England Football Team at the FIFA World Cup

25th June 2026

England at the FIFA World Cup over the years  – it’s certainly been a journey! From crushing defeat to glorious victory…to who knows what the 2026 tournament will bring. We’ve still got the fun and great hope of not knowing at this point.

The first World Cup took place in Uruguay in 1930. FIFA chose Uruguay to celebrate its 100th anniversary of its first constitution. Uruguay had also been the Olympic football champions at the last Olympics in 1928 so they seemed worthy hosts. Only 13 teams took part in the tournament: all FIFA’s members were invited to take part. 7 of the teams were from South America; 2 were from North America and only 4 were from Europe.

It was the depths of the Great Depression and many European countries felt that Uruguay was too far and expensive for their teams to attend. England wasn’t even invited as it wasn’t a member of FIFA. It had broken away from FIFA two years earlier in a dispute about ‘broken time’ compensation for players. The pure-minded FA were against amateur players being compensated for time off work to play football matches. They also felt that they were the originators and therefore guardians of the ‘beautiful game’ and possibly gave international competitions less respect than they deserved.

The Second World War changed everyone’s perspective, unsurprisingly, and the FA rejoined FIFA in 1946. England looked to the 1950 World Cup in Brazil with supreme confidence. Even the host nation called England the ‘kings of football’. England’s team was fantastic on paper: those, such as Matthews, Finney, Mannion, Mortensen, Wright and Milburn were all already footballing heroes. But the FA decided it would be too expensive to send them in advance to acclimatise to the hot Brazilian climate. They put them up in a hotel opposite the Copacabana beach, where they got little sleep. The food was poor and almost all of the team  became sick at one time or another. Matthews was completely underutilised and the team were ignominiously knocked out of the tournament by none other than a fledgling USA team. 1950 has to be one of the greatest lows of England at the World Cup over the years.

Was it the nadir? That should be the subject of many a footie debate.  Do the three World Cups count where England didn’t even qualify?!

England’s failure to qualify for the World Cup in 1974 was particularly painful. The England team were strong: Moore, Banks, Hurst and Peters were at their peak along with the great Gordon Banks in goal. Young stars were emerging too, like Osgood, Hudson and George. England was also lucky enough to be in a seemingly weak group with Wales and Poland. But Poland were England’s undoing. Shockingly they went to the top of the group. England had to beat them to qualify. The score was 1-1: devastating for England,  particularly as it led to the end of Sir Alf Ramsey’s 11 year reign as England manager.

England didn’t qualify for the next 1978 World Cup in Argentina or the 1994 World Cup in the USA either. But let’s never forget that in 1966, we became the 5th nation to win the event and the 3rd host nation to do so. Did it help that the Worldwide Fellowship of Sport held a World Cup Service at

Westminster Abbey on the eve of the 1966 World Cup? It can’t have hurt! Do we need to rely this time on a little divine intervention too?! Hopefully not. In the last two World Cups England has done respectably. It won 4th place in the World Cup in Russia in 2018 and England reached the Quarter Finals in 2022. England has had one cracking game in the tournament and one wake up call. It’s still all to play for!