Macau national football team ( ; ) represents the Macau Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China in international football. The team is supervised by the Macau Football Association ( ; Portuguese: Associação de Futebol de Macau). The Macau football team has a ranking that is one of the lowest among the FIFA members. Although usual known as simply Macau, the EAFF refer to the team as Macau, China.
The team had been representing Macau in international football events before 1999 when Macau was a dependent territory of Portugal. It continues to represent Macau even after Macau was handed over to the People's Republic of China by Portugal and became a special administrative region of the People's Republic of China in 1999. This team is separate from the China national football team, as the Basic Law and the principle of "One Country, Two Systems" allows Macau to maintain its own representative teams in international sports competitions. In Macau, the Macau football team is colloquially referred as the "Macau team" (Chinese: 澳門隊), while the China national football team is referred as the "national team" (Chinese: 國家隊).
|
|