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Home | National Football Team | Isle of Man national football team
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The Isle of Man are not members of FIFA or UEFA, as the Isle of Man FA are members of The Football Association (The FA), with similar status to an English county. Since they are not a member of either FIFA or UEFA, they are not eligible to enter either the World Cup or European Championship, nor are their league clubs eligible for the UEFA Champions League or UEFA Cup. It does not participate in these international competitions (it is a crown dependency of the UK and not a sovereign nation), even though it is larger than Andorra, Liechtenstein, San Marino and the Faroe Islands. The Isle of Man therefore is limited to different forms of competition. The main competition the Isle of Man national football team takes part in is the biennial Football at the Island Games. Isle of Man has won three Silver Medals in 1993, 1999 and 2003. They play in the annual Celtic Nations Cup, a tournament for semi-professional and amateur national teams from the Isle of Man, Scotland, the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. They won the tournament in 2000, beating Scotland 1-0 in the final, despite the Isle of Man possessing the only truly all-amateur set-up as the other teams fielded semi-professional players. Another regular competition played in is the Steam Packet Football Festival, which usually features the Isle of Man along with lower division teams from The Football League. The Isle of Man's best result to date in the tournament, was beating Burnley F.C. 1-0 in 2000. In the 2005-06 season, the Isle of Man national team won The FA National League System Cup, a competition for amateur teams representing the leagues at Step 7 of the National League System with a few other leagues permitted by the FA. The Isle of Man beat the Cambridgeshire Football Association County League team 4-0 in the final and represented England in the UEFA Regions' Cup. |
