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
2006 FIFA World Cup seeding 2006 FIFA World Cup seeding To calculate the seeding for the 2006 FIFA World Cup, FIFA used the FIFA World Rankings in combination with performances of national teams in the two previous World Cups. Points were allocated on the basis of 32 for the best achieving of the 32 qualifiers for 2006 FIFA World Cup in each of the five fields considered, down to one for the lowest ranking. The seedings table uses these points obtained from the 1998 FIFA World Cup and the 2002 FIFA World Cup averaged in a 1:2 ratio respectively, added to the average amount of