Big Minnows

For the smaller teams of Europe, these are interesting times. A European qualifying campaign which began with Germany thumping San Marino 13-0 sparked a number of appalled analysts to bemoan the fact that such no-hopers were even permitted to take to the same pitch as the two-time world champions. Stern-faced pundits concurred that the already endangered value of international football would continue to be eroded by FIFA's insistence on allowing sides like San Marino (then ranked ten places below Tahiti) a seat at the table, their only hope of influencing the outcome of the group being the difference in goals conceded between each hammering. Earnest talk about setting up a pre-qualifying mini-league of minnows was indulged in, with the winners going on to compete with the bigger boys in the qualification campaign proper. Some Irish dailies took to printing an altered group table, sans the Sammarinese, factoring in the six points they would concede that were taken for granted from every double header. Patronising? Yes. Justified? Well, not if you're Irish. A few months after being turned over by the Germans, San Marino were drawing 1-1 with Ireland, courtesy of Manuele Marani's 87th minute equaliser. A goal with the last kick of the game spared the Irish what would have been their worst ever result, although in many ways it was already that. San Marino, however, emerged with something the commentariat had deemed them incapable of retaining: their pride. They went on to hold Wales to the same scoreline.

The minnows of Europe have been steadily on the rise, though attention is rarely paid to their progress. Cyprus - or, to be correct, the Greek half of Cyprus - finished the last qualification campaign having hammered Ireland and Wales (scoring eight goals in two games) as well as securing creditable 1-1 draws against Ireland away and Germany at home. Georgia comfortably beat an in-form Scottish side 2-0 in Tblisi, effectively ending the Scots' hopes of qualification. In 2005, Lichtenstein drew 2-2 with a Portugal side containing Cristiano Ronaldo, Luis Figo and Pauleta, while 2004 saw Latvia compete at the finals stage of their first ever major championships in Euro 2004. The phenomenon of Macedonia as perennial spoilers of Irish and English plans has been a lesson sorely learned in these parts, while the heroics of David Healy in memorable victories over England, Spain, Denmark and Sweden made Northern Ireland the biggest underdog story of recent years. While it would be an exaggeration to talk up these feats as a representing a wholesale shift in the European order, neither can they be dismissed as a mere series of once-offs. The weak teams are getting stronger - and the whole concept of what a 'minnow' is in footballing terms is being redefined.

Those of us old enough to remember the World Cup qualifying campaigns of the 1990s will recall the days when minnows were minnows and knew their place. Stumbling, blinking into the daylight after decades subsumed under the pall of Communism, satellite states and Balkan republics like Albania, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Georgia were for most of their early existence the whipping boys of Old Europe. They were joined at the bottom of the barrel by new statelets such as Andorra, Lichtenstein and San Marino, with far-flung 'new nations' (with dubious claims to Europeanhood) such as Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Armenia, swelling both the qualification groups and UEFA coffers with new membership fees. Heavy defeats being order of the day, however, all endured a rocky introduction to European football - although the novelty of being recognised as independent states, with representative players, flags and anthems was not quick to wear off. The passion and pride of the eastern European and Balkan teams, spurred on by the ferocious conviction of their supporters, began to ask some uncomfortable questions of the more established sides, with their cossetted, comfortable big-league stars. Slowly but surely, the hammerings became hard-fought victories. The walk in the park become work in the park. Winning margins narrowed. The favourites began to leak goals. The 'tricky away tie' was born.

Success is relative when you're expected to lose every game - and a few moments of hope or glory on the pitch, however short-lived, were triumph in their own right. The most celebrated example is probably Davide Gaultieri who famously gave San Marino the lead 8.3 seconds into their final World Cup qualifier against England in 1993. The Sammarinese goal, apart from being a spectacular occurrence in its own right, had the double significance of meaning the English side had to score eight and hope that Poland beat the Netherlands in order to qualify (neither event came to pass). While Graham Taylor's sorry tenure as England manager did not last a game longer, it would be a mere two years until the obstinancy of another European minnow ultimately put paid to an English manager's reign.

With the automatic qualification spot at the top of the group seemingly at their mercy after a 1-0 home win against Portugal, Jack Charlton's Ireland team headed for Eschen, a ramshackle sports ground high in the Austrian Alps, to take on Lichtenstein - a side they had beaten 4-0 a few months beforehand. No doubt expecting more of the same and coming as it did at the end of the English season, the Irish started lethargically, with whatever long-range efforts that did make it through the ten man Lichtenstein defence being comfortably dealt with by man-of-the match goalkeeper (and full-time schoolteacher) Martin Heeb. As the minutes ticked by and the expected breakthrough failed to materialise, Ireland suddenly found themselves at half-time with the score still 0-0. As the second half wore on with the scoreline unchanged, the ragged and desperate efforts of the Irish struck a stark contrast to an increasingly assured group of Lichtenstein players who were visibly growing in confidence by the minute and who - with every Heeb save, tackle from captain Marcus Oper and relieving counter attack by their one full-time professional footballer Mario Frick (who would have a goal disallowed against the same opposition in Vaduz during the following campaign) - were actually beginning to believe in themselves too. Tony Cascarino was booked for punching the ball into the net in the 85th minute, with dismayed commentator George Hamilton wringing his hands at the striker's 'desperate tactic, which says it all - Ireland just cannot put the ball in Heeb's net'. Within ten minutes, the Lichtenstein players were performing a lap of honour around the stadium after holding a team which had defeated Italy in a World Cup only a year before. Ireland and Jack Charlton slunk away with a queasy sense of doom that the rot had started, and indeed it had: their self-belief irreparably damaged after Lichtensetein, defeats to Portugal and Austria followed and automatic qualification was forfeited. A limp playoff defeat to the Dutch at Anfield finally brought the curtain down on Charlton's Irish adventure, with press post-mortems unanimously pointing to the draw in Eschen as the decisive turning point. Whether it was that the minnows were not to be underestimated, or more that Ireland were no longer to be overestimated, nobody was quite sure. But whatever way you looked at it, for Ireland and Lichtenstein at least, something momentous had happened. Something had changed.

Gaultieri and Heeb are far from being the only heroes that minnow teams can point to, however. In perhaps the most celebrated minnow performance of modern times, the Faroe Islands beat Austria in their first ever competitive match in a qualifier for the 1992 European Championships. The Austrians - who counted legends Toni Polster, Andreas Herzog and Michael Konsel among their number - had returned from competing at the 1990 World Cup earlier in the summer and were managed by one Josef Hickersberger, in his first game as national coach. Much to the horror of Austrian football fans, however - and to the astonishment of everyone else - Torkil Nielsen's 61st minute goal gave the Faroes a 1-0 victory, sending the Danish archipelago into ecstasy and Hickersberger into immediate retirement after only one game (he subsequently re-emerged to coach the Austrians in this summer's Euros, having had eighteen years to recover from the embarrassment in Torshavn). While the Faroes have subsequently failed to recapture the spirit of 1990 with a string of defeats in the intervening years, they did at least come close when playing the forlorn Berti Vogts's Scotland in 2003, taking a 2-0 lead only to be pegged back to a final score of 2-2. A draw maybe, but still another scalp from the establishment.

While the Faroes have Nielsen and San Marino have Gaultieri, their fellow minnows are not without their own goal-getting heroes who - however briefly - put the frighteners on the bigger sides. It is with regrettable ease that I, as an Irish fan, can trace most of these goalscoring feats to the occasions when the smaller sides met Ireland - and the list is long. Pyrenéean principality Andorra came to Lansdowne Road in a World Cup qualifier in 2001 to play a nervy Irish side missing Roy Keane and stunned the stadium into silence by taking the lead through Ildefons Lima. Although Ireland got back on level terms through Kevin Kilbane and went on to run out 3-1 winners, there was a stultifyingly awful five or ten minutes when the Lansdowne scoreboard read: Ireland 0 Andorra 1, with echoes of George Hamilton's "no, your eyes do not deceive you" during Ireland's 3-1 loss to Spain in '93 seeming to issue forth from the dark abysm of time through those surreal few minutes.

Macedonia, of course, scarcely need an introduction: although many Irish fans remain convinced to this day that Ireland's 3-2 humbling in Skopje was due less to Georgi Hristov's goalscoring, and more to a combination of George Hamilton's irresponsible fate-tempting ("there's number one!" crowed the RTÉ commentator after Alan McLoughlin had given Ireland a 7th minute lead, shortly before the two Macedonian penalties and Jason McAteer's red card) and the equally horrific neon-orange jerseys sported by Mick McCarthy's team that dark day. Whatever the explanation, the boys in orange failed to learn from their arrogance and in 1999 produced another spectacular feat of snatching a draw from the jaws of victory when, leading the Macedonians 1-0 through a Niall Quinn goal and cruising to automatic qualification for Euro 2000, allowed Goran Stavreski to head home a 92nd minute equaliser with the last attack of the game, forcing Ireland into another joyless playoff defeat, this time to Turkey. It would be five years until England fans encountered Artem Sakiri and learned to shudder at the sound of 'Macedonia'.

Albania, led by playmaker Edwin Murati (nicknamed 'the Maradona of the Balkans'), have caused their own fair share of mayhem in their encounters with more established sides - Irish fans will remember Tony Cascarino rescuing a late victory after Kushtna had equalised, not to mention an equally fortuitous 2-1 victory in 2003 under Brian Kerr, when a last minute Aliaj own-goal cruelly denied the Albanians a deserved away point to add to their 0-0 draw in Tirana. But is this less a case of a maturing school of minnows and more the gradual decay of once-proud footballing nations? The answer is not immediately straightforward, but seems to lie somewhere between these two extremes. England face into a group containing Andorra, Belarus and Kazakhstan, Scotland must deal with the Macedonians while Ireland face undoubtedly the toughest opposition of the lot with the dreaded Cyprus and Georgia as 4th and 5th seeds. And don't for a moment think that we've got off lightly with the bottom seeds either - the only reason Montenegro are where they are is because this is their first campaign as an independent nation and they haven't played any competitive matches in which to improve their UEFA ranking. Captained by Roma striker Mirko Vucinic and having recently swatted Norway aside 3-1 in a friendly, there will be much to concern Giovanni Trapattoni and his charges.

"There are no easy games at this level" proclaimed Steve Staunton in the build-up to the San Marino away game. We laughed then, but the progress of Europe's smaller footballing nations may yet prove him right.