A week with the worst international football team in the world

It ends, like it almost always does, in the familiarity of defeat. What else would you really expect when, in the only occupied stand, there is a group of fans named Brigata Mai 1 Gioia? Translation: the “Never One Joy Brigade”.

When you are a supporter of San Marino, officially the worst international team in the world, it can be useful to have a sense of humour.

They came up with this name in 2012. Two years later, when a goalless draw against Estonia ended a decade-long sequence of defeats, the manager, Pierangelo Manzaroli, made Brigata Mai 1 Gioia produce a new banner saying Brigata Mezza Gioia (“Half a Joy”).

Manzaroli’s eyes twinkle when he remembers the euphoria of not losing. “People in other countries don’t understand what it is like,” he says. “It was an incredible moment… the same feeling as when my daughter was born.”

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Mostly, though, it is a well-established churn of joylessness.

San Marino, an enclave within central Italy with a population of 33,700, lose football matches. Sometimes they lose football matches spectacularly. In the worst times, they take such a tanking you could be forgiven for wanting to end the game early and give them a good cuddle.

Brigata Mai 1 Gioia hold up scarves bearing the message: “If you don’t cheer for us when we lose, don’t cheer for us when we win.” And if you think that is a bit presumptuous, the reality is they are poking fun at themselves. A red cross has been stitched through “when we win” — on the basis, as you have probably guessed, that nobody expects it to happen.

In 2004, San Marino did manage a 1-0 victory against Liechtenstein (population: 39,000) in the battle of the micro-states. Never again, though, have they experienced what it is like to beat an opponent. It was, in football parlance, one win on the trot.

Their latest defeat came on Friday, going down 3-0 to Kazakhstan in a Euro 2024 qualifier, and that extends their rather mind-boggling sequence without a victory to 129 matches.

(Photo: Jonathan Moscrop/Getty Images)

Since playing their first official games under the recognition of FIFA and UEFA in 1990, this tiny republic has been involved in 195 fixtures. There have been 186 defeats, eight draws and 830 goals shared out — 28 for San Marino, 802 for the opposition.

Some critics argue that, when there is such an imbalance of talent, this cannot be called sport in its truest sense. They question whether it should be allowed to continue. In San Marino, as you might expect, they think that viewpoint is arrogant, uninformed and, in some cases, dangerously close to bullying.

It has been, as it almost always is, a challenging week for the team at the bottom of FIFA’s world rankings, directly below Anguilla, the British Virgin Islands, the US Virgin Islands, Sri Lanka, Guam, and the Turks and Caicos Islands.

The Athletic has been following events, day by day, in the wildly optimistic belief that we might be lucky enough to witness their first victory in 19 years. It didn’t quite work out that way — next time, perhaps — but it has been enlightening all the same.

Tuesday, June 13

If you have packed The Rough Guide To Italy as your travel companion, your first impressions of San Marino might be slightly off-putting. Welcome, it says, to an “unashamed tourist trap that trades on its falsely preserved autonomy”.

According to the authors, there is not much to see. The waxwork museum in Via Lapicidi Marini is “crummy”. The citadels are described as mildly interesting and, for the determined visitor, the walk up the steep medieval streets is recommended for the panoramic views.

“But really the place is something of a fake,” comes the verdict. “You should be prepared, too, for the opposite of the patience and good humour you’ll usually find in other parts of the region.”

A bit harsh, perhaps. San Marino is rather beautiful, with its battlemented castles on the highest ridges. The bells of Palazzo Pubblico ring out against a backdrop of stunning scenery from Piazza della Liberta. The air is fresh, the streets spotless. Even better if you arrive when the Mille Miglia cars are passing through and the old town resembles the set of a James Bond film.

As for the alleged lack of patience or humour, it could be argued these are essential qualities if your football team has such a comically bad record.

It cannot be bundles of fun, after all, being almost permanently wedged in 211th place (out of 211 nations) in FIFA’s ranking system.

Just one of the gruesome statistics attached to this team: San Marino have lost 6-0, or worse, on 49 occasions, including seven games when the opposition has run up double figures.

“The worst memory was the 13-0 against Germany, September 2006,” says Mirko Palazzi, their longest-serving player. “They had just seen Italy win the World Cup on their own pitch (in Berlin). They came here thinking of revenge, considering us to be, in all effects, Italian. They wanted to crush us. No insults or mocking. They were like robots. They came forward, scoring again and again.”

At one particularly low point, complaints were raised in San Marino’s government about their national side’s exploits becoming a bit of an embarrassment. Others have tried to be more understanding. Many, however, find it difficult to remain enthused by a team of serial losers. What pleasure can be had, they ask, watching a team whose every game can feel like an exercise in damage limitation?

And yet, something else has become apparent since this statelet, measuring 24 square miles, set about trying to remove its tag as the whipping boys of international football.

San Marino were thrashed by Germany in 2006 (Photo: Oliver Lang/AFP via Getty Images)

In a sport that often takes a romantic view of its underdogs, San Marino have gained all sorts of new admirers. Their story of near-incessant failure has made them strangely fascinating to football fans around the world.

In 2016, a 19-year-old student by the name of Martino Bastianelli set up a Twitter account offering updates for what he described as “the unluckiest football team in the world”.

Seven years on, @SanMarino_FA (aka San Marino fan account) has 52,500 followers and, as he proudly points out, that is considerably higher than the number of people who actually live here.

But it’s not straightforward. San Marino’s matches tend not to be shown on mainstream television. Instead, Bastianelli explains he has to rely on internet searches and illegal streams. “I usually find some crazy Russian websites,” he says. “I’m lucky I have a good virus scanner, otherwise I would have at least 10 Trojan Horses on my PC.”

His first game was a 5-1 defeat in Azerbaijan. What he did not realise was that it would be another two years before he saw his heroes score again. The next game was an 8-0 home defeat to Norway, followed by 5-0 losses against the Czech Republic and Belarus. And, with every bad result, his number of followers has crept up and up.

“As a San Marino fan, you have to enjoy the little things,” says Bastianelli. “A shot on target is to celebrate. If you get a corner, be happy. If you score a goal, it’s like winning a game. If you draw, it feels like a win.”

You can hear in his voice what it means to him. Or read it in his tweets. He is fiercely passionate, driven by the thought that all the sustained defeats, year after year, will eventually lead to something precious and unforgettable.

And here’s the thing: it turns out Bastianelli is not from San Marino. He is not even from Italy, as betrayed by his Dutch accent when we speak on the phone.

He is from Breda in the Netherlands, where he grew up as a supporter of RKC Waalwijk but found himself unexpectedly drawn towards the story of a team for whom almost every match had a David-versus-Goliath vibe.

51’ WE HAD A SHOT ON GOAL. THIS IS THE TURNING POINT.

🇸🇲0-1🏴‍☠️ #SMRnir

— San Marino fan account (@SanMarino_FA) March 23, 2023

San Marino, he learned, claimed to be the world’s oldest surviving republic, founded almost 2,000 years ago by a monk fleeing the Diocletian regime. Culturally, it is essentially Italian. Legally and constitutionally, however, it remains independent — maybe because, to quote The Rough Guide to Italy’s rather sour appraisal, it has always been “too small and inconsequential to be worth conquering”.

Bastianelli, a lover of geography as well as football, was hooked.

Now 26, such is his conversion he does not “give a damn” about the Dutch national team. It’s all about San Marino these days and a strangely addictive team that, in 33 years of trying, has never scored twice in a single game.

His friends, he says, think he has lost the plot.

“Sometimes they might be going to a bar and I tell them, ‘Sorry, guys, I have to skip tonight, I’m watching the worst football nation in the world’,” he says. “That’s the love I feel for this team.”

Wednesday, June 14

There is something slightly surreal about being in a car with one of English football’s pantomime villains.

We are in a Fiat Panda. He has his foot pressed down, grinding up the hairpin bends to San Piazza Garibaldi. His name is Davide Gualtieri and he is driving me to my hotel because taxis in San Marino, like football wins, can be hard to find. And, yes, it all feels a bit surreal.

Remember this guy?

Many do. Tourists head over every year from Rimini, Cattolica and the other popular resorts on this part of the Adriatic coast to visit his computer store, Micronics, and meet the scorer of the most famous goal in San Marino’s history.

“It hasn’t changed me,” he says. “But for San Marino, that goal was like winning the World Cup.”

He is talking, of course, about that sweet-scented night in Bologna on November 17, 1993, when he scored against England in a World Cup qualifier after 8.3 seconds. At the time, it was the quickest goal in international history and, for England, a mandatory pick in any list of their top 10 greatest calamities.

“When Scotland played here a few years ago, their supporters made T-shirts in my honour,” says Gualtieri. ”Across the back, it had my name, ‘Gualtieri’, and, for the shirt number, it was 8.3. They came into the shop because they wanted to congratulate me for scoring against England. Even now, nearly 30 years later, I seem very popular with Scottish people.”

TBT – November 1993

San Marino 🇸🇲 v 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 England

Davide Gualtieri’s opener in the first few seconds of that game, we would love more of the same this March! #Throwback #ENGvSMR pic.twitter.com/18JZQlqRm6

— San Marino Supporters Group 🇬🇧 (@SanMarino_UK) February 28, 2021

In many ways, Gualtieri typifies what it means to be a footballer here and how reassuringly grounded they can seem compared to players from bigger countries.

His shop can be found just off a dual carriageway that weaves its way towards Monte Titano, the focal point of San Marino. Gualtieri has had this place for 27 years. Even when he was winning international caps, football was never his real career.

Six days a week, Gualtieri can be found behind the counter, selling laptops, games consoles, battery packs and just about every computer accessory you could need. His wife, Caterina, is usually there, too. In the back room, a team of technicians fix faulty laptops.

Gualtieri’s only connection with football these days is that Micronics supplies the internet for journalists to cover matches at Stadio Olimpico, San Marino’s 6,664-capacity stadium.

Not that he is completely unprepared when people ask for pictures, autographs and a shot of nostalgia. Behind the counter, he pulls out two of the newspaper pages that typified the English tabloid frenzy of the time.

Gualtieri has them framed and says he should really get around to putting them on the wall. One is the Daily Mirror’s back page showing his goal and a headline, “Bye Bye”, dedicated to Graham Taylor, England’s unfortunate manager at the time, with about as much warmth as a punch to the face. The other is the Mirror’s front page: “End of the World”.

Davide Gualtieri shows off Stuart Pearce’s England shirt from 1993

For Gualtieri, it seems impossible to talk about it without a smile spreading across his face.

“We started the match. I was playing on the right and went looking for the ball straight away,” he says. “The pass came through my channel. It should have been a simple backpass (for Stuart Pearce) but… whoa! Big mistake. I’m there! Goal! And then, I am just running. My team-mates are chasing me and I’m thinking, ‘Did that really happen?’.”

Everything happened so quickly that BBC commentator Jonathan Pearce, then at Capital Gold radio, was still going through the advertising spiel to introduce listeners to the game: “Welcome to Bologna on Capital Gold for England versus San Marino with Tennent’s Pilsner, brewed with Czechoslovakian yeast for that extra Pilsner taste… and England are one down.”

England came back to win 7-1, but you would be hard-pushed to find anyone who can recall which players racked them up.

The damage was done. England needed to win by seven clear goals to stand any chance of reaching the 1994 World Cup. They also had to pray that, in the same qualifying group, Poland could beat the Netherlands. Neither happened and Taylor, whose head had already been superimposed onto a turnip in The Sun, bore a nation’s fury. Rather innocently, Gualtieri went almost 20 years without realising England’s manager resigned a week later.

Gualtieri received a silver medal from his country’s Olympics federation to commemorate the goal. The football federation put up a plaque in his honour. The 30th anniversary is later this year and he mentions that he might design his own T-shirt to mark the event.

His record for scoring the fastest goal in a World Cup match — including in qualifiers or at the tournament proper — was usurped by Belgium’s Christian Benteke in 2017, but Gualtieri says it doesn’t worry him too much. “I have my memories,” says a man who did not score again for his country in eight more appearances.

It also turns out he swapped shirts with Pearce and got another from David Seaman, England’s goalkeeper on the night, signed “Safe Hands”.

The two shirts are brought out from beneath the counter and, briefly, Gualtieri is reliving the moment for which he will always be remembered. Then, an ordinary man in an ordinary job returns to his business, just the way he likes it.

Thursday, June 15

You have to feel a bit sorry for the guy. In he comes, bang on time, for his news conference. He takes his seat, taps his microphone to check everything is working and stares out into a room filled with 70 empty seats.

Not that anyone seems too surprised by the sheer absence of people. Fabrizio Costantini, the manager of San Marino, wears a seen-it-all-before expression. If he is put out, he hides it well. More likely, this is just the norm.

The country has three newspapers: Serenissima, Repubblica and Informazione. None, however, has a dedicated sports correspondent. The Italian media regards this team with a collective shrug and the broadcasters who cover Costantini’s team are clearly busy elsewhere.

But the show must go on: UEFA insist on every team having a news conference on the day before a Euro 2024 qualifier.

A couple of seats are filled with university students on work-experience projects. Another is occupied by Luca Pelliccioni, the team’s press officer. The two journalists from Kazakhstan who were here 15 minutes ago have decided not to hang around, after all.

That leaves just The Athletic. Can you win this game, Fabrizio? “We always fight to win,” he says, and nobody wants to ruin the moment by pointing out this isn’t backed up by a great deal of evidence.

Fabrizio Costantini’s poorly attended press conference

The scene is Stadio Ennio Tardini, home of Parma Calcio 1913, and if you are wondering why we have moved 140 miles across the border it is because San Marino is unable to put on the game in their own country. A new pitch is being laid at Stadio Olimpico and, without a backup venue locally, that has meant shifting the fixture to Italy’s Emilia-Romagna region.

Costantini is 55. He has a heck of a tan, piercing eyes and a wispy back-to-front combover that you imagine would be the subject of much discussion if he was managing in England. It is also striking how confident he sounds. Managers are paid to make positive soundbites, of course, but this guy really sounds like he believes it.

The previous manager, Franco Verrella, had 35 games in charge, comprising 33 defeats and two draws. Costantini, formerly the under-21s manager, took the job in November 2021 and has got off to what is, in comparison, a flying start. To San Marino, two draws from 10 games counts as a purple patch.

“The difference is that the players, off the pitch, are angry (about the results),” he says. “They know they are very close to a victory whereas, a few years ago, maybe we started with the attitude that we were only close to defeat.”

He sounds so positive that you find yourself wondering whether it was all a trick of the imagination that San Marino once went 20 matches without scoring and, even more spectacularly, 14 years without an away goal.

But the thought also occurs, watching his players training in the late-afternoon sunshine, that they don’t look as bumbling or hopeless as some people might expect. Somehow, I had imagined it might be a downcast bunch, confidence shot to pieces.

Maybe you remember what Sam Rutigliano, the former NFL coach, used to say about a terrible losing streak being the same as a series of minor heart attacks. “You can survive them,” he’d say. “But there’s always scar tissue.”

Here, though, everything seems upbeat. Laughter can be heard. In the rondos, there is a round of applause when the players forming a circle reach 10 passes without the two guys in the middle getting a touch.

You would never know this group of players were described in The Herald, the Scottish newspaper, not too long ago as “bottom of FIFA’s official world rankings… below the Bahamas, Anguilla and possibly Jossy’s Giants and those two young lads having a kick-aboot outside your house right now”.

You might even forget these players are mostly a bunch of amateurs who are paid so moderately in their domestic league they have to make ends meet through a variety of other occupations.

This, in the past, has involved a dentist, an accountant, a chemist, a graphic designer and two brothers who ran a bar called Funivia, known locally for its annual ping-pong tournament.

Of the current squad, only two are professional footballers: Nicola Nanni and Filippo Fabbri, both with Olbia in Serie C, Italy’s third division.

The goalkeeper, Elia Benedettini, runs a transport business with his brother, Simone, who also happens to be one of the substitute goalkeepers.

There are a couple of students, a painter and decorator and one player, Lorenzo Lunadei, who is a car salesman by trade — hectic work, presumably, given that San Marino is also reported to be the only country in the world with more cars than people.

Friday, June 16

San Marino 0-3 Kazakhstan.

OK, it’s another bad result, but some perspective, please. One of the two teams here represents a nation with roughly the same population as Pudsey, the 317th-largest town in the UK. The other is a country of 19.4 million.

And, daft as it might sound, there were fleeting moments when the players of San Marino made it feel like Costantini’s pre-match optimism might have been well-founded after all.

These guys aren’t complete duds. Or, at least, it didn’t feel that way while the game remained goalless and, 800 miles away, the Dutchman in charge of their most popular social media account seemed close to the point of spontaneous combustion. It was, Bastianelli excitedly tweeted, the best they had played since the 2004 game against Liechtenstein.

By the time it was over, they had managed six attempts at goal, as well as two corners, and had 41 per cent of possession. For this group of players, these are wild statistics. They also hit the crossbar during the first half (albeit from a deflected cross). One of their strikers, Filippo Berardi, even had the audacity to aim an overhead kick towards goal.

But they still contrived to find a way to lose because, in San Marino’s world, every silver lining has a cloud.

After 37 minutes, an innocuous cross came in from the right. Manuel Battistini, San Marino’s captain, made a pig’s ear of clearing the danger. The ball was lashed in by Kazakhstan’s grateful Yan Vorogovskiy and the balloon of optimism was punctured. “This is so frustrating and so unfair,” came Bastianelli’s update via Twitter. “I hate everything.”

Overall, though, Costantini was not exaggerating when he said the final score was misleading. Kazakhstan, 99 places higher than their opponents in FIFA’s rankings, got their second goal from an eccentric penalty decision. The third was an own goal, deep into stoppage time.

A text arrives from Bastianelli. “I’m so excited about what the future holds… the first 20 to 30 minutes were amazing against an in-form side. I’m sure we will get the result we have been waiting for, for almost 20 years.”

Brigata Mai 1 Gioia also seem pretty happy. Ten of them have made it to Parma and these guys are rarely disappointed about losing, mostly because it is all they have ever really known. I wonder if it is the same kind of thing that meant Billy Connolly, the Scottish comedian, grew up thinking Partick Thistle’s real name was Partick Thistle-nil.

Daniele Dei, one of the group’s members, has been kind enough to send me a list of the chants — “Come on, Titan, score us a goal, hey, hey” — that can be heard at San Marino’s fixtures.

There are 25 in total and, looking through the different verses, it is noticeable just how supportive and affectionate they are. They are, in essence, love songs. “One day suddenly, I fell in love with you… My heart was beating, don’t ask me why… Time has passed and I’m still here.”

Brigata Mai 1 Gioia at the Stadio Ennio Tardini

As it turns out, Dei and his companions are drowned out for most of the game by the noise created by 400 visitors from Kazakhstan, one of whom is impudent enough to bring a homemade banner predicting “4-0”. Three of the four stands remain closed and, with an official attendance of 538, it is an unusual night for Stadio Tardini, 97.6 per cent below capacity.

Yet Dei doesn’t seem to mind being asked why he, an Italian, has aligned himself to a national side that has made losing a speciality.

“I support a team that never wins,” he says. “So we make it about more than football. We are not angry fans, as you can find elsewhere in Italy. We are not rebels. We like to make friends, meet other supporters and see new places.”

The group, he explains, was set up 11 years ago by another Italian, Massimo Visemoli, who used to drive two and a half hours to games from Salvaterra and could not believe how flat the atmosphere was.

“The crowds were very small,” says Dei. “They didn’t sing, they didn’t show any real support. Very few wore the shirt with the badge close to their heart. To Massimo, it seemed like a theatre or the opera, with everyone sitting in silence.”

Since then, the numbers have swollen, including a German “super fan” called Josef Junker, who flies in from Ingolstadt, Bavaria, for as many games as possible.

For Junker, it started with a holiday to Cattolica more than 40 years ago: “I saw Monte Titano and I told my children, ‘OK, let’s go to the mountain to see what’s up there’. I fell in love.”

Does beer play a part? One of Brigata Mai 1 Gioia’s posters shows a cartoon figure with a pint in one hand and their adopted country’s flag over his shoulder. “Le sconfitte non fermeranno la nostra setei,” it says. Translation: “The defeats won’t stop our thirst.”

They don’t seem particularly boozy, though. Nor is it easy to understand why none of the group comes from San Marino itself. One is from Pisa, another from Milan, another from Perugia, and so on. They have bonded through a shared passion for loveable losers.

Dei is originally from Empoli and now lives in Modena, where he works in the communications department of the city’s hospital. He explains that he, too, had no connection to San Marino other than an interest in micro-state geography that made him want to find out more about the fifth-smallest nation in the world.

His first live game was an 8-0 defeat to Italy. “It’s a way of life,” he says, bringing out a photo of his two-year-old daughter, Daria, wearing the Sammarinese kit.

Saturday, June 17

If there is a moral to this story, it is that San Marino deserve better than the football snobbery they often encounter.

Tonight, the players will leave their training base at Collecchio, just outside Parma, and head to the airport for their next assignment. The opposition will be Finland at Helsinki’s Olympic stadium. And we all know what will happen: another defeat, another reminder of their place at the bottom of the pile. Game 130 without a win.

Yet it has been an insightful week following San Marino and, as the time comes to say goodbye, one conversation in particular lingers in the memory.

Alan Gasperoni is a former executive at the country’s football federation. “We always knew that we might not impress the world with our football skills,” he tells me. “But we also knew there were other ways for a country our size to win. We knew we could represent our nation, and its people, by being kind to visitors and showing ourselves in the best way possible. We knew we had to play our match off the pitch.”

Gasperoni is a multi-lingual PR, media and communications expert with an office inside the Ministry of Tourism. He is a busy man. Yet he is true to his word, even though his 14-year association with the federation is now in the past. He offers tickets for the cable cars, invitations to lunch and regular reminders that he is available if a tour guide is needed. You could not wish to meet a more helpful man.

He even acts as the interpreter when Andy Selva offers his perspective as, by some distance, the most prolific scorer San Marino has ever had.

Selva’s record of eight goals in 74 internationals makes him something of a legend in these parts given that, five years since his retirement, he remains the only player to have scored more than twice for the national side.

Eight goals, in one sense, might not sound much. Yet if you think about it properly, it is a phenomenal achievement. Just imagine how difficult it must have been to operate as a striker in a team that rarely crosses the halfway line.

“More than difficult,” says Selva. “I knew I might receive the ball only three or four times in some matches. We played Spain; Pep Guardiola, Fernando Hierro… I think the only time I touched the ball was restarting the game after their goals.” Six of them, in total.

Selva went on to score the winning goal against Liechtenstein in 2004 and you wonder what he must think when he hears critics saying San Marino have nothing to play for.

Andy Selva, San Marino’s record goalscorer

Try telling Davide Gualtieri that it is “pointless”, as Gary Lineker once claimed, to let these mini-nations have their day in the sun against the bigger and more established football countries.

Try telling Dante Rossi that San Marino — little, patronised San Marino — should remember their place and stop cluttering up more important teams’ diaries.

Rossi, a centre-half, was so overcome after a goalless draw against Gibraltar in the 2020 European Nations League that he burst into tears. It was the first time in their history they had achieved back-to-back draws in competitive fixtures. “I said I wouldn’t cry but I will cry,” Rossi announced on television. “A gift to my small, big, big country.”

🔹 0-0 Liechtenstein
🔹 0-0 Gibraltar

🇸🇲 San Marino player Rossi burst into tears after they have gone two competitive games without a defeat for the first time in their history. pic.twitter.com/n5xAalY0UA

— Photos of Football (@photosofootball) November 14, 2020

When the effortlessly suave Pierangelo Manzaroli pulls up a seat at Bar Guaita, a restaurant named after the republic’s most famous and oldest medieval tower, it quickly becomes clear that he, too, believes the good outweighs the bad. Even if it is a close-run thing sometimes.

As well as managing the senior side for three years, Manzaroli led his nation’s under-21s to the first win in their history: a 1-0 triumph against Wales in 2015.

He says he is immensely proud of representing his country and that it bugs him when he hears other managers belittling them. Jose Mourinho, he says, has fallen into that trap in the past. Roy Hodgson, more surprisingly, is also identified, from his time as England manager.

As a player, Manzaroli won 38 caps but tells me he is still haunted, at the age of 54, about a chance he missed in a 1995 defeat to the Faroe Islands. “I remember it like yesterday,” he says. “You have to realise that chances to score are rare for a San Marino player.”

In one game against Turkey, staged in front of a frenzied Ankara crowd, the score was 1-1 after 75 minutes.

This story’s a belter.

“We were so close to a big result,” says Manzaroli. “Then, 10 minutes before the end, some Turkish supporters ran on the pitch and attacked the referee. I don’t know what caused it — just that they are crazy. The match was stopped for 10 minutes.

“When we started playing again, the referee completely changed the focus towards Turkey. 4-1. 4-1! They scored three in the last five minutes.”

Former San Marino manager Pierangelo Manzaroli

These are proud men and, at the heart of everything, what they are saying is that there is a lot more to football in San Marino than the outside perception. They take the sport seriously. It matters.

And they have a point. Just think about the remarkable strength of mind and character that is required to go on the pitch in every game, knowing they have to face vastly superior opposition and the only realistic aim is to let in as few goals as possible.

“Some games are not to win,” Selva admits. “They are to lose in the best way.”

It is a curious existence that, at times, has led to some genuinely funny moments.

In one of San Marino’s first official games, Scotland beat them 2-0 but had to wait a little while for the goals to arrive. “We’ve been playing for an hour,” noted Ian Archer, the BBC Radio Scotland summariser, “and it has just occurred to me that we’re drawing 0-0 with a mountain top.”

At other times, however, the people here could be excused for thinking some comments have crossed a line into pure disrespect.

After an 8-0 win for Germany in 2016, the Bayern Munich player Thomas Muller questioned the “point of such uneven games” and complained about the “unnecessary risk” of being injured if the tactic of their opponents was to defend with tough tackling.

Gasperoni responded with a lengthy and cutting response setting out 10 reasons why Muller should educate himself about what it really means.

“It’s served to make me realise,” he says, in his 10th point, “that even if you wear the most beautiful Adidas kits, underneath you’re always the ones who put white socks under their sandals.”

No idea who wrote this on behalf of San Marino but it's a brilliant response to Thomas Muller's moan that playing them was pointless. pic.twitter.com/fjQJ1dh3c2

— MFT – MrFixitsTips (@mrfixitstips) November 15, 2016

Having mentioned this to Gasperoni, I suspect he didn’t realise it would create headlines around the world.

The interesting part, however, is that the reaction was almost overwhelmingly in favour of the team that finished the last Nations League at the bottom of D2, the lowest group, with zero points or goals from their four games.

Many people, it seems, can sympathise with the little guys, the minnows, the mountain top, the most downtrodden international team in the world.

Bastianelli, flying the San Marino flag from the Netherlands, summed it up. “It’s the story of an underdog and, if you are a real lover of football, you are always looking out for the underdog.”

(Top photos: Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton)

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