Worst In The World: Friendly: Italy 4-0 San Marino

Saturday 19 October 2013

Friendly: Italy 4-0 San Marino - May 2013

31^st May 2013

Italy 4-0 San Marino

Friendly

Stadio Renato Dall’Ara, Bologna, Italy

The overriding feeling after San Marino’s latest defeat is that it could have been worse. A historic first meeting between the tiny Sammarinese and the nation that surrounds them was never going to be good news as far as the result was concerned. But thankfully the Italians didn’t overdo things and try and humiliate their opponents.

Playing in the Bologna stadium which San Marino used to call home (scene of Gualtieri’s goal against England) San Marino were under the cosh from the start with the goalkeeper Aldo Simoncini having plenty to do, which he did quite well initially making some very nice saves from Boneventura, Aquilani and Diamanti.

It was never going to last of course, but to have survived until the 28h minute is quite an achievement. Andrea Poli was the man to finally beat Simoncini after latching onto a loose ball in the box, with his first goal for Italy.

Simoncini continued the good work however, saving well from Aquilani again 10 minutes later, but unfortunately the rebound fell to Alberto Gilardino to fire home.

The second half goals were all down to Andrea Pirlo free-kicks. One goin in directly, and the other scored by Alberto Aquilani on a rebound off substitute keeper Federico Valentini who had come on at half-time. He wasn’t up to the heroics of Simoncini unfortunately, so don’t expect to see him picking the ball out of the net in September’s qualifiers.

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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.