Football
Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...
is the most popular sports in
Myanmar
Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John C. Wells, Joh ...
.
Early history
Football was introduced to Myanmar, then named Burma, by the British colonialists in the 1880s, when explorer James George Scott organised a match between the British and the Burmese in
Lanmadaw Township. Football quickly became extremely popular across the country. So much so, that by the 1920s, Burmese started to spread the sport across East Asia. U Kyaw Din, a Burmese born in 1900, wrote one of the earliest books about the sport and promoted it so successfully in Japan that he became a member of the Japanese Football hall of fame posthumously in 2007.
In September 1926, the reportedly first women's football match was organised to raise funds for a charity.
Football governance
The
Myanmar Football Federation (MFF) is the governing body of football in
Myanmar
Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John C. Wells, Joh ...
. It was formed in 1947 as Burmese Football Federation and governs men's football since then and women's football since 1995.
The MFF joined
FIFA
FIFA (; stands for ''Fédération Internationale de Football Association'' ( French), meaning International Association Football Federation ) is the international governing body of association football, beach football and futsal. It was found ...
in 1952 and
AFC
AFC may stand for:
Organizations
* Action for Children, a UK children's charity
* AFC Enterprises, the franchisor of Popeye's Chicken and Biscuits
* Africa Finance Corporation, a pan-African multilateral development finance institution
* A ...
in 1954.
League system
The highest women's football league in the country is the
Myanmar Women League.
The highest men's football league is the
Myanmar National League. The second division is called
MNL-2
Cup system
There is currently no women's cup tournament in Myanmar. For the men's cup, see
General Aung San Shield.
Men's National team
The Myanmar national team used to be among the top teams in Asia until the early 1970s. They won five consecutive editions of the
Southeast Asian Games between 1965 and 1973 and the
Asian Games
The Asian Games, also known as Asiad, is a continental multi-sport event held every four years among athletes from all over Asia. The Games were regulated by the Asian Games Federation (AGF) from the first Games in New Delhi, India, until t ...
in 1966 and 1970. In 1968, the team finished runners-up at the
AFC Asian Cup
The AFC Asian Cup is the primary association football competition contested by the senior men's national teams of the members of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), determining the continental champion of Asia. It is the second oldest cont ...
, only losing to
Iran in the final. Most notably, the Burmese national team, as it was called at the time, finished 9th at the
1972 Olympics in Munich after beating
Sudan
Sudan ( or ; ar, السودان, as-Sūdān, officially the Republic of the Sudan ( ar, جمهورية السودان, link=no, Jumhūriyyat as-Sūdān), is a country in Northeast Africa. It shares borders with the Central African Republic t ...
2:0 and losing just 0:1 to later Bronze medalist
Soviet Union. They did win the Fair Play Award at the Games.
The national team never qualified for a
FIFA World Cup.
Women's national team
The national team is one of the most successful in South East Asia, sitting in the third place of the All-Time Table of the
AFF Women's Championship, which they won twice (2004 and 2007). They qualified for the
AFC Women's Asian Cup
The AFC Women's Asian Cup (formerly known as the AFC Women's Championship) is a quadrennial competition in women's football for national teams which belong to the Asian Football Confederation (AFC). It is the oldest women's international football ...
on five occasions, missing only three tournaments, but never made it past the group stages.
Myanmar football clubs
Myanmar football stadiums
References
External links
Myanmar Football Federation
{{Football in Asia
Football in Myanmar