Take a look at the men’s world soccer rankings. At the top, you will find the giants of the sport, Argentina, France and Spain.
Then descend, past good teams like the United States and Australia, past decent teams like Honduras and Armenia. Keep going, past Mongolia and Djibouti. Even past the tiny island nations like Guam and Anguilla. And at the very bottom, below all of them, you will find San Marino, ranked 210th and last.
When you are the worst team in soccer, you lose. A lot.
San Marino had not won a men’s soccer game since 2004. And that game was a friendly match. The team had been playing official competitive games since 1990 and had never won.
Until this week. San Marino beat Liechtenstein (ranked 199th) on Thursday, 1-0, finally getting a victory, which was played in San Marino before fewer than 1,000 fans.
“We had a great performance,” said Dante Rossi, 37, a defender for San Marino who had never before tasted the thrill of winning at this level. “To beat Liechtenstein has been an incredible joy. It is complicated to find the right words to describe the massive emotions we felt.”
Nicko Sensoli, a 19-year-old midfielder, scored the winning goal. He was not even alive when San Marino last won. “I’m over the moon,” he said after the game. “To win at home in front of your family and fans is just something that is priceless.”
When the game was over, after seven agonizing minutes of added time, the San Marino players raised their arms and embraced. But a few simply collapsed to the turf, as if in disbelief of what they had accomplished.
“Youngsters and veterans alike showed off grit, personality and the desire to win, and deservedly succeeded,” wrote Sammarinese broadcaster RTV.
A fan group, Brigata Mai 1 Gioia, posted on social media, “This day changes all our lives.” (The group’s name means roughly “Never a Joy Brigade.” Despite San Marino’s long-awaited victory, it says its name will not change.)
The Most Serene Republic of San Marino, as it is also known, is a land of 23 square miles, roughly the size of Manhattan, and only about 30,000 people, about as many as Poughkeepsie or Ithaca, New York. It is known for being located entirely within Italy, and also for being the answer to the trivia question, “By changing one letter in the name of what nation do you get a Hall of Fame quarterback?”
(Dan Marino, if you didn’t get it.)
San Marino’s chance for an elusive victory was helped by playing in a relatively new competition, the Nations League, in which teams are grouped according to their ability. San Marino is competing against Gibraltar as well as Liechtenstein, giving it a much better chance for wins than it had in the team’s most recent World Cup qualifying campaign, when it lost 10-0 to England and 7-1 to Poland.
Still, in the three previous Nations Leagues, the team’s combined record was only 0-12-2.
Rossi admitted Friday that all the losing had been difficult. “It has been really hard,” he said. “We’ve always aimed to win at least a game. We demonstrated that this is possible; we should keep on believing in our own abilities and seek for more performances like yesterday’s.”
San Marino’s size has made it difficult to succeed in any sport. It does not compete internationally in women’s soccer. At the Olympics, the country broke through in Tokyo in 2021 for its first medals, two in shooting and one in wrestling. But in 2024 in Paris it came up empty again, as it had at every Games since it first entered in 1960.
San Marino is now 1-0 in its Nations League group with three games to play. If it can finish ahead of Liechtenstein and Gibraltar it will gain promotion from League D to League C and face better teams like perhaps Estonia and Bulgaria.
“I think we are experiencing a growth that even last year allowed us to face Denmark, Slovenia and Finland almost at the same level,” Rossi said (San Marino lost to each of those teams by only one or two goals). “I’m sure that we fully deserve to face such opponents: Football is 11 players facing 11 other players, and the best win.”
Bigger countries will always have an edge on smaller countries. It’s not just sports. San Marino was 162nd at the most recent Chess Olympiad in 2022 and has never finished higher than 19th in the Eurovision Song Contest. But after this week’s game, perhaps it’s time to reassess its chances.
“The targets are many,” Rossi said. “Try to win another game in the Nations League and, why not, try to protect the first place in the standings. However, we have to keep our feet on the ground and work with the humbleness we’ve always had.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.