Paid Members Carbomb Posted November 16, 2021 Paid Members Share Posted November 16, 2021 8 minutes ago, PunkStep said: My friend asked this. I think the simple answer is basically- who the fuck is going to ply their trade in San Marino's football system (or other similarly small nations) in order to play for their national team?? At least Japan's football league has value to it, being one of the strongest football leagues in Asia. Plus Japan is a massive country in terms of population anyway and an attractive place to live, so it's always likely to attract overseas players in their league. San Marino has just over a third of the population that my town has. They couldn't even fill most Premier League stadiums with their entire population. Is that a cast-iron requirement, though? Surely the vast majority of Ireland players (and Norn Iron players) play in the Premier League or Scots Prem, for example? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Devon Malcolm Posted November 16, 2021 Paid Members Share Posted November 16, 2021 10 minutes ago, PunkStep said: My friend asked this. I think the simple answer is basically- who the fuck is going to ply their trade in San Marino's football system (or other similarly small nations) in order to play for their national team?? At least Japan's football league has value to it, being one of the strongest football leagues in Asia. Plus Japan is a massive country in terms of population anyway and an attractive place to live, so it's always likely to attract overseas players in their league. Precisely, the two aren't comparable at all. San Marino do have a semi-pro team (San Marino Calcio) that plays in the Italian league system, but they're in the fourth tier. Most of San Marino's best players still play in their country's domestic league with the odd one playing in the lower leagues in Italy, with none coming from San Marino Calcio. So they don't get the chance to play against any quality at domestic level, and it's the main reason why they've never got any better and are unlikely to. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members tiger_rick Posted November 16, 2021 Paid Members Share Posted November 16, 2021 The only way to improve is to do what Iceland did, improve facilities, identify kids coming through, keep them together, coach them, play lots of games at youth level and see how many of them you can get through to the first team. Andorra are doing something similar, their U21s are improving, they lose a lot but rarely get hammered now and they've had some notable results, drawing with England last year and beating Turkey a couple of years ago. Even then, it's not going to help San Marino win but they might stop shipping 8+ goals three times a campaign. I was looking at their numbers in internationals last night. I think it was P 185 W 1 D 7 L 177 F 26 A 777. And that was before the game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keith Houchen Posted November 16, 2021 Share Posted November 16, 2021 4 minutes ago, tiger_rick said: P 185 W 1 D 7 L 177 That’s Tommy Fury’s next opponent sorted then. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr_Danger Posted November 16, 2021 Share Posted November 16, 2021 San Marino has a population half the size of Wrexham. You could put Cristiano to stud in that country for as long as it takes to produce a generation of footballers and they’d still be shit. The problem you have is that they should only really be playing teams around their level but you’d think they get the bulk of the money they need to run a national team from getting hammered by the likes of England. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cousin Jim Bob Posted November 16, 2021 Share Posted November 16, 2021 6 hours ago, SuperBacon said: I Believe In Miracles has just been added to Netflix if anyone has never seen it. Its about the European Cup winning Nottingham Forest sides and is superb, as is the book of the same name. That is one of my favourite sports documentarys. I'm not a Forest fan but love watching it. It has fantastic music, loads of footage of Brian Clough being Brian Clough and some stunning football. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fog Dude Posted November 16, 2021 Share Posted November 16, 2021 2 hours ago, Mr_Danger said: San Marino has a population half the size of Wrexham. You could put Cristiano to stud in that country for as long as it takes to produce a generation of footballers and they’d still be shit. The problem you have is that they should only really be playing teams around their level but you’d think they get the bulk of the money they need to run a national team from getting hammered by the likes of England. That's what the Nations League was meant to sort out, but the balance between the competitions is still weighted towards the traditional format. They'll be back in Division D2 in June and September, but that group only involves 4 matches. Whereas for the main World Cup qualifiers they've just played 10 games, of which at least 8 were against much stronger opponents (depending on how you rate Andorra) and largely considered a waste of everybody's time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members PunkStep Posted November 16, 2021 Paid Members Share Posted November 16, 2021 4 hours ago, Carbomb said: Is that a cast-iron requirement, though? Surely the vast majority of Ireland players (and Norn Iron players) play in the Premier League or Scots Prem, for example? No, but it explains why you don't have the scenario you mentioned where Japan neutralised Brazilians, who had played in their league for x years to qualify. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators PowerButchi Posted November 16, 2021 Author Moderators Share Posted November 16, 2021 Feed me til I'm Keiffer Moore. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Devon Malcolm Posted November 16, 2021 Paid Members Share Posted November 16, 2021 5 hours ago, Mr_Danger said: San Marino has a population half the size of Wrexham. You could put Cristiano to stud in that country for as long as it takes to produce a generation of footballers and they’d still be shit. The problem you have is that they should only really be playing teams around their level but you’d think they get the bulk of the money they need to run a national team from getting hammered by the likes of England. You keep hearing people say that they're only going to get better if they play against really good teams, but how's that working out for them? They've been at this for, what, 30-odd years now? And they're still as bad as ever. I don't see how getting thrashed every game they play aside from against fellow minnows (and the Faroes and Luxembourg would be expected easily beat them these days) is improving them. Playing more games against teams at their level at least gives them a more level playing field. They're never going to have the infrastructure or quality of players to challenge much further up the rankings. Although, I will say, I'm not sure the FIFA rankings are all that trustworthy - a couple of the Pacific island and Caribbean sides are arguably worse than San Marino. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keith Houchen Posted November 16, 2021 Share Posted November 16, 2021 4 minutes ago, Devon Malcolm said: Although, I will say, I'm not sure the FIFA rankings are all that trustworthy Indeed. They’ve got England at fifth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators PowerButchi Posted November 16, 2021 Author Moderators Share Posted November 16, 2021 Wales got to about 8th at some point. Werre not even the 8th best in the world at rugby, never mind football. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members air_raid Posted November 17, 2021 Paid Members Share Posted November 17, 2021 It’s funny, talk of where a country is in the rankings used to be interesting to me, now it just makes me laugh (again) about reading “Belgium have been top of the rankings for three years” the other day. Nobody’s buying that DVD. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members tiger_rick Posted November 17, 2021 Paid Members Share Posted November 17, 2021 (edited) Was gonna put this in the other footy thread but might as well use this double post! What a strike. Pity the Reggae Boyz are still floundering. Canada went top of CONCACAF qualifying though with a big win over Mexico. African qualifiers finished yesterday. Biggest exit was Ivory Coast who lost out to Cameroon - one of the two was always going to go out. It's now on to five straight two-legged play-offs for qualification. Just look at these teams. Going to be some belters here: Algeria, Cameroon, DR Congo, Egypt, Ghana, Mali, Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal, Tunisia South Africa went out too, losing to Ghana to a horrendous penalty decision. They're appealling to FIFA. Edited November 17, 2021 by tiger_rick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members tiger_rick Posted November 17, 2021 Paid Members Share Posted November 17, 2021 9 hours ago, Devon Malcolm said: Although, I will say, I'm not sure the FIFA rankings are all that trustworthy - a couple of the Pacific island and Caribbean sides are arguably worse than San Marino. Clear flaws in it, though there are in any system. I think we definitely need to send San Marino over to compete in some of their tournaments though to prove it. Maybe loan the out to OFC for 4 years and then CONCACAF for the next 4. 9 hours ago, Keith Houchen said: Indeed. They’ve got England at fifth. Alright O'Houchen. Tried to find you lot but I got bored after looking through 50. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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