The Malta Football Association joined FIFA in 1959 and UEFA a year later, but the national side had already taken the field by then, losing its first official match 3–2 to Austria on 24 February 1957. Red has stayed the colour of the shirt ever since, and it gave the team its most common nickname, though the alternative, The Knights, points further back, to the Knights of St John who once ruled the island.
Malta has never reached a World Cup or a European Championship finals, and for most of its history the record book held little beyond friendly invitational trophies: the Rothmans International Tournament in 2002, the Cyprus International Tournament four times over, in 2007, 2012, 2015 and 2016. Then, in the 2018–19 season, the team finished top of its group in the newly created UEFA Nations League D, ahead of Kosovo, Azerbaijan and Gibraltar, and won promotion to League C.
Gibraltar, San Marino and Cyprus have become the opponents against whom Malta measures itself now, small nations meeting on something closer to equal terms than the qualifying draws of the past ever allowed.