Conversely, has china ever made it? Almost positive India hasn't. Are we the biggest country (pop-wise) to have made it?
Trinidad and Tobago are the smallest to ever make it. I think we're the largest currently, but the old Soviet Union may have been larger. DOH. Bora took China to the 02 WC
Lotsa small Caribbean nations have made the wcq semis. Antigua and Barbuda did last year and they make Barbados look like a metropolis (85k popn v 274k popn). Also: Saint Vincent & the grenadines and Saint Kitts and Nevis both made the same WCQ semi group in 2006. The other two teams (Trinidad and Mexico) basically had a bye to the hex.
And in that one appearance, they left without scoring a single goal. India qualified in 1950, but withdrew because they weren't allowed to play barefoot (strange, but true) Indonesia qualified for the 1934 FIFA World Cup as the Dutch East Indies.....and also were eliminated without scoring a goal. This means that almost half the world's population has a combined 2 World Cup appearances, and no goals scored. Tells you how much population matters.
i forgot about a & b, and i guess i wasn't really paying attention in 2006. i do really like a & b's game plan, though. a club and country duality seems genius for very tiny nations. i thought they played very well home against us and would love to see that group grow into a caribbean force.
That is almost certainly not true. They declined to go because they didn't think the tournament was very important. This was hardly an opinion unique to them - only 32 teams entered qualification (plus the host and defending champions), 10 withdrew during qualification (Syria, Austria, Belgium, Finland, Argentina, Ecuador, Peru, Burma, the Philippines and Indonesia), 3 withdrew after qualifying (Scotland, Turkey, and India), 3 were offered spots to replace the withdrawn teams and declined (Portugal, France, and Ireland).
Because 13 teams competed in the 1950 World Cup, that means that only five -- 34-(10+3+3+13)=5 -- teams were actually eliminated in qualifying without having withdrawn first and without declining a berth later: Wales, Northern Ireland, Israel, Luxembourg, and Cuba.
Ah, the rout. Such a magical thing. I was reminded of this thread after tonight's win against Cuba. I believe that since I last thought about this topic (end of GC '13) there have been only two routs: 7.19.15 US 6-0 Cuba 7.7.15 US 4-0 Guatemala Any other routs by four or more goals in the past couple years?
I was at Home Depot Center when we beat Barbados 8-0 to kick off the 2010 WC qualifying campaign, that must have been summer of '08 I guess. IIRC, we then sent a B team for leg 2 on the road and we were life-and-death to hold a 1-0 win and Bunker Bob afterwards said something about how he thought we'd be strong enough defensively to win down there and everyone here groaned in agony.
I was there too--what a fun day, and I think the largest rout in US men's soccer history. I didn't tune into the return leg in Barbados, but per this article your recollection is right, a narrow 1-0 victory. The goal? By Eddie Lewis, assisted by one Freddy Adu. http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jun/23/sports/sp-uscup23
Be glad you didn't watch that one. Rising superstar Danny Szetela was in the starting lineup that day, too, btw.
My memory's a little vague on that one, but I believe we lined up in a 4-5-1 with DaMarcus Beasley as our lone striker.
My favorite of all the routs was the 4-0 pasting of El Salvador at the 2002 Gold Cup. Incredibly, we put the ball in the net 8 times, with Brian McBride responsible for six of them (including the first three of the goals that counted, all scored within the first 20 minutes). Four were called back for either offside or fouls, and a couple of those calls were rather questionable, almost as if the referee was trying not to let the score get too embarrassing.
OK, I'll do the honors: 3.30.16 USA 4-0 Guatemala And should have been even more of a rout but for the obscenely bad offsides call on Findlay's goal.
I remember that game in the sense that I remember not being able to find a way to watch that game from DC. I think I followed it on a primitive version of ye olde USSoccer.com MatchTracker. Three for McBride, one for Razov (right?), and we were onto the semifinals. Oh for the days when we got it done in the Gold Cup.
6.28.16 US 4:0 Bolivia First rout against a Conmebol opponent. First win against Bolivia. Youngest US goalscorer (Pulisic).