Sport

Centenario Stadium

The main sport in Uruguay is football (soccer). In 1924, Uruguay sent its national team to the Olympics in Paris, the first South American nation to compete in Europe. They won gold at the competition, as well as at the next Olympics in Amsterdam in 1928. In addition, the Uruguay national football team is one of only five nations to win the FIFA World Cup on two or more occasions. In 1930, Uruguay hosted the first ever World Cup and went on to win the competition, defeating Argentina 4–2 in the final. Uruguay won the 1950 FIFA World Cup as well, famously defeating the favored hosts, Brazil, 2–1 in the last game of the final series. Uruguay performed very credibly in the 2010 FIFA World Cup, having reached the semi-final after 40 years. A narrow 3-2 semi-final defeat to the Netherlands was followed by a further 3-2 defeat to Germany in the third place play-off. Diego Forlán was named 2010 player of the tournament. Uruguay is by far the smallest country, population wise, to win a World Cup. Out of the World Cup winners, the nation with the second smallest population is Argentina (winners of the 1978 and 1986 editions), which has over 40 million people according to the latest estimate; Uruguay's current population slightly over 3.4 million. In fact, only six nations with population smaller than Uruguay have ever participated in any World Cup.
Uruguay is also the smallest member nation of CONMEBOL, South American Football Association. Nevertheless, the Uruguayan national team has won the Copa América 14 times, a record it shares with Argentina.
The most popular football teams in Uruguay are Club Atlético Peñarol (Three times World champions, five times Copa Libertadores de América champions, 41 times Uruguayan League champions) and Club Nacional de Football (Three times World champions, three times Copa Libertadores de América champions and 42 times Uruguayan League champions). Those two, are followed by, Defensor Sporting Club, Danubio, historic teams as Montevideo Wanderers, and other popular teams like Cerro and Rampla Juniors. Uruguay has had many well known players such as Obdulio Varela, Juan Schiaffino, Enzo Francescoli, Gustavo Poyet, Álvaro Recoba, Diego Lugano and Diego Forlán (2005 and 2009 European Golden Shoe, 2010 FIFA World cup adidas Golden Ball winner) among many others.

[edit] Education

Uruguay was the first country to have reached, in 2009, full coverage of their primary students (and their teachers) population by the OLPC's (One Laptop Per Child) XO through the Plan Ceibal. Due to their telecommunication infrastructure, students from primary schools from all over the country are able to access the Internet and its corresponding huge resources base. The Plan Ceibal included training of primary teachers to use the XO system, to maximize results. This represented a total of 350,000 primary students and their 16,000 teachers