” (short fat Müller; this name was given to him by Čik Čajkovski, his first coach at Bayern Munich. Čajkovski was Yugoslavian and got the German declension wrong).

In 1970 Müller was elected European Footballer of the Year after a successful season at Bayern Munich and scoring 10 goals at the 1970 World Cup. Müller held the all-time goal-scoring record in the tournament with a 14-goal total, a record that stood for 32 years until it was broken by Brazil's Ronaldo against Ghana in the Round of 16 of the 2006 World Cup. In 1999, he was voted ninth place in the European player of the Century election held by the IFFHS and he was voted thirteenth in the IFFHS' "World Player of the Century" election.