Cambodia

Formation

Cambodia formed its first national team following the end of French colonization in 1954. Immediately following the end of French colonialism, Cambodia played its first home game against Malaya in 1956. The game ended with a 9–2 win for the Malayans.Like most Asian countries at the time, Cambodia did not seek to participate in the FIFA World Cup qualification nor even AFC Asian Cup qualification, as the country was still trying to consolidate its early association football development. When Lon Nol decided to topple the Cambodian Kingdom and replaced by a Republic, Cambodia finally decided to participate in the 1972 AFC Asian Cup qualification. Cambodia managed to qualify for the 1972 AFC Asian Cup in its first qualification attempt. Cambodia managed to win over Hong Kong, which sent the country to Thailand.

In the tournament as Khmer Republic, Cambodia lost to Iran and had to play in group B along with South Korea and Kuwait. Despite early loss to the South Koreans, they had qualified to the semi-finals thanked for a 4–0 win over Kuwait, only got beaten later by Iran, again, and Thailand, and won the 4th place overall.

1990s to 2010s

After decades of war, in which witnessed both Khmer Rouge's genocide and the later Vietnamese invasion which toppled the Khmer Rouge, Cambodia returned to international association football in 1993. Cambodia's first tournament as a new team was the 1996 AFF Championship, in which Cambodia was defeated in all four matches. In successive tournaments, Cambodia was not as successful and they could not manage to play with high spirits as it used to be. Despite this, Cambodia still gave birth to what would one of Cambodia's association football talents in its initial history, Hok Sochetra.

During this time, Cambodia sent its national team to the 1998 FIFA World Cup qualification, the first time Cambodia had ever done so. It had been unsuccessful by large, and often got eliminated in the bottom of their group. The country also withdrew from participating in the 2006 FIFA World Cup qualification. Likewise, Cambodia also only participated in the 2000 AFC Asian Cup qualification, before withdrew from 2004 and 2007 qualification attempts. The country later suffered AFF Championship drought, failing to qualify for three consecutive tournaments.

2010s and 2020s

Cambodia's association football has witnessed resurgence after decades being under shadows. The resurgence of Cambodia had begun with the arrival of South Korean Lee Tae-hoon, who had introduced development of association football in the country, with the change of its tactics, as well as youth development and promotion of Cambodian youngsters to the national team, has given hopes of change. At this team, the team has a lot of young talents, notably Chan Vathanaka, the first ever Cambodian to play professional association football outside Cambodia, and the fanbase increased as for the achievement. Cambodia once again demonstrated a full spirit of association football, despite during the 2018 FIFA World Cup qualifying stage, they did not win and also missed out the 2012 and 2014 AFC Challenge Cups, thus missing out in the 2015 AFC Asian Cup.

During 2019 AFC Asian Cup qualification, Cambodia finished bottom in a group where they suffered losses to Jordan and neighbour Vietnam. It defeated Afghanistan, ranked 158 in that time, above Cambodia which was ranked 174, and had already defeated Cambodia twice in the World Cup qualification, 1–0 at home. It was the country's only win in the qualification.

Following its failure to qualify for the 2019 AFC Asian Cup, Cambodia participated in the 2022 FIFA World Cup qualification first round where it beat Pakistan 4–1 on aggregate over two legs to reach the second round being drawn with Hong Kong, Bahrain, Iraq and Iran. On 5 September 2019 in the first fixture, Cambodia obtained a 1–1 draw at home to Hong Kong, 5 days later, it lost against Bahrain 1–0.

In August 2020, Félix Dalmás left his post after completing his contract while on 7 April 2021, fellow countrymen, Ryu Hirose was unveiled as the new head coach of the Cambodia taking the team whenever manager Keisuke Honda is unavailable. Hirose’s task was to guide Cambodia for the remaining matches of the second round qualifiers of the FIFA 2022 World Cup qualification. Cambodia went on to undergo 2 defeats to Iran, their worst ever defeat, 14–0 on 10 October 2019 and then 10–0 on 11 June 2021 seeing Cambodia picking up a solitary point in its group.