Oceania Football Confederation
The Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) is one of the six continental confederations of international association football. The OFC has 13 members, 11 of which are full members and two which are associate members not affiliated with FIFA. It promotes the game in Oceania and allows the member nations to qualify for the FIFA World Cup. OFC is predominantly made up of island nations where association football is not the most popular sport, with low GDP and low population meaning very little money is generated by the OFC nations. The OFC has little influence in the wider football  world, either in terms of international competition or as a source of players for high-profile club competitions. OFC is the only confederation to have not had at least one international title, the best result being Australia making the final of the 1997 FIFA Confederations Cup. In 2006, the OFC's largest and most successful nation, Australia, left to join the Asian Football Confederation, leaving New Zealand as the largest federation within the OFC and the new dominant force on the field. The President of OFC until April 2018 is Lambert Maltock. The Vice Presidents are Thierry Ariiotima, Kapi Natto  John and Lord Ve'ehala while Franck Castillo is the General Secretary. The confederation is headquartered in Auckland, New Zealand. History. The confederation formed in 1966, as a result of Australia and New Zealand's failed attempts to join the Asian Football Confederation (AFC). The founding OFC members were the following: Australia resigned as an OFC member in 1972 to again pursue membership with the AFC, but rejoined the OFC in 1978. Their men's national team (nicknamed the Socceroos) became the first Oceanians to play at a FIFA World Cup in 1974, being drawn in the same group as Chile , East Germany and West Germany. They failed to score a goal, but were still competitive in all three of their matches. New Zealand's national team the All Whites played in their first World Cup eight years later. At the 1982 tournament they suffered heavier defeats than Australia previously had. Chinese Taipei was an OFC member from 1975 to 1989. In 1996, FIFA confirmed OFC as a full confederation and granted it a seat on the FIFA executive. In 1998 the OFC unveiled a new logo and an official magazine, entitled "The Wave". Australia meanwhile lost several inter-confederation World  Cup playoffs; first to Scotland in 1985, then Argentina in 1993 and then Iran in 1997. Australia's national team were long considered the biggest challenge in Oceania. There were many highly uncompetitive matches involving them, particularly in the 1990s and 2000s. Their June 1997 second round qualification games for the 1998 FIFA World Cup included a 13–0 defeat of the Solomon Islands. The following year they defeated the Cook Islands 16–0 at the 1998 OFC Nations Cup, while at the 2000 OFC Nations Cup they defeated them 17–0. The uncompetitive results escalated in April 2001, during the first round  of OFC qualifiers for the 2002 FIFA World Cup. Australia beat Tonga 22–0, following this result up with a 31–0 defeat of American Samoa and an 11–0 defeat of Samoa. The American Samoa game became the largest international victory in the history of the sport (breaking the previous record set in the Tonga game), while Archie Thompson also broke the record for most goals in an international match, scoring 13. Australia's record-breaking form in the early stages of qualifying ultimately couldn't be replicated in their inter-confederation playoff against Uruguay later that year. For the first leg , the Socceroos managed to defeat the South Americans 1–0 in front of a Melbourne crowd of 84,656, but they were overwhelmed 3–0 in the away leg. The away leg was marred by an incident at Montevideo's airport prior to the game itself, where the Australian players were spat on, punched and abused by a mob of Uruguayan fans. On 24 May 2004, New Caledonia became the 12th member of the OFC. Australia reached another inter-confederation playoff against Uruguay in 2005. Both sides won a game each over the two legs, which led to Australia finally ending their World  Cup drought through a dramatic penalty shootout in Sydney. The Socceroos were granted increased security for the first away leg, as a response to the 2001 airport incident, and in the second leg the Uruguayan team were heavily booed while their national anthem played. In the 2006 FIFA World Cup, Australia were eliminated by Italy during the Round of 16. Their 3–1 group stage victory against Japan remains the only time a team representing OFC has won at the tournament. Australia left the OFC again that same year and joined the Asian Football Confederation. In 2008, an associate member, the  Northern Mariana Islands Football Association, also left the OFC and in 2009 joined the AFC as an associate member. In late 2009, the Palau Football Association, geographically a part of Oceania but with no official ties to the OFC, also applied for the same status with the AFC as the Northern Mariana Islands association but was not successful. New Zealand ended their own World Cup drought in 2009 when they defeated Bahrain to qualify for the 2010 FIFA World Cup. The tournament coincidentally also featured Australia, who were now representing the AFC. New Zealand were the only unbeaten team at  the tournament, despite failing to advance past the group stage. With Australia's absence, New Zealand now have a regular presence in World Cup inter-confederation playoffs. They were thrashed by Mexico over two legs in 2013, and narrowly missed out to Peru in 2017. Criticism. Throughout its history, there have been calls to disband the OFC, or to merge it with the AFC. The calls grew louder in 2003 when FIFA reversed a decision to grant Oceania an automatic spot at the World Cup. Australia's lack of World Cup participation prior to 2006 has been blamed by many  on the OFC qualification process, with football writer Matthew Hall stating in 2003, "For World Cup qualification, the Socceroos will win games by cricket scores and then face a sudden-death play-off against a desperate, battle-hardened opponent given a second, or even third, life." Presidents. Current leaders. Source: Member nations. Current members. OFC is made up of 11 full member associations and 2 associate members. Those two are associate members of the OFC, but are not FIFA members. Former members. Note. Israel entered the FIFA World Cup OFC qualifying tournaments in 1986 and 1990 due to political reasons , though it never became a formal OFC member. Non-members. Several sovereign states and dependencies in Oceania have national teams with no affiliation. All play infrequently and may have been inactive for several years. There are also some which do not have a national team. There are four Oceanian sovereign states, each a member of the United Nations (UN), which are not affiliated with the OFC, FIFA or any other confederations: There are also other associated state, dependencies or territories in Oceania that do not have affiliation with the OFC, FIFA or any other confederations: Besides that, there are sovereign  state, dependencies or territories in Oceania which are not affiliated with the OFC but are members of other confederations: Competitions. National teams. Men's Women's Clubs. Men's Former tournaments. National teams Clubs Major tournament records. For each tournament, the flag of the host country and the number of teams in each finals tournament (in brackets) are shown. FIFA World Cup. Oceania has sent representatives to the FIFA World Cup four times: Australia in 1974 and 2006, and New Zealand in 1982 and 2010. (Australia has additionally qualified three times since leaving the OFC for the AFC following the  2006 FIFA World Cup: 2010, 2014 and 2018.) Neither Australia in 1974 nor New Zealand in 1982 and 2010 progressed beyond the first round. Of the four teams, only Australia in 2006 advanced to the second round. The OFC is the only FIFA confederation that does not have a guaranteed spot in the World Cup finals (a major reason for the Australians leaving the confederation in 2006 to join Asia). Between 1966 and 1982, OFC teams joined the Asian zone qualification tournament, while from 1986 onwards, the winners of the Oceanian zone qualification tournament have to enter the intercontinental play -offs against teams from other confederations in order to gain a spot in the FIFA World Cup. Beginning in 2026, the OFC will have a guaranteed spot in the FIFA World Cup for the first time in history, result of the competition's expansion from 32 to 48 teams. OFC play-off record. 1970 AFC–OFC Final Round 1974 AFC–OFC Final Round 1986 UEFA–OFC play-off 1990 CONMEBOL–OFC play-off Israel played in the OFC zone for political reasons. 1994 CONCACAF–OFC play-off 1994 CONMEBOL–OFC play-off 1998 AFC–OFC play-off 2002 CONMEBOL–OFC  play-off 2006 CONMEBOL–OFC play-off 2010 AFC–OFC play-off 2014 CONCACAF–OFC play-off 2018 CONMEBOL–OFC play-off 2022 CONCACAF-OFC play-off OFC Women's Nations Cup. Notes </onlyinclude>