‘We are San Marino, we always have to suffer’: What it’s like playing for the lowest-ranked national soccer team in the world

By Jamie Barton, CNN

(CNN) — Losing 2-1 to Denmark. Falling 2-1 to Finland. Drawing 1-1 with Latvia. For most soccer teams, this would be an indication of bad form, difficult moments that supporters try their best to forget and probably a sign that the team is looking for a new coach.

For San Marino, these are some of the greatest results in the nation’s history. That’s because San Marino loses – a lot. Since the country’s first ever match on March 28, 1986, of the 216 games the national team has played, it has lost all but 14 and only won three.

The highest position La Serenissima has ever had in the FIFA world rankings was world No. 118 in September 1993 and it has been a steady descent – with some precipitous falls – since then. The last time the team was not rock bottom of the rankings was more than three years ago when, for 35 days, the side was 209th instead of 210th. It is, statistically, the worst national soccer team in the world.

“You try to do your best wherever you can, but if the opposition are having a good day, then they can do what they want to you,” defender Dante Rossi told CNN Sport.

San Marino, a tiny microstate within Italy, is home to 33,600. Were it a city in the US, it would be around the 1,400th-largest in the country by population.

It is known for its beautiful views, traditional cakes, and for being the world’s oldest surviving republic. It is not, however, known for its soccer prowess.

A double life

Marcello Mularoni is one of San Marino’s most important players. He has made 48 appearances for his country, played in huge games against the likes of England and Italy, and recently captained the team for the first time.

But most of the time, Mularoni is a business consultant.

The midfielder is semi-professional, like almost all of his national teammates. The San Marino squad is made up of office workers, personal trainers, students, a graphic designer, and one full-time professional – Nicola Nanni, who plays his club soccer for Torres in Serie C, the third tier in Italy.

“It’s strange. During the day you’re concentrating on your work, and then you have to switch to training,” Mularoni told CNN Sport. “If you are tired, you still have to train. We do it for our passion. But it’s also about the great opportunity that we have to face players like (Jude) Bellingham – our idols that we see on TV – like they are normal guys or friends.

“It’s funny, but we have to work. We play a lot of matches during the year, which means we are away from work, so you have to show respect to the owner of the business.”

According to Rossi, this double life is one of the reasons why San Marino has struggled over the years.

“We have a lot of people in the squad who work or study. That takes up a lot of time and definitely a lot of concentration,” he said.

“We are not professionals who can dedicate our time and have economic well-being for a lifetime and have our minds solely on football. We have a lot of problems, we have family, we have a lot of things to think of besides football. It gets really complicated because (other teams) are 100% dedicated to this.”

According to Rossi, it is not easy to lose so heavily, so often. Between 2006 and 2023, San Marino held the unwanted record of suffering the biggest defeat in European Championship qualifying history – a 13-0 drubbing by Germany.

September 7, 2006, remains a dark day for anyone who follows San Marino. Two months earlier, Germany had been beaten by Italy in the last minute of a World Cup semifinal in Dortmund.

Believing San Marino to be essentially Italian, Die Mannschaft took revenge. German goalkeeper Jens Lehmann even had to be talked out of taking a penalty by the Sammarinese players who, already 12-0 down, had faced enough humiliation.

Rossi did not play in that game, but he did feature on another infamous day in the nation’s soccer history, a 10-0 loss to England in November 2021.

“That game was the most difficult, on a personal level and as a group, that we have had to face,” remembered Rossi. “It was painful. We did suffer after that game, to tell you the truth. We suffered a lot. But hey, it happens. That’s football.

“We are San Marino, we always have to suffer!”

So frequent are the heavy defeats that Rossi has learned to take the positives wherever he can, including from another game against England that year.

“In 2021, we played at Wembley against England and lost 5-0,” he said. “5-0 is obviously a big scoreline, but for us at Wembley, it was almost good. Maybe not good, but definitely acceptable.”

The defender is philosophical about what it means to play for a team which only won one of its first 210 games, a 1-0 victory over Liechtenstein in an exhibition match in 2004.

“It’s very difficult to understand it because football is a sport where the most important thing – the only thing, sometimes – is to win and become champions,” he explained. “But I don’t think it’s one extreme or the other. Everyone has to look at their own reality and what they can do with it, even the small things.”

Looking on the bright side

San Marino’s fans have also learned how to remain upbeat, even if they can afford to be slightly more self-deprecating. Fan account @SanMarino_FA has garnered 182k followers – more than five times as many people as the population of the country itself – on X, formerly known as Twitter, with a humorous account of what it is like to support the team.

“It’s a hell of a ride!” laughed its admin, who goes by the pseudonym Martino Bastianelli, in an interview with CNN Sport. “I always think, ‘Maybe today is the day.’ But then they start playing.”

Even more tongue-in-cheek is the national team’s main supporters’ group, the Brigata Mai 1 Gioia, or “Never One Joy Brigade.”

“We are sick because we support San Marino,” Christian Santini, a Brigata member since 2018, told CNN Sport. “We support a team that never wins.”

“I am not from San Marino,” he continued. “I live near the west coast of Italy. It takes me almost three hours to get to San Marino. We (the Brigata) have a Bavarian man who drives to San Marino from Munich. We have people from Austria, two Irish guys, a French guy.

“These are sick people. Simple.”

Rossi added: “It may be a bit of humor, but we know the people in the Brigata and we know they have a lot of respect for us. We know they probably came up with the name as a joke, but there’s more to it. We always thank them because they follow us everywhere – be it three, 10, 20, 30, whatever.”

It is a sentiment echoed by Bastianelli. “It’s nice to have that humorous take of: ‘Here we go again, we are going to lose,’” he told CNN. “But it’s also nice to try to keep believing, even though you know you’re going to lose.”

Notwithstanding his playful tone, Santini explained that the Brigata also holds a genuine appreciation for the players.

“If I want to see a professional football match, I live two kilometers from a Serie A team, Empoli,” he said. “Here in Tuscany, I have Fiorentina and Pisa as well. So why travel three hours and go to San Marino to watch a football game?

“We support them for the unique reason that they are like us. They are people who work hard during the week. But they also make us dream.”

For 38 years since the country’s first game in the mid-80s, people like Santini and Bastianelli have dreamed about seeing San Marino win a competitive game. Many will likely have accepted that it would never happen.

But then, on September 5, that dream became a reality.

Victory at last

As La Serenissima prepared for a UEFA Nations League game against Liechtenstein – the team it had beaten in a friendly 20 years ago – midfielder Mularoni felt something different to the usual expectation of defeat.

“Before the Liechtenstein game, I could see in my teammates’ eyes that they believed,” he said. “We were thinking, ‘Yes, today is the day.’”

Opportunities to play against teams of a similar level do not come around too often, Mularoni explained.

“About four years ago, we faced Gibraltar and Liechtenstein and there was pressure – like, ‘Woah, we have to win,’” he said. “But this time against Liechtenstein, we didn’t have those kinds of thoughts. It was like, ‘We can win,’ not ‘We have to win.’”

Nonetheless, the team was aware that it had to be at its best. “We knew that to win the game, or to have a chance of winning the game, we would have to do everything perfectly,” said Rossi. “There was no other way – if we made mistakes, we would lose.”

The game itself was far from a classic. One goal early in the second half from 19-year-old Nicko Sensoli – who had not yet been born when San Marino last won – was enough. But the quality of the game was the last thing on Rossi’s mind.

“It was an emotion that I will never forget for the rest of my life,” he said. “When the referee blew the whistle to end the game, everything stopped, like in a movie. I couldn’t hear anything. It was incredible.

“That adrenaline rush where you don’t know what to do with yourself. I think I hugged my teammates, went to the coach, looked at the stands to find my daughter, and just enjoyed it.”

Back in the locker room, Rossi saw not only what it meant to his teammates, but also to the people of San Marino.

“Emotion, tears, joy, hugs, photos, messages – thousands of messages!” he said. “I don’t use social networks, but on WhatsApp, I received calls and messages from all of my colleagues.”

Mularoni’s experience was much the same. “The day after, when I got to work, everyone was congratulating me,” he said.

“I feel so proud of the staff and my teammates – not just the teammates who were on the pitch or on the bench that day, but also all the teammates I’ve trained with during my years in the national team.”

At the 176th time of asking, San Marino had won a competitive game. All that was left, joked Mularoni, was for the supporters’ group to recognize the achievement.

“The Brigata Mai 1 Gioia – ‘Never One Joy,’” he mused. “They should change the name!”

Golden generation

For anyone with even a remote interest in San Marino, it was an unforgettable night, a unique moment in the nation’s history.

At least, it was, until the world’s lowest-ranked national team won again less than three months later.

On November 18, San Marino faced off against Liechtenstein again, this time away from home. If the last win had been something of a dull game in itself, this one was played on pure adrenaline.

After the home team had taken the lead in the first half, three second-half goals from La Serenissima brought with them a whole host of records: a first ever away win, the first time the team had ever scored three goals in a game, the first time it had ever come from behind to win, and – incredibly – promotion to the third tier of the Nations League, the first time San Marino had achieved overall success in any competition.

“It’s a dream after years of sacrifice,” said Mularoni.

You would be mistaken for thinking that a second competitive win would be celebrated less fervently than the first.

“It’s an immense joy for the whole country, for the team, for the (football) federation, really something that you cannot put into words, a unique emotion,” said Rossi.

“Really, to have done this in this tournament, at this level, with these incredibly important results and finish it with another victory, an away victory, and win promotion is truly unique, inexplicable, unexpected for 99% of people,” he continued. “But we know internally that we have improved so much, and we are still improving.”

San Marino’s starting lineup for the game had an average age of just over 23 years old. At 37, Rossi is something of an older brother figure to an emerging golden generation of Sammarinese players.

“We are a small team. We are a family,” he said. “And when you are a family, you enjoy things twice as much.”

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