This article is about the men’s team. For the women’s team, see Estonia birth date women’s national football team.
The team participated in the 1924 Olympic Games tournament, their only participation. Estonia have never qualified for the FIFA World Cup or UEFA European Championship. Estonia has also participated in the local sub-regional Baltic Cup championship, which takes place every two years between the countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The record for the most international caps by an international is held by Martin Reim with 157, who held the European record in 2009 until November of that year.
In September 2016, Reim was appointed team manager. The record for most goals is held by Andres Oper with 38. Estonians were introduced to the game of football by English sailors in the first years of the 20th century, when the land was still part of the Russian Empire. Estonia’s only participation in a major tournament took place in 1924 at the Olympic Games in Paris. The Estonian league season usually lasted from the end of May to September. In 1928 the first Baltic football contest was held involving all three nations, it was held nine times during this period. Estonia’s first FIFA World Cup qualifying match took place on 11 June 1933 in Stockholm, Sweden.
This match was also world’s first FIFA world cup qualifying match. Since later on Sweden also defeated Lithuania, match between Estonia and Lithuania was cancelled, because Sweden had already won the group. Estonia’s first points in the FIFA World Cup qualifying rounds were gained in 1938, playing the qualification matches in 1937, the third edition of the tournament. At the time teams would play each other once in each group. Players were mostly in Tallinn clubs, such as TJK, Sport, Kalev and Tallinn Estonia. On 18 July 1940 the team played their last official game as an independent nation for more than half a century.
After Soviet occupation in August 1940, the national team demised along with the country. The clubs were renamed in the second half of the 1940s and the traditions started to fade. According to Uno Piir, the first national team manager after Estonia’s re-independence, the reason for football’s downfall in society was the inability to create a competitive Union-level club, hence the decrease in audience and the favouring of other sports by the governing bodies of sports. Estonian football-life was relaunched in mid-70s by the attempts of Roman Ubakivi, who formed Estonian-language training groups. 1989, who were coached by Ubakivi and Olev Reim. Several players, such as Mart Poom and Martin Reim, became part of the national team later. The Singing Revolution, the pursuit to restore Estonian independence and to cool regional tensions, found its way to football as well.
On 18 July 1990, an exhibition match was held between Estonian and Latvian footballers at Kadriorg Stadium, to remember the last official match between the two teams as independent nations 50 years previously. Estonia regained its independence on 20 August 1991, and then came back to international football when the team debuted in Lithuania’s organized Baltic tournament taking place in November. At that time the composition of the squad was influenced by the country’s citizenship policy. There were disputes whether the national team should include players who lived in Estonia but had not acquired Estonian citizenship. Most of those players in question were of Russian origin.
The citizenship dispute heated up again in February 1993 when Estonia took part in a three team friendly tournament held in Finland. For the first time, non-citizen players Andrei Borissov and Sergei Bragin were allowed to represent Estonia in the national team. On 5 December 1991 the EFA decided to take part in 1994 FIFA World Cup qualification tournament despite financial difficulties, the poor state of the Kadrioru Stadium and the inexperience of the national team. In the UEFA Euro 1996 qualifying tournament the team was coached by Roman Ubakivi. The qualification tournament ended without a single point and a goals record of three scored and 31 against. From 14 October 1993 to 5 October 1996 Estonia played without a victory for almost three years and by February 1996 the team had sunk to 135 in the FIFA World Rankings.
Public interest was at a low. In the autumn of 1994 when Estonia hosted Italy at the Kadrioru Stadium only 3000 people came to watch. Results improved with the arrival of the newly independent team’s first foreign coach, Icelandic Teitur Thordarson. His first victory was achieved at the fifth attempt in October 1996, when they defeated Belarus at the Kadriorg Stadium in a 1998 World Cup qualifier with a goal from Hohlov-Simson. At the end of qualifying, the Estonians finished fifth in a field of six teams on a total of four points ahead of Belarus. This was the first time the Belorussians finished last in a qualifying campaign, and had a weaker goal difference.
Estonia scored four goals and conceded sixteen. Estonia also entered the qualifying tournament for Euro 2000. This time round the Estonians recorded three wins and two draws in their group, with fifteen goals scored and seventeen conceded. The Estonian magazine Sporditäht, placed the 1998 events between the pair in their top ten sporting events. 0 defeats, with the last to date being at Wembley Stadium on 13 October 2007. Head coach Teitur Thordarson resigned at the end of 1999, leading the Estonian football association to look for a new coach. 2000, and seen the team through their qualifying group for the 2002 FIFA World Cup.
