San Marino Earn First Competitive Win

History was made on 5 September 2024 when San Marino won a game for only the second time in their history, and the first time in a competitive fixture. We take a look at their achievement.

Light the beacons, San Marino have won a game.

Thursday night saw La Serenissima host Liechtenstein in their opening game of Group D1 in the UEFA Nations League.

It was just over 20 years and four months ago that San Marino had last won a match. The 1-0 victory in a friendly against Liechtenstein was their first, and until this week, the only win in their history. Just a mere 7,435 days later, they repeated the trick.

Arguably the country’s most famous competitive moment prior to 5 September 2024 was when they took the lead against England in November 1993. Davide Gualtieri’s goal after just eight seconds in Bologna rocked Graham Taylor’s side. It took the Three Lions 21 minutes to equalise, before they eventually went on to win the World Cup qualifier 7-1, but what a 21 minutes that was for Sammarinese football.

Over 30 years later, San Marino finally secured a competitive victory with a 1-0 success over Liechtenstein thanks to Nicko Sensoli’s goal. The 19-year-old ran on to an errant flick from the visitors’ Sandro Wieser, beating goalkeeper Benjamin Büchel to the ball and prodding it over him and into the net.

The goal came just eight minutes into the second half at Stadio Olimpico di Serravalle, and so San Marino had to hold on for another 37 minutes plus stoppage time to finally seal that previously elusive competitive victory. They restricted Liechtenstein to just eight shots in the game, though, and not a single one on target. The players either ran around the pitch or dropped to the floor in elation on the final whistle. The historic moment had arrived.

To put it into context, Sensoli hadn’t even been born the last time San Marino won a game. Before turning 20, he might have already sealed his status as his country’s most revered player of all time.

Is it too harsh to suggest San Marino are Liechtenstein’s bogey team? Perhaps. Thursday was their seventh meeting in all competitions, with Liechtenstein winning three to San Marino’s two, while there have been two draws.

The two face each other again in the reverse game in November. It seems likely Liechtenstein will be out for revenge, but whatever happens, no-one can take away the fact that San Marino now have a competitive victory to their name.

Their overall record in all games now stands at played 211, won two, drawn 10 and lost 199, with 34 goals scored and 845 goals conceded. Doubling their win count before reaching 200 defeats is the kind of moral victory we can get on board with.

Since that first win in 2004, San Marino had played 141 games without another victory, losing 135 of those and drawing just six, scoring 21 goals and conceding 568.

Of every team they had faced in that time, they lost to all but one. Their one and only game against Seychelles brought a 0-0 draw in September 2022. They held out hope of finally ending the two-decade drought in March this year in two games against St. Kitts and Nevis – ranked 147th in the world by FIFA at the time – but lost the first game 3-1 before drawing the second 0-0. At that point, this moment probably felt further away than ever.

Then again, this is apparently one of the reasons the Nations League was created by UEFA, to provide teams with a chance to play others of a similar level more often. San Marino’s record in World Cup and European Championship qualifying makes for rather depressing reading, largely because the seeded nature of the draw means they’re always pitted against teams far higher than them in the world rankings.

That said, the Nations League hadn’t produced much joy either. As you can see from their zones of control graphic across each Nations League campaign since the competition began in 2018, San Marino have still struggled to control games outside of the very middle of their own penalty area.

This was San Marino’s 15th game in the competition, having previously drawn two and lost 12 of their 14 outings, conceding 28 goals along the way. Sensoli’s strike was their first ever Nations League goal; it’s their only goal from 82 shots and an expected goals (xG) total of 6.3. At the other end, their 28 goals against have come from 278 shots faced and an xG of 30.0.

San Marino are currently bottom of the FIFA rankings in 210th place. It’s unlikely this win will catapult them past 209th place Anguilla given Liechtenstein themselves are ranked 199th, but it’s certainly a step in the right direction.

Let’s just hope it’s not another 20 years until the next success.

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