The long, dark night of the goals
As you all know, Mr Mazza, whose first name is often spelled “Long suffering”, is the coach of San Marino, the team which does its level best to overturn the cliché that there are no easy games in European football anymore.
While Lawrie’s non-appearance is easily explained by the fact that his side had only managed to beat Spain by the odd goal in five — and who’d want to be make a big deal about that? — you could understand if Giampaolo Mazza felt like going into a witness protection programme after seeing his boys ship 13 against Germany.
I’m not actually suggesting that Mazza shirked a media duty, merely pointing our that no one seemed to pay any attention to what, if anything, he had to say. Certainly, no amount of googling or yahooing has turned up even a single quote about his team’s latest, eh, setback.
Sure, there’s plenty of celebratory stuff from the other side about Joachim Loew’s boys enjoying “an amazing goal party” but nothing, at least that I can find, about what it felt like to be on the receiving end of a record-breaking defeat in European Championships history.
Which is a pity because I’d like to think that Mazza would have tried to accentuate the positive.
“Couldn’t have asked for any more from the lads,” he might have said. “We’re a small country and we’ll always have to punch above our weight but I think we frightened the life out of the Germans there for the first second or two. But after that, we never got a break. The ref gave us nothing all night and their 11th goal — or was it the 12th? — looked offside to me. And their 13th was never a pen. Never. And once that went in, what with it being in the 90th minute and all, there was no way back for our boys. But that’s what happens at this level and we’ll hopefully learn from the experience, going forward. Not that going forward is something we have much experience of, of course.”
Aye, we wish Mazza and his boys well for the rest of the campaign, and not least because in the wake of the German goal avalanche, the usual suspects are bound to start calling for the likes of San Marino to be excluded from this level of championship competition. There are too many games in international football, they will moan, and it’s demanding too much of our lads who have to take time off from their clubs in order to take part in these meaningless fixtures. (When they would be much more usefully employed, they sometimes forget to add, in travelling half-way around the world during the close season in order to sell a few more shirts).
No, to all those who would cruelly consign San Marino to the scrap heap, I merely give you one name: Davide Gualtieri. (All bow).
Germany don’t have a monopoly on international records. Davide, as if you need reminding, is the man responsible for the fastest goal in the history of World Cup competition, when he seized on an underhit Stuart Pearce backpass to put San Marino one-up against England, after just nine seconds, in a US ‘94 qualifier in Bologna.
On the same evening, the Republic of Ireland were playing Northern Ireland in Windsor Park, a ferociously hostile occasion subsequently immortalised on stage as “A Night In November”. I recall entering the ground with other journalists from the south amid tight security and instructions to generally avoid attracting attention to ourselves. However, we were spotted by one local who, for what turned out to be obvious reasons, was also keeping a low profile. Sidling up beside me, he muttered: “San Marino have gone one up against England”. Then, with a low but profoundly satisfied chuckle, he faded back into that bad night.
I recall thinking at the time that nationalists in Belfast must have been so desperate for a bit of light relief that they were prone to wandering into the realms of fantasy. But no, confirmation duly came through that mighty England had indeed gone behind to San Marino.
No matter that the visitors somehow managed to recover and score seven: those were merely incidental statistics to the real and enduring story of the night.
And to think that if some high-minded people had their way back then, the world would have been deprived of one of the funniest, most memorable moments, in the entire history of the game.
And, of course, there is another reason why those of us in this neck of the woods ought to be careful about backing the elite and lending our support to any move which seeks to extend football’s exclusion zone. It’s a fairly compelling if somewhat painful reason, most cogently expressed by the simple scoreline: Lichtenstein 0, Republic of Ireland 0.
‘Nuff said. Except to add that San Marino have only ever won once in international competition, a thumping 1-0 win over — you guessed it — Lichtenstein.
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