San Marino: The impossible becomes a reality
It’s the 8th of February 2024 in Paris, France. The 2024/25 UEFA Nations League draw has just been completed.
League A boasts matchups of France and Italy, Netherlands and Germany and Croatia and Portugal. League B has England vying to get back to the summit of the tournament.
League D exists below them all, harbouring the minnows of European international football. It may just be where the most interesting stories and fixtures will take place, however.
It’s where the three lowest ranked teams in all of UEFA have been drawn in a group with each other. Liechtenstein, Gibraltar, and San Marino.
San Marino
This means that, no matter what, one of the three worst UEFA nations will be promoted to League C in 2026/27.
This gives a unique opportunity for one of these three teams to experience something they never have before.
It dares their fans to dream of those glorious moments that following your team brings with it. For San Marino, these moments have come few and far between.
A win, let alone any glory was all too rare, and a trophy was as far away as it could ever be.
Chained to the bottom of the FIFA rankings for over a year, they were stuck in the wilderness, regularly being rolled over. Results like a 10-0 thrashing at home by England, didn’t help their cause.
What happened?
But, in the most recent international breaks, something remarkable has happened. Things have changed.
With a record of two wins, one draw and one loss, San Marino topped Group D1 with 7 points, one point ahead of Gibraltar.
Not only did it give them only their second and third win ever, their first two competitive victories and their first ever away win, it’s propelled them into the consciousness of many football fans.
#SanMarino was number one on the trending tab on X (formerly Twitter) as the footballing world was stunned bythese events.
The Sammarinese have achieved something that even two years ago would’ve been considered a mere fantasy, outside the realms of possibility.
A win for the ages
Many of their players, although now less so than before, have day jobs. Left back Alessandro Tosi works as a digital marketing specialist andc midfielder Alessandro Golinucci works at a distribution factory for a toy company.
The stories write themselves as, in the 3-1 victory away in Liechtenstein that secured them promotion, Golinucci actually scored the third goal that all but secured their promotion.
Now, for the bigger nations, the Nations League is sometimes nothing more than an afterthought. It’s an annoyance that interrupts the club season unnecessarily.
For the smaller nations, however, and it becomes more prevalent the further down you go, it provides hope for a story like San Marino’s, to happen to them.
Reality
As excited as the footballing world is for San Marino, and rightly so, expectations must be tempered. They are going to be competing against teams a lot better than Gibraltar or Liechtenstein.
In fact, every single one of their three victories have come against Liechtenstein. That may be a rivalry that starts to brew and fester in future years.
We’ve seen, when faced up against better opposition, San Marino simply don’t win. That will be a cause for concern for their FA and their manager, Roberto Cevoli.
Dreams
In the here and now however, all they can do is celebrate as they tread ground no Sammarinese footballer has ever treaded before.
Their celebrations as they rushed the pitch at full time provided even the most stoic person with goosebumps. It’s a feelgood story at a time when it feels like European football desperately needs one.
It’s an international break that has come off the back of the horrifying events in Amsterdam. As well as this, we’ve seen Romania vs Kosovo suspended for pro Serbian chants at the Kosovan players and fans.
Within that context, some small nation surrounded on all sides by Italy winning promotion to the third tier of the UEFA Nations League might not seem so important.
But football is the ultimate escapism for so many people for so many different reasons. It gives players like Golinucci and Tosi a chance to represent their country away from their day jobs.
Stories like this are all too rare in modern football, but in this fans as well as players can find comfort in the knowledge that football, despite its financialisation, still exists in its purest form.
The jubilant celebrations of the fans and the players confirms this and it will hopefully cement its place as one of the best underdog stories in modern football.
