of the world was beind them, as they still are today, although the gap has closed. The whole reason there was a World Cup in 1930 in the first place was the high level of interest and play in many countries. There were already very good teams by then, by all accounts.

Uruguay was the world’s great soccer power in the ‘20s and early ‘30s, along with England. Austria put together the next great team in the 30s (the “Wunderteam”), but they flopped in the 1934 World Cup and got absorbed by Germany and basically dissolved before the 1938 World Cup, as I understand it. Argentina was the other great power in the ‘30s and ‘40s, but a bunch of their best players went to play for Italy, and led Italy to the ‘34 & ‘38 World Cups.

Not sure where you got the idea that competition was horrible circa 1930. The Copa America (with different branding) had already been going for 14 years by the time the first World Cup rolled around, along with Olympic soccer, both of which generated a lot of interest and led to the idea of staging a World Cup.

If you wanted to pick a “bad” champion from that era, why not the Italian teams of 1934 & 1938? It’s only a few years later, and those Italian teams don’t have nearly the reputation that Uruguay had.