Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
20 REASONS WHY SAN MARINO HAS THE WORST TEAM IN INTERNATIONAL FOOTBALL
1. San Marino has a population of 33,800 – which makes it roughly the size of Pontefract.
2. They are largely amateurs – bankers, accountants and dentists – who train once a week.
3. San Marino’s current match run of two successive 0-0 draws (against Liechtenstein then Gibraltar) in competitive matches is their longestever unbeaten run.
Skipper Dante Rossi
(right) burst into tears after the second game.
4. Since joining FIFA in 1986, they have only ever won one match, a friendly against Liechtenstein in April 2004.
5. Andy Selva
(right) 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 were not beaten.
8. When they drew 1-1 with Latvia in 2001, it cost English boss Gary Johnson his job.
9. They drew 2-2 with Liechtenstein in 2003, won their only game 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-ever ranking of 118 in the world and went 1-0 up against England in 8.3seconds. They still lost 7-1.
11. David Gualtieri, the computer salesman who scored that goal, remains a national hero.
12. They are 210 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 works out as an average of more than four goals per game.
18. They have had six double-figures defeats, the worst being a 13-0 drubbing by Germany in September 2006.
19. German striker Thomas Muller (above) said that a separate 8-0 win over San Marino 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.”