Football World Cup 1990

The 1990 Football World Cup was held in Italy. It was won by West Germany, who beat Argentina 1-0 in the final.

Lasts

• This would be the last World Cup in which goalkeepers were allowed to pick up direct backpasses from teammates. The backpass rule was in use from the 1994 tournament in order to make it harder for teams to time-waste.
• This was the last World Cup in which four teams' countries existed as political entities: West Germany joined with East Germany shortly after the tournament, Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Yugoslavia dissolved into the nations Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, and Serbia and Montenegro (which retained the name Yugoslavia until 2002), and the USSR, which split into Russia and fourteen smaller states with the fall of the Communist regime, although the former Soviet states fielded a CIS team through the 1992 European Championship.