The FIFA World Cup is football’s grandest stage. Every four years, when the world's biggest sporting spectacle returns, even the game's greatest stars are willing to push themselves to the limit for a place in their national squad.

Inside the stadium, tens of thousands of people were crying, yet there was almost no sound. That silence hurt more than any scream ever could. Supporters in yellow jerseys sat with their faces buried in their hands. Some stared blankly at the pitch, unable to process what had just unfolded before their eyes. Just six minutes. In the span of six devastating minutes, a nation’s dream, a generation’s wait, an entire country’s footballing identity turned to dust.

There are World Cups that live on through trophies, and then there are World Cups remembered for the players who briefly made football feel like poetry. For many fans, the 2014 FIFA World Cup belonged to one such player -- James Rodriguez.

In football’s vast and colourful history, there are certain figures without whom the story of the FIFA World Cup feels incomplete. Mario Jorge Lobo Zagallo was one of them.

Gelsenkirchen, Germany. June 16, 2006.

Designers from seven countries submitted 53 proposals. The winning concept came from Italian sculptor Silvio Gazzaniga.

The 1958 FIFA World Cup in Sweden was never meant to belong to France. Talented though they were, they were not considered an unstoppable force on football’s grandest stage. Yet, by the end of that tournament, they had become one, and at the heart of it stood Just Fontaine.

In the early 1950s, across Europe’s green carpets, Hungary were not merely a football team. They were devoted practitioners of the art of football. The eleven men on the field seemed to move according to the sheet music of an invisible orchestra. The world knew them as the “Magic Magyars.” When the ball was at their feet, it felt as though a master poet was arranging his finest verses.

Like the heroes of ancient Greek tragedies -- triumphant, revered, yet ultimately undone by a single moment of human weakness -- the night of July 9, 2006 at Berlin’s Olympic Stadium felt like a modern retelling of a timeless drama. And at the centre of it stood one man: Zinedine Zidane, both the story’s unrivalled hero and its tragic villain.