SLIM PICKINGS...
1 San Marino has a population of 33,800 – which makes makes it roughly the size of Haywards Heath.
2 The team is largely made up of amateurs – bankers, accountants and dentists – who train once a week.
3 San Marino’s current spell of two successive 0-0 draws (against Liechtenstein and Gibraltar) in competitive matches is their longest unbeaten run. Skipper Dante Rossi burst into tears after the second game.
4 Since joining FIFA in 1986, they have only ever won one match, beating Liechtenstein 1-0 in a friendly in April 2004.
5 Andy Selva is their record goalscorer with eight goals in 74 appearances.
6 Before their latest ‘purple patch’, they had only ever drawn four other matches.
7 A goalless draw in Turkey in 1993 was the first time they avoided defeat.
8 When they drew 1-1 with Latvia in 2001, it cost Latvia’s English boss Gary Johnson his job.
9 They drew 2-2 with Liechtenstein in 2003, achieved the only win in their history two matches later, then lost 61 games on the trot before their next draw – 0-0 with Estonia – in November 2014.
10 In 1993, they achieved their highest ranking of 118 in the world and went 1-0 up against England within eight seconds. They still lost 7-1.
11 Davide Gualtieri, the computer salesman who scored that goal against England, remains a national hero.
12 They are 210th out of 210 in the FIFA world rankings.
13 Anguilla, a small British overseas territory in the Caribbean, the British Virgin Islands and the US Virgin Islands are all above them.
14 They have scored 24 goals in 174 official international matches.
15 The compilation video posted on YouTube in 2016 of every goal San Marino had ever scored lasted less than six minutes.
16 Since then they have managed just two more goals against Kazakhstan in 2019 and Azerbaijan in 2017.
17 In all matches, San Marino have conceded 730 – which is an average of more than four goals per game.
18 They have had six double-figure defeats, the worst being a 13-0 drubbing by Germany in September 2006.
19 German striker Thomas Muller said a separate 8-0 win over the Sammarinese team in 2016 “had nothing to do with football”.
20 However, Zlatan Ibrahimovic once commented about the team: “Don’t apologise – if you are here, you deserve it.”