New Zealand

New Zealand's first international football match was played in Dunedin at the old Caledonian Ground on 23 July 1904 against a team representing New South Wales. New Zealand lost by the game's only goal, but drew with the same team 3–3 in a game at Athletic Park, Wellington seven days later. The following year the team played a Wellington representative side on 10 June before embarking on a tour of Australia, during which they played eleven representative sides, including three "test matches" against New South Wales. Of these three matches they won one, lost one, and drew one.

A New Zealand national team did not play again until 1922, when New Zealand played three official full internationals against Australia, played at Carisbrook in Dunedin, Athletic Park in Wellington, and Auckland Domain. The results were two 3–1 wins to New Zealand and a 1–1 draw in Wellington. In 1927, Canada became the second team to play in New Zealand as they played in four official matches with a win and a draw.

New Zealand would become one of the founder members of the Oceania Football Confederation in 1966 which was founded between Charlie Dempsey and his Australian colleague Jim Bayutti in founding the federation.

At the beginning of the 1980s the All Whites were on a run of consecutive victories until the 1980 Oceania Cup in New Caledonia. New Zealand ended up having a disastrous campaign, losing 1–3 and 0–4 to Tahiti and Fiji respectively. In the last round without a possible qualification for the final they beat the Solomon Islands 6–1.

The All Whites later improved when the team advanced to the final phase of the qualifiers for the 1982 World Cup. With zero losses, the team's strength was highlighted by a 3–3 draw and a 1–0 victory against Australia, and a 13-0 victory against Fiji. For the final phase the All Whites, competed against China PR, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. After a 5–0 victory against the Saudis, they competed in a play-off match against China, winning 2–1, eventually qualifying for the World Cup in Spain.

Up until the 1980s, the All Whites received criticism for having a high number of British players. Of the 22-man squad in their 1982 World Cup campaign, 11 members were born in the United Kingdom. This included the captain Steve Sumner and striker Steve Wooddin, who had both played club football in England before immigrating. They lost all three games conceding 12 goals and scoring just 2. Over the following decades the composition of the national squad changed and "the face of football became increasingly Kiwi".

Since the 1990s, United States college soccer has played a significant role in the development of New Zealand players. This influence began when former Scotland international Bobby Clark returned to the US after his 1994–96 stint as New Zealand head coach to take the head coaching job at Stanford University (he now holds the same position at Notre Dame). Clark began recruiting in New Zealand, and former New Zealand national players Ryan Nelsen and Simon Elliott played for him at Stanford. The trend that Clark started has continued to the present; more than two dozen New Zealanders are now playing for NCAA Division I men's programmes in the US. A common next step in these players' career paths is a stint in Major League Soccer; ESPN soccernet journalist Brent Latham speculated in a March 2010 story that New Zealand's 2010 World Cup squad could have more MLS players than the US squad.

However, Latham's speculation did not prove true, as only one MLS player made the New Zealand squad for the World Cup. New Zealand formerly competed against Australia for top honours in the OFC. However, after Australia left to join the AFC in 2006, New Zealand were left as the only seeded team in the OFC. New Zealand qualified for the 2010 World Cup, though exited the competition after the first round despite being the only team not to lose a game during the tournament. They drew 1–1 versus defending champions Italy, along with Slovakia and a scoreless match against Paraguay while eventual champions Spain lost to Switzerland. New Zealand finished above Italy in their group as the Italians lost to Slovakia in their final group match and finished with two points compared to New Zealand's three.

After a very positive cycle for the All Whites, the team competed for the 2012 OFC Nations Cup as favourites to win the title winning the first two games by a small margin of victory (1–0 and 2–1), and a 1–1 draw against the Salomonense. In the next round, they faced New Caledonia in the semi-final, where they suffered 2–0 loss, with goals from Bertrand Kaï in the 60th minute, and Georges Gope-Fenepej in the second minute of second-half stoppage time to seal the defeat known as the Horror in Honiara. Ricki Herbert stepped down, but New Zealand would also be eliminated in the intercontinental play-off for the 2014 World Cup by Mexico 9–3 on aggregate.

In August 2014, Anthony Hudson was appointed manager of the All Whites. Hudson's first game in charge of the national team was a 3–1 defeat away to Uzbekistan in September. As a result of the All Whites playing "just three matches" in the previous year, which was "the least of any country in world football", and having "seven months without a match" the All Whites dropped to 161st in the FIFA World Rankings. The All Whites went on to win the 2016 OFC Nations Cup, winning four matches with the final being won via a penalty shootout after a 0–0 draw against Papua New Guinea, conceding only one goal, from a penalty, in the process. New Zealand's victory saw them crowned Oceania champions making New Zealand the most successful national team in the competition's history, having won the tournament five times, and also saw them qualify for the 2017 FIFA Confederations Cup in Russia. The All Whites moved up to 88th in the FIFA World Rankings, the highest ranking in three years, on the back of the OFC Nations Cup victory that qualified them for the 2017 FIFA Confederations Cup.

After a disappointing tournament at the 2017 FIFA Confederations Cup where they finished bottom of their group which featured Russia, Mexico and Portugal, the national team fell 27 places to 122nd. In September 2017, New Zealand won the OFC Final against the Solomon Islands with an aggregate score of 8–3 to qualify for the inter-continental play-off qualifier against Peru, the fifth-ranked nation from South America's qualifiers. After holding Peru off in the first leg, they would go to lose 2–0 in the second leg to be eliminated from competition as Peru became the last team to qualify for the 2018 FIFA World Cup.

After the All Whites' stoppage for almost two years, they returned to play friendlies (in 2021), obtaining positive results in their three (four counting against Algeria A') games played in that year. With the complications caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2022 World Cup qualifiers were held in the host country itself, Qatar, where the Kiwis managed to win all the games, as well as breaking artillery records, when forward Chris Wood became the All Whites' top scorer, after scoring twice against Fiji.

With the continental victory, they qualified for the inter-confederation play-offs, where they disputed the vacancy against Costa Rica. They started by conceding a goal in the 3rd minute of the game to Joel Campbell, but New Zealand began to pressure the game, and in the 39th minute, Chris Wood scored after a poor kick by Yeltsin Tejeda. However, his goal was disallowed when the video assistant referee (VAR) showed that Matthew Garbett had fouled Óscar Duarte before the goal. As the final whistle blew, the New Zealanders failed to qualify for the Cup, which was their third consecutive elimination in the inter-confederation play-offs.

After the qualifiers, the All Whites played a home and away series against the Socceroos to mark the 100th anniversary of the first meeting between the two nations, which was first played in Dunedin in 1922.^[]