Men's Gibraltar national team is tonight making history when playing for the first time a football match against another UEFA official national team. A friendly against Slovakia will be the debut of the Gibraltarian squad after having been admitted as UEFA's newest member last May, despite Spanish opposition. The game is to be played in Portugal since there is no stadium in Gibraltar that meets the requirements of UEFA.

Gibraltar is the sixth sub-state federation to be a current member of UEFA. The other four teams are the UK's Home Countries (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) and the Faroese national team, which was admitted to UEFA in 1990 after the islands had held their own national championship since the 1940s.

UEFA does not allow teams from countries that are not members of the UN to be their members. But Gibraltar made ​​his request for membership before UEFA had approved this rule, and thus the European body was forced to admit the Gibraltarians. Spain had been arguing that Gibraltar should not be admitted, and that Gibraltarians were trying to mix sports and politics.

Without having been admitted to FIFA, Gibraltar can only participate in Europe-wide competitions. Their men's national U-19 and U-17 teams are now contesting the qualifiers for the European Championships next year. So far, they has lost all the matches. Women's teams have yet to debut.

Games against unrecognized teams

Until it was admitted to UEFA, Gibraltar could only play games against unofficial teams, mostly representing other sub-state territories. For instance, Gibraltarians played against stateless nations teams like Tibet and Greenland. They also played against islands' teams such as Rhodes and Minorca.

(Image: Estádio Algarve, where the Gibraltarian national team is playing tonight / picture by Osvaldo Gago.)