The
Faroe Islands national football team represents the
Faroe Islands in
association football and is controlled by the
Faroe Islands Football Association (FSF), the
governing body of the sport in the country. It competes as a member of the
Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), which encompasses the countries of Europe. Organised football has been played in the country since the 19th century;
Tvøroyrar Bóltfelag was its first club, founded in 1892.[3] Initially, clubs played friendlies to determine the winner of an unofficial championship, with matches being contested home and away, depending on the weather and the state of the generally uneven grass pitches.[3] The Faroe Islands Sports Association was formed in 1939, and three years later a
national league was created.[3] Cup competitions were introduced in 1955 before the FSF was founded on 13 January 1979.[3]
Before joining the
International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) on 2 July 1988,[3] the Faroe Islands played a selection of unofficial friendlies; they played their first official match on 24 August 1988 against
Iceland which resulted in a 1–0 away defeat in
Akranes, Iceland.[4] The nation recorded its first victory in its next
friendly, 1–0 against
Canada.[4] On 18 April 1990, the Faroe Islands became a member of UEFA and entered its first major international competition later that year: the
qualifying rounds for the
1992 UEFA European Football Championship.[3] The team won their first competitive match on 12 September 1990 when they defeated
Austria 1–0; this match, along with all competitive home matches during the qualification tournament, was played in Sweden because there were no grass pitches in the Faroe Islands to meet UEFA standards at the time.[5] The Faroe Islands made its first appearance in the qualifying rounds of the
FIFA World Cup during the
1994 edition, but the country has yet to reach the finals of either competition.[6]
Between 1988 and 2019, the team's largest victories came by three-goal margins against
San Marino,
Gibraltar and
Liechtenstein in 1995, 2014 and 2018 respectively; also during this period, the Faroe Islands' largest defeats came by seven-goal margins against
Romania,
Norway,
Yugoslavia and
FR Yugoslavia.[6] The Faroe Islands' highest annual
FIFA Men's World ranking during this period was 83rd at the end of 2016.[7]
^Following the
dissolution of Czechoslovakia, the national team was known as the Representation of Czechs and Slovaks (RCS) for a short period where they completed their FIFA World Cup qualification group.