The Montserrat national team is one of the newest in international football, having played its first senior match on 10 May 1991, during the 1991
Caribbean Cup tournament. The team suffered a 3–0 defeat against
Saint Lucia. The team's next match was against
Anguilla; securing a 1–1 draw. Montserrat once again entered the Caribbean Cup the following year, but were once more knocked out in the group stage, with heavy defeats against
Saint Kitts and Nevis and
Antigua and Barbuda. They were drawn against the same two teams in the 1994 Caribbean Cup, again being eliminated in the tournament's group stage, conceding 17 goals in two matches. In 1994, the
Montserrat Football Association (MFA) was formed. Like all other football teams based in the Caribbean, the MFA became a member of
CONCACAF. On 26 March 1995, Montserrat played their first ever home international match. They defeated Anguilla 3–2, thus achieving their first win. The team beat Anguilla again in the next fixture, to ensure progression to the Second Qualifying Round of the 1995 Caribbean Cup. The 1–0 win in the second leg, was their only clean sheet in international football, and their most recent victory for the next seventeen years. The side exited the competition in the next stage, losing 20–0 against
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Soon afterwards, the
Soufrière Hills volcano became active and the eruptions destroyed Plymouth, the capital of Montserrat, severely disrupting life on the island. Despite the lack of football action, the MFA became a member of FIFA in 1996. However, it was a further three years before the Montserrat team played another match. This was mostly because many of the island's footballers had emigrated from the area, many of them to England. Just months later on September 8,
Lee Bowyer took over as the Montserrat manager and
Steve Gallen is the assistant. In their first game they beat
Barbados with a 99th-minute winner to go second in their
CONCACAF Nations League group. A campaign was started by The Sweeper, a podcast on world football, to bring together the least-populated FIFA member Montserrat with
India, the most-populated FIFA member for a friendly match. Montserrat governor
Harriet Cross has endorsed the campaign. ==World rankings==