Worst In The World: Azerbaijan v. Andorra Preview

Wednesday 20 March 2013

Azerbaijan v. Andorra Preview

30^th May 2012 – Kelsterbach, Germany

Azerbaijan v. Andorra - Friendly

This will be the fourth meeting of these two nations, all in friendlies, going back to 1998 and somewhat surprisingly Andorra have a half decent record against the Azeris. The first two meetings both ended in 0-0 draws in 1998 and 2000.

Both of those fixtures were staged in neutral venues, Tallinn and Ta’Qali, Malta respectively, which superstitious types may cling to as being a sign Andorra can repeat those feats in the upcoming neutrally hosted fixture. The other was in Andorra La Vella and the hosts narrowly lost 1-2 on that occasion in 2008.

This record of 2 draws and a narrow defeat must make Azerbaijan one of Andorra’s favourite opponents. Azerbaijan have improved somewhat themselves since their own first steps into international football, so an Andorran success remains as always very unlikely, but if any opponent was to bring out the best from our Pyrenean friends, this is it.

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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.