Worst In The World: San Marino Back In Action

Friday, 10 October 2014

San Marino Back In Action

European Championships Qualifiers

England v. San Marino
Thursday 9th October 2014

European Championships Qualifying Group E

Wembley Stadium, London, England

San Marino continue their Euro 2016 qualifying campaign with the latest edition of what is becoming something of a regular fixture in European qualifying. Having met in the last round of qualifiers for the 2014 World Cup, the two sides had also previously met famously in 1994 World Cup qualifying.

On those occasions, England won by six goals in both matches but of course it was San Marino's goal through David Gualtieri which has remained in everyone's memories; the fastest ever goal in World Cup football. Here it is again for your enjoyment/amusement/embarrassment:

In their four previous meetings, England have twice put six past the Sammarinese, once put five past them, and put seven past them once; the occasion they conceded that famous goal.

For San Marino, obviously this is a no win game but if they could at least show a little more endeavour than in their two most recent clashes with England that would be something.

San Marino v. Switzerland
Tuesday 14th October 2014

European Championships Qualifying Group E

Stadio Olimpico, Serravalle, San Marino

After the trip to Wembley San Marino return home to face a Swiss side who haven't been so impressive in opening their Euro campaign in losing at home to England, and then going down to defeat in Slovenia.

Having lost their opening two fixtures, Switzerland will naturally be eager to restore some pride and points to their tally and there is the danger that they will take out their frustration on San Marino.

This is a repeat of San Marino's first ever official fixture, and first ever competitive fixture, when the two sides met in Serravalle in Euro '92 qualifying when Switzerland won 4-0. The return fixture was a 7-0 defeat for San Marino.

If San Marino were to restrict Switzerland to four goals once again that would be a decent return against a team who were quite impressive in the World Cup this summer.

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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.