Denmark at the FIFA World Cup  The FIFA World Cup is an international association football competition contested by the 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 first tournament in 1930, except in 1942 and 1946, due to World War II. The tournament consists of two parts, the qualification phase and the final phase (officially called the "World Cup Finals"). The qualification phase, which currently take place over the three years preceding the Finals, is used to determine which teams qualify for the Finals. The current format of the Finals involves 32 teams competing for the title, at venues within the host nation (or nations) over a period of about a month. The World Cup Finals is the most widely viewed sporting event in the world, with an estimated 715.1 million people watching the 2006 tournament final. The first time Denmark entered the tournament was for the 1958 edition in Sweden. However, they lost all four of their qualifying matches to England and the Republic of Ireland. They qualified for the first time in 1986, where they won all three of their Group Stage matches including a 2-0 against title contenders West Germany, but were eliminated by Spain in the next round. Since then, the Danish national team has regularly qualified for FIFA World Cup Finals and have made their fifth appearance in Russia 2018. Their best performance was in 1998, where they reached the quarter finals. Denmark made their first World Cup appearance in the 1986 World Cup, and with the attacking duo of Michael Laudrup and Preben Elkjær. In their first match against Scotland, Denmark won 1-0 with the only goal coming from Preben Elkjær after he burst into the penalty area before shooting left-footed low into the right corner of the net. The team surprised the world, sweeping the group, including a 6–1 thrashing of Uruguay. In the second round, Denmark faced Spain losing 5–1 on the strength of four Emilio Butragueño goals; the first Spain goal was caused by a miss-timed backpass by Jesper Olsen to Butragueño, an unfortunate action subsequently coined as "a real Jesper Olsen" (""en rigtig Jesper Olsen""). The phrase would live on for 13 years and was repeated by the Danish TV commentators in 1999, when an identical backpass was carried out by Jesper Grønkjær to Filippo Inzaghi on the former's debut for Denmark.