Minnows at any level of competition in the Asian Zone, Macao have a relatively good football infrastructure and organisation which is in proportion with the small population. They are however typically mired somewhere near the bottom of the FIFA/Coca-Cola World Rankings.

Coached from 1999 to 2002 by well-regarded Japanese coach Eiji Ueda, Macao ended their 2002 FIFA World Cup Korea/Japan™ dream with six straight defeats in the preliminary group stage against Iraq, Kazakhstan and Nepal. They did manage to do better than their neighbours, Chinese Taipei, by at least scoring two goals - both against Nepal. In the preliminary qualifying round for the 2004 Asian Cup, the side were eliminated after suffering two defeats to Singapore and Pakistan and conceding five goals without reply.

Unfortunately, Macao's far away dreams of Germany 2006 were dashed in the Asian Zone preliminaries when they lost by a 6-1 aggregate score to Chinese Taipei. With the qualifying preliminaries for 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa™ just around the corner, the islanders are keen to improve this time around but their recent record does little to suggest otherwise, having lost three of the four friendly games they played in June, including a 7-1 demolition at the hands of Korea DPR.