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89-612: The Estonia men's national football team ( Estonian : Eesti Jalgpallikoondis ) represents Estonia in international football matches and is controlled by the Estonian Football Association , the governing body for football in Estonia . Estonia's home ground is Lilleküla Stadium in the capital city Tallinn . The national team's first ever match was held against Finland in 1920 and resulted in 6–0 defeat. Estonian footballers have participated only once in

178-468: A Swedish 6–2 win. This match was also the world's first FIFA world cup qualifying match. Since later on Sweden also defeated Lithuania, the match between Estonia and Lithuania was cancelled, because Sweden had already won the group. Estonia's first points in the FIFA World Cup qualifying rounds were gained in 1938 , playing the qualification matches in 1937, the third edition of the tournament. At

267-455: A broad classical education and knew Ancient Greek , Latin and French . Consider roim 'crime' versus English crime or taunima 'to condemn, disapprove' versus Finnish tuomita 'to condemn, to judge' (these Aavikisms appear in Aavik's 1921 dictionary). These words might be better regarded as a peculiar manifestation of morpho-phonemic adaptation of a foreign lexical item. Article 1 of

356-600: A goals record of three scored and 31 against. The biggest defeats came from abroad against Croatia (7–1) and Lithuania (5–0). From 14 October 1993 to 5 October 1996 Estonia played without a victory for almost three years and by February 1996 the team had sunk to 135 in the FIFA World Rankings . Public interest was at a low. In the autumn of 1994 when Estonia hosted Italy at the Kadrioru Stadium only 3000 people came to watch. Results improved with

445-644: A group of six. 2009 was declared the 100th anniversary of Estonian football. The final matches for record cap holder Martin Reim (6 June versus Equatorial Guinea ) and long-standing goalkeeper Mart Poom were held (against Portugal on 10 June). Sajandi mäng (English: Match of the Century ) was the first ever match versus Brazil , who had arrived in Tallinn as the FIFA World Rankings leaders, and also

534-493: A play-off tie, making 2011 the " annus mirabilis of Estonian football". They have since repeated this feat by qualifying for the UEFA Euro 2024 qualifying play-offs through being the best group winner in 2022–23 UEFA Nations League D . Estonia has also participated in the local sub-regional Baltic Cup championship, which takes place every two years between the countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania . Estonia has won

623-480: A weaker goal difference. Estonia scored four goals and conceded sixteen. Estonia also entered the qualifying tournament for Euro 2000 . This time round the Estonians recorded three wins and two draws in their group, with fifteen goals scored and seventeen conceded. The team also found themselves in the same group as Scotland, this time losing 3–2 away but drawing 0–0 at home. The Estonian magazine Sporditäht, placed

712-737: Is a bilingual German-Estonian translation of the Lutheran catechism by S.   Wanradt and J.   Koell dating to 1535, during the Protestant Reformation period. An Estonian grammar book to be used by priests was printed in German in 1637. The New Testament was translated into the variety of South Estonian called Võro in 1686 (northern Estonian, 1715). The two languages were united based on Northern Estonian by Anton thor Helle . Writings in Estonian became more significant in

801-756: Is also Estonia's largest football stadium. Lilleküla Stadium is also the home of FC Flora . Their previous home ground was the Kadriorg Stadium, which opened in June 1926 with a 3–1 victory over Lithuania. The Kadriorg holds 5,000 seats and in contrast to the Lilleküla Stadium, stages athletics events on a regular basis. 1992–2000 Estonia have also staged friendly matches away from Tallinn in Kohtla-Järve , Kuressaare , Narva , Pärnu , Rakvere , Tartu , Valga and Viljandi . The kit of

890-734: Is based on central dialects, it has no vowel harmony either. In the standard language, the front vowels occur exclusively on the first or stressed syllable, although vowel harmony is still apparent in older texts. Typologically, Estonian represents a transitional form from an agglutinating language to a fusional language . The canonical word order is SVO (subject–verb–object), although often debated among linguists. In Estonian, nouns and pronouns do not have grammatical gender , but nouns and adjectives decline in fourteen cases: nominative , genitive , partitive , illative , inessive , elative , allative , adessive , ablative , translative , terminative , essive , abessive , and comitative , with

979-457: Is extensive, and this has made its inflectional morphology markedly more fusional , especially with respect to noun and adjective inflection. The transitional form from an agglutinating to a fusional language is a common feature of Estonian typologically over the course of history with the development of a rich morphological system. Word order is considerably more flexible than in English, but

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1068-758: Is pronounced [æ], as in English mat . The vowels Ä, Ö and Ü are clearly separate phonemes and inherent in Estonian, although the letter shapes come from German. The letter õ denotes /ɤ/ , unrounded /o/ , or a close-mid back unrounded vowel . It is almost identical to the Bulgarian ъ /ɤ̞/ and the Vietnamese ơ , and is also used to transcribe the Russian ы . Additionally C , Q , W , X , and Y are used in writing foreign proper names . They do not occur in Estonian words , and are not officially part of

1157-492: Is pronounced) and in the use of 'i' and 'j'. Where it is very impractical or impossible to type š and ž , they are replaced by sh and zh in some written texts, although this is considered incorrect. Otherwise, the h in sh represents a voiceless glottal fricative , as in Pasha ( pas-ha ); this also applies to some foreign names. Modern Estonian orthography is based on the "Newer orthography" created by Eduard Ahrens in

1246-757: The idamurre or eastern dialect on the northwestern shore of Lake Peipus . One of the pronunciation features of the Saaremaa dialect is the lack of the 'õ' vowel. A five-metre monument erected in 2020, marking the "border" between the vowels 'õ' and 'ö', humorously makes reference to this fact. South Estonian consists of the Tartu, Mulgi, Võro and Seto varieties. These are sometimes considered either variants of South Estonian or separate languages altogether. Also, Seto and Võro distinguish themselves from each other less by language and more by their culture and their respective Christian confession. Estonian employs

1335-497: The Livonian Chronicle of Henry contains Estonian place names, words and fragments of sentences. The earliest extant samples of connected (north) Estonian are the so-called Kullamaa prayers dating from 1524 and 1528. In 1525 the first book published in Estonian was printed. The book was a Lutheran manuscript, which never reached the reader and was destroyed immediately after publication. The first extant Estonian book

1424-470: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Estonian and English: 1938 FIFA World Cup qualification A total of 37 teams entered the 1938 FIFA World Cup qualification rounds, competing for a total of 16 spots in the final tournament. For the first time the title holders and the host country were given automatic qualification. Therefore, France , as the hosts, and Italy , as

1513-643: The Baltic Sea and in northwestern Russia. Estonian is typically subclassified as a Southern Finnic language, and it is the second-most-spoken language among all the Finnic languages. Alongside Finnish, Hungarian , and Maltese , Estonian is one of the four official languages of the European Union that are not Indo-European languages . In terms of linguistic morphology , Estonian is a predominantly agglutinative language . The loss of word-final sounds

1602-416: The Estonian Football Association (EFA) an ultimatum signed by 25 players which stated that "only those who have acquired Estonian citizenship on the basis of legal continuity should be included in the national team". In July of the same year FIFA gave the right to represent Estonia to 97 non-citizens who were according to EFA born in Estonia and were in the process of acquiring Estonian citizenship. In October

1691-712: The Germanic languages have very different origins and the vocabulary is considered quite different from that of the Indo-European family, one can identify many similar words in Estonian and English, for example. This is primarily because Estonian has borrowed nearly one-third of its vocabulary from Germanic languages, mainly from Low Saxon ( Middle Low German ) during the period of German rule , and High German (including standard German ). The percentage of Low Saxon and High German loanwords can be estimated at 22–25 percent, with Low Saxon making up about 15 percent. Prior to

1780-581: The Latin script as the basis for its alphabet . The script adds the letters ä , ö , ü , and õ , plus the later additions š and ž . The letters c , q , w , x and y are limited to proper names of foreign origin, and f , z , š , and ž appear in loanwords and foreign names only. Ö and Ü are pronounced similarly to their equivalents in Swedish and German. Unlike in standard German but like Swedish (when followed by 'r') and Finnish, Ä

1869-536: The Proto-Finnic language , elision has occurred; thus, the actual case marker may be absent, but the stem is changed, cf. maja – majja and the Ostrobothnia dialect of Finnish maja – majahan . The verbal system has no distinct future tense (the present tense serves here) and features special forms to express an action performed by an undetermined subject (the "impersonal"). Although Estonian and

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1958-474: The floodlighting inadequate. This matter was raised with the officials who agreed with their concerns. In protest, the Estonians failed to show up, which kicked off only to be stopped seconds later. At the end of qualifying, the Estonians finished fifth in a field of six teams on a total of four points ahead of Belarus. This was the first time the Belarusians finished last in a qualifying campaign, and had

2047-402: The qualifying rounds for the 2006 FIFA World Cup , under the supervision of Dutchman and assistant coach of Pijpers Jelle Goes , after Pijpers left the post in 2004. Five wins, two draws and five losses gave them 17 points in their qualification group and fourth place. The team were placed ahead of Latvia, Liechtenstein and Luxembourg. UEFA Euro 2008 qualifying was not as successful, which seen

2136-485: The 1870s to the 1890s) tried to use formation ex nihilo ( Urschöpfung ); i.e. they created new words out of nothing. The most well-known reformer of Estonian, Johannes Aavik (1880–1973), used creations ex nihilo (cf. 'free constructions', Tauli 1977), along with other sources of lexical enrichment such as derivations, compositions and loanwords (often from Finnish; cf. Saareste and Raun 1965: 76). In Aavik's dictionary (1921) lists approximately 4000 words. About 40 of

2225-553: The 18th and 19th centuries based on the dialects of northern Estonia. During the Medieval and Early Modern periods, Estonian accepted many loanwords from Germanic languages , mainly from Middle Low German (Middle Saxon) and, after the 16th-century Protestant Reformation , from the Standard German language. Estonia's oldest written records of the Finnic languages date from the 13th century. The "Originates Livoniae" in

2314-926: The 1930s. There are 9 vowels and 36 diphthongs , 28 of which are native to Estonian. All nine vowels can appear as the first component of a diphthong, but only /ɑ e i o u/ occur as the second component. A vowel characteristic of Estonian is the unrounded back vowel /ɤ/, which may be close-mid back , close back , or close-mid central . Word-initial b, d, g occur only in loanwords and some old loanwords are spelled with p, t, k instead of etymological b, d, g : pank 'bank'. Word-medially and word-finally, b, d, g represent short plosives /p, t, k/ (may be pronounced as partially voiced consonants), p, t, k represent half-long plosives /pː, tː, kː/, and pp, tt, kk represent overlong plosives /pːː, tːː, kːː/; for example: kabi /kɑpi/ 'hoof' — kapi /kɑpːi/ 'wardrobe [ gen sg ] — kappi /kɑpːːi/ 'wardrobe [ ptv sg ]'. Before and after b, p, d, t, g, k, s, h, f, š, z, ž ,

2403-426: The 1970s, the game lost popularity in Estonia and the sport was mainly played by the Russian immigrant community. Estonian football-life was relaunched in mid-70s by the attempts of Roman Ubakivi , who formed Estonian-language training groups. The most notable team was Lõvid (English: Lions ) in 1980–1989, who were coached by Ubakivi and Olev Reim. Several players, such as Mart Poom and Martin Reim , became part of

2492-548: The 1998 events between the pair in their top ten sporting events. On 31 March 1999 the Estonians defeated Lithuania 2–1 in Vilnius. Estonia remained a theoretical possibility to qualify for their first major tournament. Despite failing to qualify, they still set themselves a then team record of 11 points. Their meeting with Scotland on 8 September 1999 was a 5,000 sell-out at the Kadriorg. Head coach Teitur Thordarson resigned at

2581-524: The 19th century during the Estophile Enlightenment Period (1750–1840). The birth of native Estonian literature was during the period 1810–1820, when the patriotic and philosophical poems by Kristjan Jaak Peterson were published. Peterson, who was the first student to acknowledge his Estonian origin at the then German-language University of Dorpat , is commonly regarded as a herald of Estonian national literature and considered

2670-490: The 200 words created by Johannes Aavik allegedly ex nihilo are in common use today. Examples are * ese 'object', * kolp 'skull', * liibuma 'to cling', * naasma 'to return, come back', * nõme 'stupid, dull'. Many of the coinages that have been considered (often by Aavik himself) as words concocted ex nihilo could well have been influenced by foreign lexical items; for example, words from Russian , German , French , Finnish , English and Swedish . Aavik had

2759-579: The Baltic Cup for the 4th time, beating Latvia 2–1 at home, and it's the first time after 83 years, since 1938. Home games are played in Tallinn at the Lilleküla Stadium since 2001, its capacity is about 14,400. The stadium borrows its name from its sponsor A. Le Coq , a major Estonian brewery. The stadium was opened on 2 June 2001, for the sold-out World Cup qualifier versus the Netherlands. This

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2848-590: The Estonian SSR had its own representative team, but because of the occupation it did not take part of international competitions. Between 1948 and 1976, the Baltic Cup was held 19 times, which The Byelorussian SSR won a few times and the Estonian SSR five times. From 1969 to 1982, Soviet-occupied Estonia was the only Soviet "union republic" not participating in the Soviet Union's football league. During

2937-465: The Estonian national team (home games) traditionally consists of a blue shirt, black shorts and white socks, while a change strip (away games), is that of a white shirt, black shorts and blue socks. Before 1996, other colour combinations have been used. The goalkeeper usually wears a yellow jersey, black shorts and yellow socks. The kit design changes every two years to a new one. Since 1997 the team's supplier has been Nike , while between 1992 and 1997 it

3026-583: The Estonian team failed to turn up for the game. For unclear reasons, the match was rescheduled to be played on neutral ground in Monaco after it was agreed at a FIFA meeting in Scotland on 7 November, leading to the rescheduled match to take place on 11 February 1997 ending in a 0–0 draw. Reasons for the original postponement of the game was that the Scottish team trained at the Kadriorg the night before, finding

3115-546: The Estophile educated class admired the ancient culture of the Estonians and their era of freedom before the conquests by Danes and Germans in the 13th century. When the Republic of Estonia was established in 1918, Estonian became the official language of the newly independent country. Immediately after World War II , in 1945, over 97% of the then population of Estonia self-identified as native ethnic Estonians and spoke

3204-472: The Euro 2012 qualifying campaign. The regular qualification phase for the Euro 2012 tournament was completed with a win in the final game away to Northern Ireland. Four days later, Serbia failed to beat Slovenia , thus Estonia entered a qualifying play-off against the Republic of Ireland with the first leg in Tallinn. Estonia lost the home game 0–4 but managed a 1–1 draw abroad. The Euro 2012 qualifying campaign

3293-497: The FIFA World Rankings. The first home game of the campaign was a 3–0 loss to Spain, the reigning European champions . The team still picked up points during the qualification, which included holding Euro 2008 semi-finalists Turkey to a 0–0 draw. Further results were a 1–0 win over Armenia, and a 2–2 draw away from home before the campaign was completed with a 2–0 win against the Belgians. The team collected 8 points finishing fifth in

3382-662: The Faroe Islands then followed, before a tour of South America saw the team lose to Chile and Uruguay. A 3–0 loss to Turkey in Istanbul then completed their friendly matches cycle before qualifying resumed. However, the Sinisärgid won away from home to Slovenia and at home to Northern Ireland , which lifted the team to 58th in the FIFA rankings, giving them their best position to date. This win completed their group matches in

3471-690: The Olympic Games, when they played a single match in the 1924 Olympic Games' final tournament in Paris, France. They were defeated 1–0 by the United States in first round. During World War II, in 1940, Estonia was invaded and occupied by the Soviet Union , and there was no possibility of fielding a national football team again until the country restored full independence in August 1991. After

3560-559: The Serbian team had competed in the World Cup. Media attention came from a 2–2 friendly international result with Bulgaria . Two days before the friendly match, on 11 February 2011, bets were placed by officials regarding the outcome of the match. Suspicion of match manipulation was raised when a Hungarian referee gave four disputable penalties, being equally distributed between the two sides. The same team of officials also took charge of

3649-410: The alphabet. Including all the foreign letters, the alphabet consists of the following 32 letters: Although the Estonian orthography is generally guided by phonemic principles, with each grapheme corresponding to one phoneme , there are some historical and morphological deviations from this: for example preservation of the morpheme in declension of the word (writing b, g, d in places where p, k, t

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3738-485: The arrival of the newly independent team's first foreign coach, Icelander Teitur Thordarson . His first victory was achieved at the fifth attempt in October 1996, when they defeated Belarus at the Kadriorg Stadium in a 1998 World Cup qualifier with a goal from Hohlov-Simson. After the victory over the Belarusians, the Estonian team gained infamy on 9 October 1996, when a match against Scotland had to be rescheduled after

3827-441: The basic order is subject–verb–object . The speakers of the two major historical languages spoken in Estonia, North and South Estonian , are thought by some linguists to have arrived in Estonia in at least two different migration waves over two millennia ago, both groups having spoken considerably different vernacular; South Estonian might be a Finnic language rather than a variety of Estonian. Modern standard Estonian evolved in

3916-539: The board of EFA made a decision that after the date of 1 April 1993 non-citizens could no more debut in the national team. The citizenship dispute heated up again in February 1993 when Estonia took part in a three team friendly tournament held in Finland. For the first time , non-citizen players Andrei Borissov and Sergei Bragin were allowed to represent Estonia in the national team. In a statement made on 23 February

4005-413: The case and number of the adjective always agreeing with that of the noun (except in the terminative, essive, abessive and comitative, where there is agreement only for the number, the adjective being in the genitive form). Thus the illative for kollane maja ("a yellow house") is kollasesse majja ("into a yellow house"), but the terminative is kollase majani ("as far as a yellow house"). With respect to

4094-399: The competition after Egyptian officials objected to playing on this date since it was in the holy month of Ramadan. Therefore, Romania qualified after Egypt invited Austrian club side First Vienna to play the friendly match against the national team. Switzerland qualified. Greece qualified for the final round. Hungary qualified. Czechoslovakia qualified. Latvia qualified for

4183-467: The defending champions, qualified automatically, leaving 14 spots open for competition. Due to the Spanish Civil War , Spain withdrew from the competition. The remaining 34 teams were divided into 12 groups, based on geographical considerations, as follows: However, due to the withdrawal of Austria after qualifying (they had been annexed by Germany ), only 15 teams actually competed in

4272-587: The end of 1999, leading the Estonian football association to look for a new coach. They were taken over this time by Tarmo Rüütli (who was replaced by caretaker Aivar Lillevere for two games), who was appointed until autumn 2000, and seen the team through their qualifying group for the 2002 FIFA World Cup. After the departure of Rüütli and Lillevere's two game stint as caretaker manager, the Estonian Football Association made an agreement with Dutchman Arno Pijpers . Plans were later set by

4361-526: The end of the 1944–1991 Soviet occupation, Estonia's first FIFA -recognised international match was with Slovenia on 3 June 1992, a 1–1 draw at home in Tallinn. Estonia has never qualified for the FIFA World Cup or UEFA European Championship . The team has reached the UEFA Euro 2012 qualifying play-offs , by finishing second in their qualifying group, before being drawn up against Ireland for

4450-422: The end of the 20th century has brought the proportion of native Estonian-speakers in Estonia now back above 70%. Large parts of the first- and second-generation immigrants in Estonia have now adopted Estonian (over 50% as of the 2022 census). The Estonian dialects are divided into two groups – the northern and southern dialects, historically associated with the cities of Tallinn in the north and Tartu in

4539-571: The final round. Austria qualified, but was later incorporated by Germany during the Anschluss . FIFA offered the place to England (winner of the 1937–38 British Home Championship ), who had opted not to enter the competition, but they declined the offer; FIFA decided not to allow anyone else to qualify, leaving the World Cup one team short. Netherlands and Belgium qualified. Argentina withdrew, so Brazil qualified automatically. Costa Rica, Dutch Guiana, El Salvador, Mexico, Colombia and

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4628-556: The final tournament. FIFA did not offer participation to the runner-up of the group that Austria had played in, Latvia . A total of 21 teams played at least one qualifying match. A total of 22 qualifying matches were played, and 96 goals were scored (an average of 4.36 per match). The 12 groups had different rules, as follows: Key : Germany and Sweden qualified. Norway qualified. Poland finished above Yugoslavia on goal average , and thus qualified. Egypt were to play Romania on 17 December 1937. However, Egypt withdrew from

4717-749: The first Baltic football contest was held involving all three nations, it was held nine times during this period. Four of them were held in Latvia, two in Estonia and three in Lithuania. Estonia was particularly notable for winning the edition of the tournament in 1938. In the crucial meeting between them and Latvia at the Kadrioru Stadium , 2,000 out of the 12,000 spectators were Latvians. Estonia's first FIFA World Cup qualifying match took place on 11 June 1933 in Stockholm, Sweden, which ended with

4806-496: The five-time world champions, winning 1–0. Much attention was attracted the day after the international friendly, with the Estonian FA announcing that coach Rüütli's contract was to be extended to 2011. Estonia later achieved one of its most famous victories, winning 3–1 in a 2012 European Championship away qualifier on 8 October 2010 against Serbia then ranked 15th in the FIFA rankings. The match took place four months after

4895-577: The football association to build a modern football home in Tallinn, which took place in 2000 and construction began outside of the Lilleküla railway line, giving it its original name of the Lilleküla Stadium. The arena opened on 2 June 2001, ahead of their 2002 World Cup qualifying game against the Netherlands (4–2 defeat). The 9,300 tickets on sale for the match sold out within six hours. Their campaign for 2002 FIFA World Cup qualification , saw two victories over Andorra and two draws with Cyprus, which gave

4984-589: The founder of modern Estonian poetry. His birthday, March 14, is celebrated in Estonia as Mother Tongue Day. A fragment from Peterson's poem "Kuu" expresses the claim reestablishing the birthright of the Estonian language: In English: In the period from 1525 to 1917, 14,503 titles were published in Estonian; by comparison, between 1918 and 1940, 23,868 titles were published. In modern times A. H. Tammsaare , Jaan Kross , and Andrus Kivirähk are Estonia 's best-known and most translated writers. Estonians lead

5073-533: The game of football by English sailors in the first years of the 20th century, when the land was still part of the Russian Empire . The national team was formed after the war of independence (1918–1920). It played its first match on 17 October 1920 in Helsinki, Finland which ended in a 6–0 defeat. The game took place on a grass surface, which was a first for the Estonians. The Estonian Football Association

5162-547: The game the day before, an international friendly involving Latvia and Bolivia which ended 2–1 in favour of the Latvians and had also seen three penalties awarded in the game, which were also all of the goals scored. The Estonian team got an important victory in their next match, which was on 25 March at the Lilleküla Stadium over Uruguay in a friendly match. Former World Cup winners Uruguay had recently reached

5251-501: The government of Estonia urged the Estonian Central Sports Union to "consider manning Estonian sports teams only with Estonian citizens". On 11 March the local press published an open letter in which the signatories accused EFA and the head coach Uno Piir of using four "alien citizens" (Andrei Borissov, Sergei Bragin, Aleksandr Puštov, Sergei Hohlov-Simson) in games and using Russian as the working language of

5340-674: The group as the most vocal, situated in the Southern section of the Lilleküla Stadium. A busy away journey took place in October 2007, when at Wembley Stadium for the European championship qualifier with England a crowd of two thousand Estonian fans were in attendance. Estonian language Estonian belongs to the Finnic branch of the Uralic language family . Other Finnic languages include Finnish and some minority languages spoken around

5429-456: The language. When Estonia was invaded and reoccupied by the Soviet army in 1944, the status of Estonian effectively changed to one of the two official languages (Russian being the other one). Many immigrants from Russia entered Estonia under Soviet encouragement. In the 1970s, the pressure of bilingualism for Estonians was intensified. Although teaching Estonian to non-Estonians in local schools

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5518-467: The last official match between the two teams as independent nations 50 years previously. The principle of assembling the squad was controversial. 63 players made a public addressing ( Päevaleht , 24 April 1990) calling out the football governing bodies to only select the descendants of Estonians, leaving out immigrants who came to Estonia after World War II . Estonia restored its full independence on 20 August 1991, and returned to international football when

5607-423: The national team later. Not a single Estonian reached the Soviet national team, but two Ubakivi's pupils, Ott Mõtsnik and Toomas Krõm , broke into the youth team. The Singing Revolution , the pursuit to restore Estonian independence and to cool regional tensions, found its way to football as well. On 18 July 1990, an exhibition match was held between Estonian and Latvian footballers at Kadriorg Stadium, to remember

5696-504: The national team. The signatories also noted that "most of the positions belonging to Estonians (in youth teams) were filled with non-citizens". According to Estonian press the EFA had also misled FIFA because most of those 97 players who had gotten the right to represent Estonia had not actually applied for citizenship. On 5 December 1991 the EFA decided to take part in 1994 FIFA World Cup qualification tournament despite financial difficulties,

5785-669: The newest member, Kosovo . On 15 November 2014, Estonia became the first and so far only team to give up a point to San Marino in the European Championship qualifying tournament, when the two sides played to a 0–0 draw in San Marino. On Tuesday, 28 March 2017, Estonia gained one of the most famous wins in their history as they beat Croatia 3–0 at home in an international friendly. On 19 November 2018, Estonia defeated Greece 1–0 in Athens. On 10 June 2021, Estonia won

5874-422: The outfield players Eugen Einmann (65), Eduard Ellman-Eelma (58) and Karl-Rudolf Silberg-Sillak (52). Top goal scorers were Ellman-Eelma (21 goals in 65 matches), Richard Kuremaa (18/42), Arnold Pihlak (17/44), Georg Siimenson (14/42) and Friedrich Karm (9/13). Players received small pay for their contributions – 5 Estonian krooni in 1938. The Baltic tournament victory was 50 krooni. On 18 July 1940

5963-414: The poor state of the Kadrioru Stadium and the inexperience of the national team. Estonia ended the qualification tournament in the last place of the group and with record of one goal scored and 27 conceded. The team lost nine games and drew once against Malta . In the UEFA Euro 1996 qualifying tournament the team was coached by Roman Ubakivi . The qualification tournament ended without a single point and

6052-507: The second half of the 1940s and the traditions started to fade. According to Uno Piir , the first national team manager after Estonia restored independence in 1991, the reason for football's downfall in Soviet-occupied Estonia was the inability to create a club competitive at the level of the Soviet Union's top clubs, hence the decrease in audience and the favouring of other sports by the governing bodies of sports. Formally,

6141-492: The second half of the 19th   century based on Finnish orthography. The "Older orthography" it replaced was created in the 17th   century by Bengt Gottfried Forselius and Johann Hornung based on standard German orthography. Earlier writing in Estonian had, by and large, used an ad hoc orthography based on Latin and Middle Low German orthography. Some influences of the standard German orthography – for example, writing 'W'/'w' instead of 'V'/'v' – persisted well into

6230-541: The semi-finals of the 2010 World Cup and were sitting at 7th place in the FIFA rankings at the time of the 2–0 victory. The captain Raio Piiroja earned his 100th international cap. On 29 March, the good performances continued with a 1–1 home draw against Serbia. This was followed by a period of poor form, which began with an unofficial friendly game loss to the Basque Country , qualifying defeats to Italy and

6319-419: The sounds [p], [t], [k] are written as p, t, k , with some exceptions due to morphology or etymology. Representation of palatalised consonants is inconsistent, and they are not always indicated. ŋ is an allophone of /n/ before /k/. While peripheral Estonian dialects are characterized by various degrees of vowel harmony , central dialects have almost completely lost the feature. Since the standard language

6408-405: The south, in addition to a distinct kirderanniku dialect, Northeastern coastal Estonian . The northern group consists of the keskmurre or central dialect that is also the basis for the standard language, the läänemurre or western dialect, roughly corresponding to Lääne County and Pärnu County , the saarte murre (islands' dialect) of Saaremaa , Hiiumaa , Muhu and Kihnu , and

6497-457: The team a total of eight points in the final table and fourth place with ten goals scored and 26 against, finishing ahead of those two teams. This was later matched in UEFA Euro 2004 qualifying , where they gained two more wins over Andorra and draws with Croatia and Bulgaria. The team's goals record was much more stronger defensively, only conceding six goals in their eight matches while scoring four. Estonia then most successful tournament came in

6586-739: The team debuted in the Baltic tournament which took place in Lithuania in November 1991. However, the first recognized match did not take place until June 1992 in Tallinn as a friendly against Slovenia (1–1). This historic meeting under the guidance of coach Uno Piir was overseen by a team consisting of Mart Poom , Urmas Hepner , Igor Prins , Urmas Kaljend , Meelis Lindmaa , Toomas Kallaste , Tarmo Linnumäe , Indro Olumets , Martin Reim , Sergei Ratnikov , Risto Kallaste , Viktor Alonen , Urmas Kirs , Marko Kristal and Aleksandr Puštov . Puštov

6675-403: The team finish sixth in a field of seven teams, only ahead of Andorra who were also the only team they recorded wins against and gained a total of seven points. The Estonian FA shortly parted company with Goes in June 2007. November 2007 saw the approval of a two-year contract for new head coach Tarmo Rüütli, who had overseen the national team in the 1999–2000 season, with this being the last time

6764-543: The team played their last official game as an independent nation for more than half a century. The game was played at the Kadrioru Stadium and was a 2–1 victory against Latvia. In 1940, the Stalinist Soviet Union invaded and occupied Estonia and, in August 1940, when Estonia was annexed into the USSR, the national team ceased to exist along with the independent country. During German occupation (1941–1944),

6853-480: The team took on an Estonian coach, as Pijpers was the first of three foreign coaches between 2000 and 2007. Rüütli's main task in his second term was to lead the team through the 2010 World Cup qualifying matches. The team showed volatile form in friendly matches during 2008. In September, the Estonians lost 3–2 to Belgium in an away qualifying match, but fell to a low ebb after being beaten 7–0 by Bosnia also on their travels, and fell to an all-time low of 137th place in

6942-566: The team was revived and they played two unofficial friendlies (in Riga 0–4 and in Tallinn 1–8), but only few players remained from the pre-war era. When Soviet troops invaded Estonia again in 1944, some of the best footballers ( Richard Kuremaa , Elmar Tepp, Valter Neeris, etc.) were mobilised; some fled to west. Many ex-nationals ( Arnold Pihlak , Arnold Laasner, etc.) were in Estonia's team in Geislingen 's refugee camp. The clubs were renamed in

7031-614: The team's head coaches before the Second World War, seven of them were Hungarian with Antal Mally taking this position twice. There were four foreign coaches (three Hungarians and one Austrian), while the first Estonian national team was coached by Albert Vollrat in 1932. Coaches also played for several seasons, who also determined the composition of the football association. Players were mostly in Tallinn clubs, such as TJK , Sport , Kalev and Tallinn Estonia. The republic's most capped players were goalkeeper Evald Tipner (67) and

7120-518: The three-nation Baltic Cup tournament five times — most recently in 2024 — which is less than either of the other two teams in the tournament, Latvia and Lithuania. The record for the most international caps by an international is held by Konstantin Vassiljev with 158. Martin Reim has 157 caps, who held the European record in 2009 until November of that year. The record for most goals is held by Andres Oper with 38. Estonians were introduced to

7209-405: The time teams would play each other once in each group. Estonia were in group one, drawn with Germany, Sweden and Finland. In their first match against Sweden, the team went 2–0 up even before the game reached five minutes of play, only to lose 7–2. This was then followed up with a 1–0 success against Finland in which Richard Kuremaa scored the only goal of the game in the 56th minute. Qualification

7298-514: The wave of new loanwords from English in the 20th and 21st centuries, historically, Swedish and Russian were also sources of borrowings but to a much lesser extent. In borrowings, often 'b' and 'p' are interchangeable, for example 'baggage' becomes 'pagas', 'lob' (to throw) becomes 'loopima'. The initial letter 's' before another consonant is often dropped, for example 'skool' becomes 'kool', 'stool' becomes 'tool'. Estonian language planners such as Ado Grenzstein (a journalist active in Estonia from

7387-464: The world in book ownership, owning on average 218 books per house, and 35% of Estonians owning 350 books or more (as of 2018). Writings in Estonian became significant only in the 19th century with the spread of the ideas of the Age of Enlightenment , during the Estophile Enlightenment Period (1750–1840). Although Baltic Germans at large regarded the future of Estonians as being a fusion with themselves,

7476-399: Was Estonia's best to date, with 16 points achieved out of a possible 30, and was the closest that Estonia came to qualifying for a major tournament. On 5 June 2012, Estonia set a record for being the first team to have played all of UEFA fellow 52 members . Two more sides have been added since 2013 as full UEFA members. Estonia has played the 53rd member, Gibraltar , but has not yet taken on

7565-407: Was completed with a 4–1 defeat against Germany, despite a goal from Georg Siimenson taking the teams in at half time with a 1–0 lead for the Estonians. As a result, Estonia failed to qualify for the World Cup. The team's biggest win came on 26 July 1928 which was a 6–0 success against Lithuania in Tallinn, meanwhile their biggest defeat came on 11 August 1922 which was a 10–2 loss to Finland. Out of

7654-525: Was formally compulsory, in practice, the teaching and learning of Estonian by Russian-speakers was often considered unnecessary by the Soviet authorities. In 1991, with the restoration of Estonia's independence , Estonian went back to being the only official language in Estonia. Since 2004, when Estonia joined the European Union, Estonian is also one of the (now 24) official languages of the EU . The return of former Soviet immigrants to their countries of origin at

7743-466: Was founded on 14 December 1921 and affiliated with FIFA in 1923 joining Yugoslavia, Latvia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Turkey and Uruguay. Estonia's only participation in a major tournament took place at the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris. Estonians lost their only match in the tournament to the United States 1–0. The Estonian league season usually lasted from the end of May to September. In 1928

7832-526: Was supplied by Lotto . Below is a timeline of how the home kit colours have changed through time: Estonia's main supporters group of that of the Jalgpallihaigla (English: Football Hospital ), with over 600 members. The group is committed to "Deal with all of your supporters issues from ticket distribution in a special fans section, and also with the fans as watchdogs for relations with the Estonian Football Association and their clubs". Home games see

7921-420: Was the scorer of the Estonian goal. At that time the composition of the squad was influenced by the country's citizenship policy. There were disputes whether the national team should include players who lived in Estonia but had not acquired Estonian citizenship. Most of those players in question were of Russian origin. Approximately four months before the first official match against Slovenia, FC Flora presented

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