I absolutely love the San Marino national team and everything to do with the place so I’ve been wondering this - why is their team so bad?

The obvious answer is because of the size of the country. Only around 30,000 people. This explains why they are so much worse than most teams, but then I’ve got to looking at the records of other teams with similar populations. Both Gibraltar and Liechtenstein are also very bad (see 14-0 yesterday) and have similar populations, yet are considerably better than San Marino.

San Marino have got one solitary win in their history. One. Liechtenstein have 15. Gibraltar have eight and they were only admitted FIFA 10 years ago!! Gibraltar and Liechtenstein generally beat San Marino comfortably too.

It seems just impossible that San Marino are as bad as they are. Things seem to be improving, but not by much.

Another answer is that Liechtenstein and Gibraltar both have wider diasporas to pick good players from which is somewhat true with a lot of dual British/Spanish players for Gibraltar and Swiss/German/Austrian for Liechtenstein. Still, San Marino, do you draw on their Italian diaspora. It’s not like they can’t produce good players, the first captain Massimo Bonini won the Champions League with Juventus!!

Another theory I’ve seen is the relative leagues strengths. Gibraltar has a well set up football league and a lot of British players. Liechtenstein has Vaduz playing in the Swiss second division. San Marino also had a team in the Serie C not long ago! There is plenty of football culture in San Marino and the game is loved - i saw more football there than in Liechtenstein or Gibraltar.

It’s not like they don’t care about football - they absolutely do and their culture is full of it.

None of these explanations can describe how bad is San Marino are and I cannot either. Anyone else care to guess?