Indonesia at the FIFA World Cup

This is a record of Indonesia's results at the FIFA World Cup. The FIFA World Cup, sometimes called the Football World Cup or the Soccer World Cup, but usually referred to simply as the World Cup, is an international association football competition contested by the men's national teams of the members of Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the sport's global governing body. The championship has been awarded every four years since the first tournament in 1930, except in 1942 and 1946, due to World War II.

The tournament consists of two parts, the qualification phase and the final phase (officially called the World Cup Finals). The qualification phase, which currently take place over the three years preceding the Finals, is used to determine which teams qualify for the Finals. The current format of the Finals involves 32 teams competing for the title, at venues within the host nation (or nations) over a period of about a month. The World Cup Finals is the most widely-viewed sporting event in the world, with an estimated 715.1 million people watching the 2006 tournament final.^[1]

The Indonesian national football team has only participated once in the FIFA World Cup, which is the 1938 World Cup in France, under the name Dutch East Indies. Although they are now independent from the Netherlands and has changed their name to Indonesia, FIFA considers them as the successor team of Dutch East Indies. The Indies played Hungary in their first game ever, losing 6-0. The straight knockout format used at the time made it the only game ever played by the Indonesians. Thus, Indonesia holds the FIFA World Cup record as the only team with the fewest matches played (1) and one of the teams with the fewest goals scored (0).

In 1958, the team tasted their first World Cup action as Indonesia in the qualifying rounds. They got past China in the first round, but subsequently refused to play their next opponents Israel. The team suffered a long hiatus from FIFA World Cup since 1958 due to an unfavourable political situation - both internally and externally. It was only in 1974 that Indonesia returned to the fold.

History

World Cup Competition Record