The 1966 World Cup Boycott: When Africa and Asia Said Enough

In Phnom Penh, of all places, the road to the 1966 World Cup in England was settled for two entire continents. North Korea faced Australia in a two-legged play-off, with both matches held in Cambodia. The Koreans won 9-2 on aggregate. Their prize was a place in the finals, the single, solitary spot allocated by FIFA to the combined confederations of Africa, Asia and Oceania. They were the only nations from this vast swathe of the globe to have even entered the qualification process. Everyone else had withdrawn in protest.

The boycott was a story largely ignored by the British press at the time. In July 1965, The Guardian dismissed it as a ‘sour note’ in otherwise smooth preparations for the tournament. Yet this was no mere footnote. It was the culmination of years of frustration at FIFA’s Eurocentric worldview and a direct challenge to its president, Stanley Rous, over his controversial support for apartheid South Africa. The actions of the boycotting nations would fundamentally change the World Cup forever.

A History of Disrespect

From the moment African and Asian nations began to engage with the World Cup, they were treated as an afterthought. Egypt first attempted to qualify in 1934, but as more countries joined the global footballing family, FIFA’s rules remained stubbornly restrictive. For the 1958 tournament in Sweden, a bizarre rule stipulated that no team could qualify without playing at least one match. After a series of withdrawals in the African and Asian section, Israel won the group by default. They were subsequently forced into a play-off against Wales, a European team that had failed to qualify, and were soundly beaten 4-0 on aggregate. The message was clear: an African or Asian qualifier was not welcome without a European seal of approval.

The situation barely improved for 1962. The winners from Africa (Morocco) and Asia (South Korea) were again forced into play-offs against European runners-up. Both were predictably eliminated, with Morocco losing to Spain and South Korea being thrashed by Yugoslavia. For 1966, FIFA offered what it must have considered a concession: one guaranteed place in the finals for a team from Africa, Asia or Oceania. Just one. For the planet’s two largest continents, this was not a concession; it was an insult.

This decision came at a time of immense global change. The post-war collapse of European empires had created a host of newly independent nations, proud and unwilling to accept the colonial-era hierarchies that still defined organisations like FIFA. The Confederation of African Football (CAF), founded in 1957, and the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), founded in 1954, were growing in power and demanded fair representation. They saw no reason why they should be forced to fight over scraps while Europe was handed the lion’s share of places.

The Shadow of Apartheid

The allocation of places was not the only source of anger. A deeper, more toxic issue was straining the relationship between FIFA and its African members: apartheid. South Africa had been admitted to FIFA in 1954 but was expelled from CAF four years later. In 1961, FIFA suspended South Africa for its discriminatory policies, but the election of Englishman Stanley Rous as FIFA president changed the dynamic. Rous was a staunch advocate for South Africa’s inclusion in world football.

In 1963, Rous travelled to South Africa on an ‘investigation’ and concluded that the game could disappear there if they were not readmitted. Following a proposal from the South African FA to send an all-white team to the 1966 World Cup and an all-black team in 1970, FIFA reinstated them. The backlash was immediate. At FIFA’s next congress in Tokyo, a larger and more organised bloc of African and Asian delegates forced a vote that saw South Africa suspended once again. Rous, however, remained defiant. He continued to push for their inclusion, even suggesting a new Southern African confederation for South Africa and Rhodesia. He only backed down when CAF members threatened a mass withdrawal from FIFA itself at the 1966 congress in London.

It was against this backdrop of simmering resentment that the boycott of the 1966 qualifiers was organised. The CAF and AFC nations withdrew en masse, leaving only North Korea and Australia to contest the single place. The protest worked. From the 1970 tournament in Mexico onwards, Africa and Asia were each guaranteed at least one spot at the finals.

The Surprise from Ayresome Park

The team that broke the boycott, North Korea, became one of the tournament’s most cherished stories. Drawn to play their group games at Middlesbrough’s Ayresome Park, they were initially overwhelmed, losing their first match 3-0 to the Soviet Union. But the Teesside crowd took the underdogs to their hearts. In their second game, a late Pak Seung-Zin goal secured a 1-1 draw with Chile, giving them an unlikely chance of progressing.

Their final group match was against the mighty Italy, a game that has since passed into World Cup folklore. Watched by just 18,000 people, the second-lowest crowd of the entire tournament, North Korea pulled off one of the greatest upsets in history. A goal from Pak Doo-Ik just before half-time was enough to secure a 1-0 victory. With the Soviet Union beating Chile in the other match, the unthinkable had happened: North Korea were through to the quarter-finals.

Their incredible run came to a spectacular end at Goodison Park. Against a Portuguese side inspired by the brilliant Eusébio, the Koreans stormed into an astonishing 3-0 lead within 25 minutes. But the dream could not last. Portugal, one of the strongest teams in the world, rallied. By half-time, they had pulled the score back to 3-2, and a second-half surge saw them run out 5-3 winners. We can never know if another team would have qualified had the boycott not occurred, but there is a rich irony that the defiant performance of the one nation that did play may have helped convince FIFA of the benefits of a more diverse tournament.

The political battles, of course, did not stop. North Korea refused to play Israel in the 1970 qualifiers and withdrew. Rhodesia, expelled from CAF, was shunted into the AFC/OFC qualifying group before being expelled from FIFA altogether in 1970.

The fight for representation and against apartheid ultimately sealed Stanley Rous’s fate. His Eurocentric and racially out-of-touch attitudes made his position untenable. The African and Asian confederations, increasingly powerful, rallied behind a challenger: Brazil’s João Havelange. At the 1974 FIFA congress, Havelange promised them greater involvement and more places at the World Cup. The delegates delivered their verdict, and Rous, a relic from a bygone era, was voted out of office. For all the problems Havelange’s presidency would later bring, his election marked a decisive shift in the global politics of football, a change forced by the nations that, in 1966, simply said “enough”. It would take until 1978 for an African team, Tunisia, to win a match at the finals.