Belarus national football team

Belarus

The Belarus national football team is the national football team of Belarus and is controlled by the Football Federation of Belarus.After the split of Soviet Union, Belarus played their first match against Lithuania on July 20, 1992. Before that, some Belarusian players played for the USSR national football team. The first FIFA-recognized international was a friendly against Ukraine on October 28, 1992 and the first win happened in a match against Luxembourg on October 12, 1994.

Belarus have never qualified for either FIFA World Cup, or UEFA European Championship. Despite the lack of any significant success during 90s, some notable results were still archieved, like home win against Netherlands in qualification for Euro 1996 or two draws against Italy during Euro 2000 qualification.

Under coach Eduard Malofeev the team came very close to playing Germany in a play-off round to qualify for the 2002 World Cup in Japan and South Korea, but were defeated by Wales in the last group stage match, missing the chance to pass Ukraine, who tied their last game, for the second place, and to finish second behind Poland.

Euro 2004 qualifying campaingn was very unsuccessful as Belarus lost 7 of 8 games. Around the same time generation change occurred and a number of players from U-21 team (which successfully qualified for 2004 European U-21 Championship) joined national team. With each next head coach (Anatoly Baidachny, Yuri Puntus and Bernd Stange) the team improved their attacking skills. As a result in every next qualifying tournament starting with 2006 World Cup Belarus scored more goals (total and average per game) than in previous. However, problems in defense and a lot of missed goals prevented them from finishing higher than 4th in the group. Some notable results during this period included high-scoring 3–4 away loss to Italy in 2006 World Cup qualifier (the first time Italy missed 3 goals in a home qualifying game since 1983) and another home victory against Netherlands during Euro 2008 qualifying.

Belarusians archieved some success in minor tournaments. In 2002 the team passed Russia and Ukraine to win the "LG Cup". In 2004 and 2008, they won 12th and 14th editions of Malta International Football Tournament respectively. The first with its Olympic Squad and the later with the first team (many starters were only available for the last game vs Malta).

Source : Wikipedia.com