‘It’s been unimaginable’: San Marino’s 20-year wait for win may soon be over
“I remember it so clearly. What made it really special was that we hadn’t expected it to happen. But there was no big celebration – the simple fact that we got to walk off the pitch after 90 minutes as winners, for the first time, that was the greatest celebration we could have had,” says Simone Bacchiocchi . “We didn’t need to have a party. That was more than a football team, not just a group of football players. It was a group of friends, a group of people who had made sacrifices, who had struggled, and had fought together to reach an objective. And that was to play one great game. To have one good result.”
Bacchiocchi was 27 when San Marino beat Liechtenstein 1-0 in April 2004, his nation’s first victory in a full international. One month shy of two decades later the Sammarinese are still waiting for their second win. Since the final whistle blew in Serravalle that night San Marino have played 137 games and been ahead for just six minutes, against Malta in August 2012.
But the dark days could soon be over. On Wednesday and Sunday they play friendlies at home to Saint Kitts & Nevis, who may be ranked a lofty 147th by Fifa (San Marino are in 210th and last place) but have lost seven of their past nine games, most recently 5-0 in Guadeloupe last November. San Marino meanwhile go into the fixtures on a run of scoring in each of their past three matches, an unprecedented achievement, games lost by the slender margins of 2-1, 3-1 and 2-1.
“I’ve no idea what will happen if we win,” says Lorenzo Capicchioni, their 22-year-old midfielder. “It’s been something almost unimaginable, something unachievable, but this time we can definitely do it. Normally we try to keep the score at 0-0 for a long as possible but this will be completely different, because we have to be on the front foot, to try to score. But we showed what we’re capable of against Denmark at home [last October]: we lost 2-1 and we were level with 20 minutes to play and we were pushing at the end to draw the game.”
Capicchioni made his international debut in 2022, when San Marino played a pair of friendlies against Caribbean opponents in Saint Lucia, drawing one and losing the other. But those games were played away from home, and with a weakened team. “I don’t know Saint Kitts very well, but the coach has showed us a few videos and I assume their level will be roughly the same as Saint Lucia,” he says. “We were missing many members of our starting XI for those games and this time we’ll be at full strength, so I think if we play our best we can do it. I don’t want to jinx us, but we can do it.”
Despite their promising goalscoring run, San Marino have just changed their coach, Roberto Cevoli replacing Fabrizio Costantini. “I have one big regret,” Costantini said on his departure last December. “My father hasn’t been able to come to the stadium in recent years and I would have liked to dedicate to him the victory I know is coming.”
Since the team last played Aldo Simoncini, their senior goalkeeper at 37, and his 28-year-old understudy Elia Benedettini have announced their international retirements, the latter saying that despite his age he had been considering the move for some time: “The atmosphere we used to have in the team always stopped me doing it – I would never have walked out on a second family.”
Capicchioni insists the atmosphere in the squad remains buoyant. “It’s still the same guys, I don’t think much has changed,” he says. “We’re still a good group. Coming from a small country, we really know each other well. When it’s time to play for the national team, we know we have to give something extra to help each other out. So it’s not a simple friendship – you could say that we see each other more as brothers, so we go that extra mile for each other on the pitch. It’s a different spirit. We know that normally we’re weaker than our opponents, so that’s just what we have to do.”
With San Marino’s population estimated by the United Nations at 32,960 – about one two-thousandth of the UK – the team’s chances of victory against most opponents will always be slender, and after 206 games their alltime record stands at one win, nine draws and 196 defeats. But despite those bad results and those goals conceded, representing San Marino has never been a chore. Most obviously it allows those selected to play in front of thousands and against superstars: Capicchioni treasures a photograph with Christian Eriksen; Bacchiocchi has memories of marking Zlatan Ibrahimović, Robert Lewandowski and Klaas-Jan Huntelaar, and of playing three times at Wembley.
“Every match was a source of so much pride,” Bacchiocchi says. “We’re a tiny nation, so obviously we don’t have great players and those who do play have to make sacrifices, so when you play you put your heart into it, you play with the greatest passion. We were players, we were workers, we were just normal people. A kid who works all day and then goes to the stadium to play against professionals, against people who play football for a living, that is something special.
“For that game in 2004 to still be the last win, the only win, that’s not good, but there’s also a pleasure in having been involved in setting an example, and showing that victory is possible. In the last few years there has been so much work, so many things have improved. Now it’s time to turn that effort into victory.”