By Richard Heller
October 11, 2019 will go down in football history. Andorra won its first match in the European Championships, ending a run of 56 consecutive defeats. Fewer than a thousand fans were at the Estadi Nacional to see Marc Vales head the hosts into a shock lead against Moldova in the 63rd minute. Then the Andorran defence stood tall to protect it, as befits their mountain nation (current population 77,000 or so) which has preserved its independence against powerful neighbours for centuries.
Things went back to normal for the Andorrans three days later. Despite another gritty performance, they went down 2-0 to Iceland (of whom more below). The result kept them above Moldova in Group H after the latter crashed 4-0 at home to Albania.
The tournament went less well for another small mountain nation, San Marino. Their record at the time of writing is Played 8 Lost 8 Goals For 0 Goals Against 43. They remain anchored to the lowest spot (210) in the FIFA rankings. Many remember the match in 1993 when a mistake by Stuart Pearce allowed San Marino’s Davide Gualtiere to score the fastest goal in World Cup history to give his country the lead against England after 8.3 seconds. They held it for 20 delirious minutes, before England replied with seven. San Marino hold the record for a European championship defeat (0-13 at home to Germany). They have never won a qualifying match for any tournament. They have never beaten any other country in a friendly except another small nation: Liechtenstein.
Two small Caribbean nations stand immediately above San Marino in the current FIFA rankings. Anguilla successfully if sometimes comically resisted incorporation into St Kitts-Nevis in the late 1960s. It has just lost its two CONCACAF Nations League matches against Guatemala by a combined total of 15 goals to nil. Its record in all international matches since 2014 is played 13, lost 12, drawn 1 (away to the next-ranked team Bahamas): Goals For 1 Goals Against 69. Bahamas can boast some emphatic victories against other small neighbours, the Turks and Caicos Islands and Bonaire, but have been generally crushed by higher-ranked opponents.
Without disparaging any of the teams concerned, that is the general pattern of small-nation teams in the lower reaches of the FIFA world rankings. They sometimes beat and leapfrog each other. More rarely, they eke out a draw against supposedly better teams. In international tournaments, their most heroic performances may occasionally influence qualification for the final stages, when some fancied team fails to flatten them. Otherwise, their role is to be cannon fodder and create meaningless statistics.
I therefore believe that FIFA should devise an international competition for small nations alone.
Of course population size is not a determinant of football success. Iceland is ranked 180 in population size but 41 in the latest FIFA rankings. It would probably contest a small-nations final with Montenegro (168th in population 59 FIFA ranking). Since Montenegro would be playing with many African, Caribbean and Oceanic countries, it would need to curb the racists among its supporters to avoid disqualification. Two other sub-million nations are also ranked in the top hundred by FIFA; Curaçao and Cape Verde.
By contrast Bangladesh, the eighth most populous country in the world, has a FIFA ranking of 188, Indonesia, the fourth, is at 159, while Pakistan, the fifth, is at 200 – behind Monserrat, the FIFA member with the smallest population at just under 5,000.
However, population size is a more objective and less contested measure of a small footballing nation than any attempted football ranking. The million cut-off point would take in 40 present members of FIFA, of which 32 are ranked below 150. According to the UN Population Division, there are around thirty other political entities with populations below one million. Vatican City (population 799) might struggle to raise a team even with the help of the football-loving Pope Francis, but other micro-states might be encouraged by the new competition to seek FIFA admission.
If properly timed, the new competition could be used as a screening process for the World Cup, with only the best-placed teams taking part in the latter’s qualifying rounds. If the four small countries ranked above 100 were insulted at being asked to take part, they could be allowed to step aside or field a youth team. If any larger country ranked below 150 were ready to swallow its pride it could be allowed to enter.
There has been a sort of rehearsal for this competition, in the famous match between Bhutan and Montserrat, then the two worst-rated FIFA teams, on the same day as the 2002 World Cup Final. With home advantage in their 2300-metre high Changliminthang Stadium, in front of a 15,000 crowd the Bhutanese gained their first international victory, 4-0 with a hat-trick by Wangay Dorji. It was celebrated in the documentary The Other Final, made by the two Dutchmen who had promoted the match in disappointment that their national team failed to qualify for that World Cup.
In a full-scale small nations competition, many more groups of fans would share with Andorra’s and Bhutan’s the elusive joy of victory. It would do more for football in these countries than a regular diet of crushing defeats. It would provide a new showcase and increased income for their players, and help them to retain the best ones rather than losing them to bigger countries for which they can rustle up a qualification.
Taking in a high proportion of countries with gorgeous scenery and/or spectacular beaches, such a tournament is likely to be very popular with media and commercial representatives, and thus generate substantial coverage and revenue. If FIFA asked me, I would be happy to discuss its rules and conditions in an extended tour of the potential entrants.
Richard Heller is an author and journalist, who has played or watched football in some fifty countries, the smallest being the beautiful African archipelago of São Tomé e Príncipe (population ranking 187 FIFA ranking 190). His latest book (with Peter Oborne) is White On Green, celebrating the drama of Pakistan cricket.