St. Kitts and Nevis

The Sugar Boyz spent 2023 doing something they had never done before: playing in the Gold Cup. None of the three games went their way, but the appearance itself was the achievement, earned through the preliminary rounds after a draw with French Guiana got them there.

The St. Kitts and Nevis Football Association has been organising the game since 1932, six years before the national side played its first match at all, a 4–2 defeat to Grenada in 1938. Basseterre remained the centre of it throughout, sharing the sporting complex with the cricket stadium next door; the football ground itself holds 3,500.

The closest the Sugar Boyz have come to a regional trophy was in 1997, when they finished runners-up at the Caribbean Cup after losing 4–0 to Trinidad and Tobago in the final.

One result outside the region still gets mentioned before most others: a 1–0 win over Andorra in 2015, the first time St. Kitts and Nevis had beaten a European side. It came during the stretch that carried them to their highest FIFA ranking, 73rd, reached in October 2016 and matched again the following March.