The oldest football club in Luxembourg is
Fola Esch, founded as the "Football and Lawntennis Club" on 9 December 1906 by English language teacher Jean Roeder. Being the oldest club in the country, they are also part of the
Club of Pioneers, a group set up by
Sheffield FC to join the oldest clubs in each country. It wasn't until 1908 that enough clubs had been created to form the
Luxembourg Football Federation (FLF). The following year, in 1909, the FLF organised the
first National Division league, which was won by
Racing Club Luxembourg. Racing were also the first team to win the
inaugural Luxembourg Cup 12 years later. The
women's league started in the 1971–73 season and was won by the
Atert Bissen women's team. A
women's cup competition started in 2001–02, where the
Progrès Niederkorn women's team won the trophy. Luxembourg, as a nation, was affiliated with
FIFA in 1910, and then with
UEFA in 1954. The first match of the
national team was a 1–4 defeat at home to France on 29 October 1910. It was only in 2006 that the
national women's team played their first game, a 0–4 defeat to Slovakia at home in the
2009 UEFA Euro Qualifying stage. The country hosted their first, and so far only, national tournament in 2006 when they hosted the
Euro Under-17 Euro tournament, where they failed to progress beyond the group stage. Until 2017, Luxembourg were consistently ranked outside the top 100 teams by FIFA, but after some good results, namely in the
UEFA Nations League, they are now ranked 84th. The national stadium, the
Stade de Luxembourg was opened in September 2021, replacing the outdated
Stade Josy Barthel, first inaugurated in 1931, as the home of the country's national team. Since the turn of the century, the domestic league has been dominated by F91 Dudelange, having won 14 league titles as well as 7 Luxembourg Cup titles. This is still some way behind the most successful team in the country,
Jeunesse Esch, with 28 league titles, however Dudelange was only founded as recently as 1991. They added to this success by becoming the first Luxembourgish team to qualify for the group stage of the Europa League in 2018–19, after dropping out of the Champions League Qualification Stage. ==Rankings==