Welcome to the Playmaker Archive where every week will be diving into our massive database of over one million players, four million games, and much more to discover some of football’s more interesting and unique stories.
In this fourth edition of Into the Archives, we’re focusing on a team most famous for being heavily defeated and being the subject of Football Manager challenges.
That’s right, it’s plucky San Marino. But we’re going to look at the biggest achievement of the team so far – their one win in 200 games.
Sandwiched between the Italian regions of Emilia-Romagna and Marche, the tiny nation of San Marino is a trivia enthusiast’s dream country.
It is arguably the world’s oldest continuous state having been founded in 301 AD with borders unchanged since the 15th century. It’s also the world’s oldest constitutional republic and the first country to democratically elect a communist government in 1945 (in the wake of having been under its own fascist regime).
For a tiny nation, it’s pretty impressive that it has managed to survive through the era of Napoleon and two World Wars while for the most part remaining unaffected.
But mostly, it’s known for its sporting achievements – or lack of them, especially in football.
The nation’s first official match was against Switzerland in 1990 – a qualification game for the 1992 Euros that resulted in a 4-0 defeat.
In that time San Marino have managed to draw on just a handful of occasions but they have only ever won a game once: a friendly 1-0 victory over Liechtenstein in April 2004.
There weren’t really any famous names on display in Serravalle that evening but of course, Playmaker has in-depth profiles on every player who featured. Darlington fans may remember Liechtenstein’s Franz Burgmeier but San Marino’s Andy Selva was the hero – as he often was considering he is still the nation’s top scorer with eight goals in 73 games.
Selva, whose career saw him represent Italian sides like Hellas Verona, Sassuolo, and SPAL, scored the winner in just the fifth minute of the game – and what a goal it was. The striker smashed a free kick into the roof of the net with Liechtenstein goalkeeper Peter Jehle, then playing for Grasshopper Zurich, unable to keep it out. It’s worth watching for yourself.
San Marino were unlucky not to extend their lead but did manage to see out the game to record their only-ever victory. Unfortunately though, it was only a friendly game and a competitive victory still proves elusive.
Indeed, San Marino and Liechtenstein met twice during the 2020/21 Nations League with the Sammarinese managing a goalless draw in Vaduz but losing 2-0 at home.
There were memories of that 2004 game in that recent defeat though. One of Liechtenstein’s goalscorers was Yanik Frick. Yanik is the son of Mario Frick – who is one of Liechtenstein’s most famous players and who featured in that game.
Frick senior was playing for Serie B side Ternana at the time and was interviewed by Sammarinese TV following the game where speaking in Italian he praised Selva’s fine strike even if he didn't look too happy about it.
San Marino’s next competitive game will happen this September when they face a trip to Denmark. It’s hard to imagine they’ll overcome that winless competitive record just yet.
1: Albert Camus
2: Rungrado 1st of May Stadium
3: Sean Connery
1-0 | ||
Andy Selva 5' |
