Northern Ireland at the FIFA World Cup Northern Ireland at the FIFA World Cup The Northern Ireland national football team have appeared in the finals of the FIFA World Cup on three occasions. Their best World Cup performance was in their first appearance in the finals, the 1958 World Cup, where they reached the quarter-finals after beating Czechoslovakia 2–1 in the play-off. They were knocked out by France, losing 4–0. In the 1958 competition Northern Ireland became the least populous country to have qualified for the World Cup, a record that stood until Trinidad & Tobago qualified for the 2006 World Cup. Northern Ireland remains, however, the
Czech Republic at the FIFA World Cup people watching the 2006 tournament final. Czechoslovakia have been one of the better performing national teams in the history of the World Cup, having ended twice as runners-up, in 1934 and in 1962. Between 1930 and 1994 they qualified for 8 out of 13 World Cups they played qualifiers for, and did not enter in two other World Cups. After the political split-up into Czech Republic and Slovakia, the official successor football team Czech Republic has been less successful at the World Cup than Czechoslovakia, qualifying only for one out of five tournaments (the 2006 FIFA World Cup) without surviving