The countries that have only made it to the World Cup once

As Qatar looks to host the World Cup for the first time, it is a once-in-a-lifetime event for their footballing squad. As the host nation, they automatically qualified for the tournament. However, Qatar is not known as a nation that is proficient at the beautiful game. In fact, before this World Cup, they had never qualified for the tournament. If you’re looking at some of the World Cup odds, you will be very unlikely to find Qatar among the favorites such as Brazil or Argentina.

Qatar joins a list of many countries that have only featured at the World Cup once, and some of the other countries on the list may surprise you. As sports writers gear their material and blogs towards World Cup material, we will aim to give you some unique facts and figures about teams that have reached football’s pinnacle and seemingly disappeared into the shadows.

Starting with the oldest and working our way forward, Cuba qualified for the World Cup in 1938. Despite getting to the quarterfinals and surprising many people, they have not since qualified for the tournament. This has been cited as being for reasons outside of football, but the fact of the matter is that Cuba isn’t a country that is considered one of the top footballing nations. They are much more proficient at sports such as boxing, where they regularly medal at the Olympic games.

The 1938 World Cup also featured Indonesia, whose team didn’t reach the same stage as Cuba, as they failed to qualify for the knockout stages. They have also failed to qualify for every tournament since. Fast forwarding a few decades to 1970, the next country that features on our list is Israel. Despite going out at the group stage, there was great pride among Israelis that their team managed to qualify for the world’s top international competition. Unfortunately, they have not been featured since.

In the 1974 World Cup, Haiti and DR Congo were two surprise entrants. Their presence didn’t cause any upset, and both went home after the group stages when they failed to qualify. Neither has featured in the tournament since.

The same applies to two countries during the 1980s World Cups – Kuwait in 1982 and Iraq in 1986. Again, both qualified for the tournament for the first time but did not get past the group stages and have not been in international football’s premier competition since. The same applies to the United Arab Emirates, who played in the 1990 World Cup.

As we moved into the 1990s, the format of the World Cup allowed more teams to qualify, when FIFA decided to increase the number of teams in the tournament from 24 to 32. Therefore, the qualification pool was expanded to over 170 countries. This is reflected in the number of teams that have since qualified following that competition.

Jamaica appeared in their first tournament in 1998. The tiny Caribbean nation took its seat at the table with the giants of world football, and though it wasn’t meant to be, the team gave a spirited and hard-fought account of themselves.

A few of you might be surprised that China has never qualified for the tournament. India is set to overtake China as the most populated nation on Earth, but with well over a billion citizens, it is a surprise that for China, the 2002 World Cup was their first and only appearance.

Four debutants showcased themselves at the 2006 World Cup:

• Angola
• Togo
• Trinidad & Tobago
• Ukraine

While the first three may be no surprise, Ukraine qualified for the World Cup thanks to their legendary forward, Andriy Shevchenko. Having made their way out of the group, they came up short in the quarterfinals. It is the first and only time they have competed.

The following World Cup saw only one new entrant – Bosnia and Herzegovina, whose team went home after the group stage. Iceland and Panama both followed suit in 2018, falling out in the group stages.

Conclusion

As you can see by the range of countries that make up this article, there are appearances from some of the world’s largest and smallest countries. The beauty of the World Cup is the inclusive nature of the football fraternity. Expect to see more countries make their debut in future World Cups. There are talks of the number of teams increasing even further, which will see an increase in newcomers in the competition.