The Seychelles women's national football team is the national team of the Seychelles.
The national team, captained by Abby Boone, played in two eighty-minute long games in 2005 in a youth tournament hosted by Mauritius, with the Seychelles losing both matches. An official under-17 national team exists and had regular training sessions in 2006.
The sport faces several development problems inside the country including a lack of popularity for the sport, and few female players and teams. Women have gained football leadership positions in the country with one coaching a men's team and another umpiring international matches. There are other development issues for the sport that are ones facing the whole of Africa.
The Seychelles Football Federation was founded in 1979, and became a FIFA affiliate in 1986.[2][3] Women's football is represented in the federation by specific mandate and currently they employ one full-time employee to look after the women's game.[2]
In 1985, almost no country in the world had a women's national football team[4] including the Seychelles who did play in a single FIFA sanctioned match between 1950 and June 2012.[5]
In 2005, a youth team from Seychelles competed in a three nation tournament hosted by Mauritius, where all games were 80 minutes in length. They lost to Mauritius 1–4 and also to Réunion 0–9. Overall, they finished last, scoring only one goal in the competition.[6] In 2005, Zambia was supposed to host a regional COSAFA women's football tournament, with ten teams agreeing to send teams including South Africa, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi, Seychelles, Mauritius, Madagascar, Zambia, Botswana, Namibia, Lesotho and Swaziland.[7] Seychelles did not record a match in the event.[5]
In 2006, the country did not have an official FIFA recognised senior "A" team,[2] a situation unchanged by 2009.[3] However, according to FIFA's Women's Football Today, the country has an official under-17 team, the Seychelles women's national under-17 football team. In 2016, they had two training sessions a week but had yet to record an official FIFA recognised match.[2]
In 2022, Seychelles have entered the FIFA/Coca-Cola Women’s World Ranking for the first time under the Singaporean head coach Angeline Chua.[11] For a team to be ranked on the FIFA list, the team has to play a minimum of six international matches against ranked teams. On 4 April 2022, the Seychelles women's national team played its sixth international match in Singapore.[12]
In October 2023, Singaporean Chris Yip-Au joined the Seychelles Football Federation as its head of women’s football and women’s national team coach.[13]
