Worst In The World: Azerbaijan 0-0 Andorra - Defeat Avoided!

Wednesday, 20 March 2013

Azerbaijan 0-0 Andorra - Defeat Avoided! - May 2012

30th May 2012 Kelsterbach, Germany
Azerbaijan 0-0 Andorra
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Not many countries can celebrate a 0-0 draw with Azerbaijan, but for Andorra a third goalless draw in four matches against this opponent was a huge positive. The first time defeat had been avoided in a full international since another 0-0 draw against a former Soviet Republic, Armenia, back in February 2007.

We have no goal scorers to hail, but Andorra will soon climb majestically from the foothills of the world rankings thanks to this result. Luckily for us, we get to celebrate that fact by following their World Cup Qualifier in Poland on Saturday before their ranking points take effect later in June.

Match highlights can been seen here...

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What's This All About?

It’s all too easy to focus on the successful teams in international football, Spain, Brazil, Germany etc. We all know what’s going on with them, usually winning, and can easily follow their crowning glories on the international stage. But what about life at the other end of the scale?

FIFA’s world rankings allow us to easily see who is officially the worst national football team in the world, and this site simply follows that team (or teams) until they manage to drag themselves kicking and screaming from the foot of the world rankings to be replaced by someone even worse. And then we follow them instead.

In the past the FIFA rankings made it clear who was the very worst of all, as the complex ranking formula rarely caused a tie for last place. Since 2006 the formula has been rather simplified, I won’t go into detail but many factors were removed to make things easier to understand. The result though is that down at the bottom of the rankings we often now have a cluster of ineptitude (or should it be a splat of ineptitude?) with several nations judged to equally as useless as each other for the simple reason that they lose all their games. In the past they’d have received some credit for a narrow defeat against a top side, but no more. To get off the bottom they are going to have to win or draw a match, something that often proves beyond most of them.

We’re here to highlight their struggles against hopelessness, and bring the occasional heart warming story of marginal success.