The Slovenia national football team represents Slovenia in international football competitions. The team was founded when Slovenia became an independent state in 1991. In 1992 Slovenia became a member of UEFA and FIFA.
Euro 1996 was the team’s first tournament, where they started well enough, playing a draw with Italy, the reigning vice-champions. The qualifying campaign for 1998 World Cup wasn’t successful, the squad played eight games and seven of them ended in defeats, only one game with Denmark was a draw.
A certain progress was made in the beginning of 2000s when Slovenia finished second in its qualifying group in Euro 2000 and eliminated Ukraine by 3-2 on aggregate. In the tournament the squad shared points with Yugoslavia and Norway, but lost to Spain 1-2.
In 2002 Slovenia took part in the World Cup, losing the games to Spain 1-3, Paraguay 1-3 and South Africa 0-1.
The defeat to France 0-5 during Euro 2004 qualifying round came out to be the most prominent failure but Slovenia went further finishing second in its group. Unfortunately, Slovenia yielded to Croatia 0-1 and 1-1.
Slovenia didn’t manage to qualify for the 2006 World Cup and Euro 2008, as it finished the last but one from the bottom in its group.
On November 14, 2009 Slovenia lost to Russia 1-2 and won 1-0 in the return game, which saw them advance for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.
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