The Miracle of San Marino!
Today at 03:41 AM
September 2024, San Marino won its first football match in twenty years. Now San Marino supporters see the possibility of new triumphs.
– Campioni! Campioni! Never before have San Marino football fans cheered louder than when referee Andris Treimanis blew for full time in the match between San Marino and Liechtenstein at the San Marino Stadium in Serrevalle.
The home team had won 1-0, and for the first time in history, San Marino stood again as the winner of a football match where points and table position are at stake. Just under a thousand spectators were present in the stadium, but on this particular evening it sounded as if they were many times that number. Many of the spectators stormed the pitch in a frenzy of joy. Others were left sitting in the stands rubbing their eyes with their eyes fixed on the scoreboard, as if to make sure it wasn’t all a dream. Above the main stand, the neon numbers shone 1-0, as an assurance to the home crowd that the result was real. It’s absolutely fantastic! exclaimed an ecstatic spectator after the sensation was a fact. – I was born and raised in San Marino, and have seen every single one of the national team’s home games in the last five years. Every time I hope for victory, a miracle, but I guess I never really thought it could happen in reality. Out on the grass, several of the home team’s players sank to their knees in joy. Some let the tears roll.
It was a perfect evening, smiled San Marino’s coach Roberto Cevoli. – We could actually have scored more than one, and for a rare time we stayed close at the back. I couldn’t have asked for more from my players. I am so happy! On behalf of the players, and on behalf of football in San Marino. We have been waiting for this victory for a long time!
Also San Marino’s match winner, Nicko Sensoli was high after the triumph against Liechtenstein.
An absolutely incredible feeling to score, beamed Sensoli. – We knew we had a chance to win. We were well prepared, and for a rare occasion we kept a clean sheet all the way in.
The match against Liechtenstein was Sensoli’s fourth for the national team. Last year he was on loan to Sangiuliano City at level 4 in Italy. This season he is back in San Marino club football, for the San Marino Academy. For most nations, a win against a small-time nation like Liechtenstein is nothing to cheer about, but for San Marino, the win represented the country’s biggest night of football to date.
San Marino is in 215th and last place in the FIFA rankings, and the statistics clearly show that this is not a team that is used to winning. Since San Marino’s first international match, a narrow 0-1 loss to Canada’s Olympic team in 1986, the team has played 211 games. The result is two wins, ten draws and 199 losses, which gives a loss percentage of a formidable 96.62. In the 211 matches, San Marino has scored a paltry 33 goals, and conceded a total of 845.
It has not been easy, sighed San Marino’s football president Marco Tura in an interview with San Marino TV earlier this year. – The vast majority of our matches are against good European teams, and these are matches we have little or no chance of winning.
Tura knows what he’s talking about. Ever since San Marino took part in its first qualification, for the EC in Sweden in 1992, the country has always been seeded at the lowest level, and the opposition has been formidable. In the qualification for the European Championship in 2024, San Marino ended up in a group with Denmark, Slovenia, Finland, Kazakhstan and Northern Ireland. It ended with ten losses and a goal difference of 3-31. Loss is our destiny, said the former national team coach Giampaolo Mazza, when he retired in 2013, having held the job since 1998. – Our goal is not to win, but to show the world our dignity.
San Marino is a country that Norwegian football supporters also have a relationship with. Norway has met San Marino a total of four times. The first time was in the qualification for the World Cup in the USA in 1994. Egil “Drillo” Olsen was in the process of building one of the world’s best national teams, and San Marino was sent home from Ullevaal Stadium with 0-10 in the bag. Right-back Gunnar Halle was never known as a goal-getter, but this evening he scored the first and last hat-trick of his career, in what is to date the Norwegian national team’s biggest victory.
San Marino has experienced many ugly defeats, and over the years several major football nations have advocated that San Marino and other small states should go through a pre-qualification before they are allowed to participate in the actual qualification for the Euro’s and World Cup.
But so far UEFA and FIFA have resisted the pressure. San Marino and a number of other small states are still allowed to participate, along with England, Germany and Spain.
The big countries will never understand how important it is for us to participate on an equal basis with everyone else, said football president Tura before the match against Liechtenstein. – It is extremely important for us to be recognized by UEFA and FIFA as full members. San Mariners are proud of their country and their national team. The losses continue to come in a row for San Marino. But in the last couple of years, there has still been a certain optimism to trace. In the last European Championship qualification, San Marino scored goals in three matches in a row, against Denmark, Kazakhstan and Finland. In any other country, no one would have raised an eyebrow at such a feat, but for a country accustomed to celebrating every goal as a victory, the scoring streak was something to notice in San Marino.
We are still performing unevenly, nothing else is to be expected, said coach Cevoli after the victory against Liechtenstein. – But in the last couple of years we have developed. We are better trained, and mostly manage to keep up for ninety minutes. In addition to more goals and better performances on the field, UEFA’s innovation Nations League has created optimism in San Marino.
The introduction of the Nations League has been fantastic for us, explained football president Tura. – Now we finally get the chance to play against teams at our own level, in matches that really matter. I am sure that the Nations League will increase interest in our national team. Nobody likes to see their team lose by six or seven goals in every game.
Tura’s enthusiasm for the Nations League is shared by many, particularly in the smaller European nations. For countries such as Liechtenstein and San Marino, the Nations League means that they do not have to stand up as the big nations’ victims, in meaningless private matches. Instead, they get the opportunity to play for important points, against teams at their own level. In this year’s edition of the tournament, San Marino is placed at the lowest level, D, in a group with Gibraltar and Liechtenstein, respectively number 198 and 199 in the FIFA rankings.
Like the national team, San Marino club football also strives at the lowest European level. Because even though San Marino is a rich country, with one of the highest gross domestic products in the world, it in no way means that there is a lot of money in San Marino football. The Campionato Sammarinese di Calcio, the San Marino elite league, is ranked as the weakest in Europe.
Most of the players are amateurs, a few are semi-professional. Not all of the sixteen teams in the elite series have stadiums that meet the requirements for playing league matches. Instead, eight stadiums are used. Which matches are played in which stadiums is decided by lottery. The national team arena San Marino Stadium is the largest of the eight, with a capacity of just over 6,500 spectators.
San Marino clubs also get the opportunity to compete in Europe. As a full member of UEFA, the San Marino league winner gets to play qualification for the Champions League. But the club teams also have no chance in the meeting with teams from other European countries. In this year’s qualification, last year’s series winner AC Virtus was eliminated in the first qualifying round, after 1-11 over two games against the Romanian series champion FC Steaua București. Virtus then entered the second qualifying round of the Conference League, against Flora Tallinn from Estonia. After a heroic effort and 0-0 at home, the dream of a historic advancement to the next round burst, after losing 2-5 in the second leg in Tallinn.
The vast majority of San Marino’s national team players are in the San Marino elite series, while a few play at a lower level in Italian football. This means that the national team also consists of a mixture of amateurs and semi-professional players. Everyone has regular jobs on the side, and on match days the players drive to the stadium in their own private cars. Carpenters, lawyers, bank clerks and plumbers gather here with one common goal in mind; to make their country proud.
In most games, we know that we don’t have a chance to win, said national team captain Alessandro Golinucci after the game against Liechtenstein. – But no matter who the opponent is, we always go on the pitch to do our best. You never know, suddenly a chance to score will appear, like today. Fortunately, we managed to close behind. A perfect result for us! Many small, wealthy nations succumb to the temptation to grant citizenship to foreign athletes, hoping to achieve quick success on the football field.
Many small, wealthy nations succumb to the temptation to grant citizenship to foreign athletes, hoping to achieve quick success on the football field. With San Marino’s status as the world’s worst national team, combined with the country’s geographical location, completely surrounded by Italy, it is natural to think that San Marino can do the same, by inviting Italian players to the national team. But that is not going to happen anytime soon, we are to believe the country’s football president Marco Tura.
We have strict requirements for who can get citizenship in San Marino, and we are not going to ask the authorities to change the current arrangement in order to attract footballers from other countries, Tura told the San Marino media after the home loss against Finland in November in last year. – We are a team for Sanmarinese. Period!
Tura’s position is shared by most San Marino, of which the story of San Marino’s greatest player of all time, Massimo Bonini, is a good example. Bonini won three Serie A titles and a European Cup with Juventus in the 1980s. He was asked several times to play for the Italian national team, but declined each time, waiting for San Marino to be accepted as a full member of UEFA and allowed to participate in European qualifying matches. It didn’t happen until 1990. Bonini’s career was then in full swing, but the midfielder still managed to get nineteen games in for his beloved San Marino, before hanging up his boots in 1995.
Despite the San Marino’s strong sense of nationalism, and the fact that San Marino has participated in all qualifiers for the European Championship and the World Cup since 1990, interest in the national team is not particularly great, and there are rarely more than a few hundred present at the home games at the San Marino Stadium . But those who show up are, in return, very committed. Some of the most enthusiastic are the supporter group which calls itself Brigata Mai 1 Gioia – Never any joy. Brigata Mai 1 Gioia was formed by a group of Italians and San Marino in 2004. The group follows the team through thick and thin, and has thousands of committed followers on social media. Groups like Brigata Mai 1 Gioia hit the zeitgeist perfectly. All over Europe, more and more football fans are looking for new teams to follow, preferably an underdog, a club or a team that is not part of the ever-increasing commercialization and modern football’s money rush. It is difficult to find a bigger underdog than the world’s worst national team, and San Marino’s last place in the FIFA rankings has made San Marino something of a cult team, followed by football fans from all over the world.
Until the triumph against Liechtenstein, Brigata Mai 1 Gioia were very proud of the fact that they had never seen their heroes win – the last time was in 2004, just before the group was formed – but now the question is, will the gang have to find a new name?
Maybe we have to change the name, smiled one of San Marino’s faithful ultras after the match. – Maybe to Brigata San Marino? Because this was really fun – real football joy! With the victory against Liechtenstein, San Marino finds itself in a very unusual first place in its group in the Nations League. Now Brigata Mai 1 Gioia and other San Marino football supporters see the chance for new triumphs, perhaps also a promotion to level C in the Nations League. In that case, far more meritorious opponents, such as Sweden, Romania and Bulgaria, await in the second half.
The first obstacle on the way is Gibraltar. On 10 October, the two teams will meet at the Europa Sports Park in Gibraltar. The Sanmariners have faith in another victory, and although there are very few who believe that San Marino will ever qualify for an Euro’s or World Cup, one can always dream. Of course we can beat Gibraltar! smiled one of the members of Brigata Mai 1 Gioia after the victory against Liechtenstein. – Right now it feels like we can beat Messi and Argentina! And who knows, maybe we’ll see San Marino in defeat major opponents? You are allowed to dream, and for those who stick with San Marino, even the smallest dreams become big!
Author; Geir Jacobsen
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