With Russia being banned from the 2022 World Cup because of the conflict in Ukraine we wanted to see what other teams ahd been banned.
It should be noted many teams have pulled out or simply not wanted to take part especially in the early tournaments but these teams were for other reasons.
Germany and Japan (1950 World Cup)
Both Germany and japan were banned from the 1950 World cup.
The 1950 FIFA World Cup was the fourth edition of the FIFA World Cup with the tournament was held in Brazil. The planned 1942 and 1946 World Cups were cancelled due to World War II.
Neither team had been readmitted to FIFA until September 1950, while East Germany was not admitted to FIFA until 1952.
South Africa (1970 -1990 World Cups)
South Africa under apartheid was subjected to a variety of boycotts.
South Africa was suspended from FIFA in 1963 but Stanley Rous(Yes of England 1966 World cup fame), the then FIFA’s President ( you thought only later Fifa presidents were ‘dodgy’), wanted to negotiate the countries reinstatement.
The proposal was in the 1966 World cup to field an all-white team and in the 1970 world cup to field an all-black team, fortunately this proposal was rejected.
The South African FA was expelled from FIFA in 1976 after the Soweto uprising.
In 1991, when apartheid was beginning to be demolished, a new multi-racial South African Football Association was formed, and admitted to FIFA.
Mexico (1990 World Cup)
Mexico was disqualified from the 1990 FIFA World Cup (and other international competitions) after using over age players in the qualifying round for the 1989 FIFA World Youth Championship, this was known as the “Cachirules” scandal.
The punishment was also applied to all Mexico national representatives of all FIFA-sanctioned tournaments
Chile ( 1990 and 1994 World Cups)
Chile managed to go one better than Mexico in one of the weirdest ways to get banned from a World cup.
The incident happened when Chile goalkeeper Roberto Rojas faked an injury from a firework thrown from the stands in Chile’s final qualifying match against Brazil, which caused the match to be abandoned.
It turned out that Rojas had used a blade hidden in his glove to cut himself and the incident had been caught on television.
Chile was also banned from the 1994 qualifiers for this offence. Rojas’ career was finished as he was subsequently banned for life.
Myanmar (2006 World Cup)
Banned in 2006 for withdrawing from qualification in 2002.
They were also initially banned from 2018 for crowd trouble but this was later overturned to matches to be played on neutral soil. they didn’t qualify anyway.
