FIFA lists the United States as having finished third at the 1930 World Cup, even though no third-place play-off was held. That has left a strange footnote at the start of World Cup history: a team can be credited with a podium finish without ever playing for it.

The question is being asked now because the first tournament’s final standings are back under scrutiny 96 years later, and the United States’ place in them still shapes how the competition is remembered. The record matters beyond nostalgia. A third-place finish would stand as the best World Cup result ever recorded by a side from outside Europe and South America, ahead of teams such as Denmark, Russia, Morocco, Colombia and Yugoslavia.

The United States got to that point by surviving the inaugural World Cup in 1930 and reaching the semi-finals before losing 6-1 to Argentina. Yugoslavia was beaten 6-1 by Uruguay in the other semi-final, which made the two teams the obvious candidates for a match for third place. But the 1930 World Cup was the only edition in which no bronze match was staged, and Martin da Cruz said he could find no record that such a play-off was even planned.

That absence sits at the heart of the dispute. Planet World Cup says there was no bronze match at the time and that the United States and Yugoslavia shared third place, while also noting FIFA’s retrospective ranking placing the Americans third. In other words, the standing exists in the books even though the game that would have decided it never happened.

The semi-finals themselves added to the confusion. The United States lost multiple players to injury in the defeat to Argentina, while Yugoslavia objected to officiating in its loss to Uruguay. Rob Fielder, in The Complete History of the World Cup, wrote that after Uruguay’s Santos Iriarte had chased a seemingly hopeless cause, a watching policeman kicked the ball back onto the field before the move continued. He said referee Almeida Rego missed that the ball had gone out, allowed Iriarte to cross for Pablo Dorado and watched Peregrino Anselmo score, later saying his view had been blocked even as he let one of the most farcical goals in World Cup history stand.

The result is a record that remains oddly unfinished. FIFA’s historical listing gives the United States a third-place finish, but the tournament that produced it offers no evidence that the position was ever contested on the pitch.