Book Extract: Among the Minnows
A Night of Pride, Hope, and Small Miracles in San Marino
The following is an extract from the book Standing on the Shoulders of Titans by Mat Guy and published by 1889. It is available for purchase here and here.
San Marino Stadium is bustling expectantly. Outside, people queue to pick up tickets. A couple of young children wearing San Marino shirts so big they completely consume them, stumble on the hems as parents lead them by the hand inside.
Music plays across the PA system. A small trestle table that is the official San Marino FA shop is doing a roaring trade in scarves – a thoroughly unsuitable option for such a balmy June afternoon as this. Footballing tourists also consider the beautiful San Marino home shirt, sporting the three towers of Guaita, Cesta, and Montale from the capital that hangs in the hazy, rippling sky beyond.
And in the shadow of the main stand sporting beautiful wooden vaulted beams, the bar is doing great business in beer and hotdogs. Forty or so Malta fans who have made the trip drink and sing in the sunshine, many wearing home-made tabards like Templar Knights. The symbols of their religious order carefully stitched, drawn, painted across them being the Maltese cross, club badges from Maltese teams, images of footballing heroes old and new.
A singing, drinking, laughing, walking Bayeux tapestry of devotion to their homeland, their football history, their identity - life down among the minnows of world football does not exclude one from this. If anything, it magnifies such passion, devoid mostly of tangible, statistical successes.
But something is in the air, and beer, today, that suggests that for these travelling Maltese knights, they are in for the most-rare of treats – a win, and a win away from home. And armed with that belief, their battle dress, and a good helping of beer, they take to the stands in expectation.
Taking up a position closest to the steps back down to the bar, in preparation for that all-important half-time dash, the Malta fans sing and dance, applaud as the teams come out.
At the other end of the main stand, the Brigata Mai Una Gioia clap their heroes out onto the pitch too. Stood among their blue and white San Marino flags and banners draped across empty seats, tied to railings, this small group of 15, 20 stand with hope rather than expectation filling their hearts. After all, even in this lowly Nations League, League D clash in front of a little under 600 supporters, Malta are still 35 places higher in the FIFA rankings.
Hope. Always hope. But never any joy.
San Marino Stadium is not only the home of football in the country, but also athletics. A running track encircles the pitch, and on the far side, long jump sand pits, throwing circles, high jump mats stand in front of a small stand used to house away support when some of Europe’s big hitters come to town. Today we just need the main stand.
Behind the right-hand goal more equipment for converting one sport into another lays in wait. While behind the other end a sea of trees rise like a rich, lush, natural Kop, Curva Sud, Gallowgate End. Over its shoulder, the capital, Monte Titano looming in the haze. Indistinct. Like a dream.
It is time.
Elia Benedettini stands, arms locked around the shoulders of his teammates either side of him, beneath the hot sun.
Backs straighten, heads look up into the stand, beyond the stand, as the opening chords of ‘Inno Nazionale’ ring out.
A row of Sammarinese, lost for a moment, in the moment, eyes glassy, distant, focusing on a place very few of us ever reach, where the pride, meaning, belonging felt in representing your nation lives.
A place, in the middle-distance, rippling between the heat haze – neither here nor there – a place of sacrifice. Hour upon hour, day after day, year on year of training, from a very young age, in all weather. A place of lost income from work to travel to games. A place of heavy defeats, sometime ridicule from opposing fans. A place of overcoming injury, clawing your way back to fitness, to take your place in the firing line once more. A place where everything else has to come second, in order for you to play, and come second.
We can only imagine - that place that they go. But Elia knows. It is, after all, not his first experience of this moment, shared this time with these 600 spectators.
It is a moment loaded with raw emotion. The passion, meaning, and belonging. A celebration of place and people, no matter how few. No matter how small.
He has experienced it many times in his international career.
He has experienced it in front of 85,000 at Wembley. He has experienced it lining up against Pirlo’s Italy, twice. He has faced down the then world champions in Germany. He has travelled the continent in the name of San Marino, in the name of football.
And here he is, once more, in the slightly more-humble surroundings of a Nations League Group D fixture against Malta, at that place again.
A line of proud chests, seemingly pulled up toward the sky by the music, and what it symbolises, like a row of marionettes, manipulated by the thought of those that have gone before them, those that they do it for in the present, those they hope to inspire in the future.
And as the national anthem ends, the line of Sammarinese breaks out in animation - applause, fist bumps, and hugs.
It is a moment loaded with raw emotion. The passion, meaning, and belonging. A celebration of place and people, no matter how few. No matter how small.
You can’t help but feel it too. And understand that it matters. So much.
It is that understanding that has kept UEFA doggedly sticking to their belief that all nations are equal. That all nations should be afforded the same opportunity to qualify for World Cups and European Championships. That a basic respect demands this.
But also, another tournament that promotes more competitive fixtures between nations, played across international dates in the football calendar that had been traditionally used for friendlies, could only ever be a positive.
It was a moment of inspired thinking, the creation of the Nations League, having an almost immediate positive knock-on effect in performance and results of lower ranked nations.
It is rare for one institution to create such a visionary concept. Rarer even still for another to buy in to it so whole-heartedly.
It took a doubletake in the newsagents at the airport. My killing time before my flight had found me aimlessly leafing through magazines. Any magazine. It didn’t matter. And there it was. A sticker album – Topps’ ‘The Road to UEFA Nations League 2022’.
Inside were blank spaces for the badges of every competing nation, the shirts of every competing nation, followed by pages showcasing goalkeepers, strikers, defenders, those with the ‘x-factor’, playmakers, veteran players – at least two from each country. San Marino, Liechtenstein, every country.
I bought the album, as many packets of stickers as I thought I could get away with without looking completely deranged with excitement and set about discovering who had been immortalised.
As a child the Panini World Cup sticker albums had been a necessary rite of passage, collecting the stickers of the great Brazilian team of Spain ’82, the Argentinians in Mexico ’86. But just as captivating to me were the also rans – El Salvador, Cameroon, Kuwait, Canada. Exotic sounding player names, wearing never before seen shirts, pictured in faraway, exotic stadiums. They held me with as much awe and wonder as Zico, Socrates, Tardelli, Maradona. Their stories, played out via cramped statistics beneath their sticker - how many times they had played for their country, the wild and wonderful names of the club sides they represented. I would wonder at what lay beyond the edges of each sticker. What the rest of the far-flung stadium in the background looked like. What their club team’s shirt, badge looked like.
These early exposures fired a life-long interest in football off the beaten path. Seeing the value, the magic in places visited not nearly enough.
And here, all these years later, an album that chose to focus as much on them as anyone from the more successful nations.
Opened packet after opened packet revealed Azerbaijan’s Ramil Sheydayev, Arber Zeneli of Kosovo, Noah Frick from Liechtenstein, Malta’s Teddy Teuma, Vadim Rata from Moldova, Vadislavs Gutkovskis of Latvia, Kazakhstan’s Baktiyar Zaynutdinov, Roy Chipolina from Gibraltar, Laifis Konstantinos of Cyprus, and one Elia Benedettini of San Marino.
A sticker album of such striking vision a perfect companion to a football tournament aimed at benefiting all.
And as both teams broke from their huddles before kick-off to take up their formations, Elia Benedettini (sticker number 35) jogged into his goal, while Malta’s Joseph Mbong (number 72) stretched his hamstrings by the centre-circle.
Adolfo Hirsch, San Marino substitute, sticker number 169, took his place on the bench. Then, when the whistle went, leant in. Looked on.
About the Book: Where is the joy in supporting or playing for a team that never wins? Mat Guy joins the Brigata Mai Uno Gioia (Never Any Joy Brigade) - San Marino’s ever faithful supporters - to explore the passion, pride and dedication of following their team, to places like Malta, Liechtenstein, Latvia and Moldova.
About the Author: Mat Guy lives in Southampton and writes non-fiction books about football far from the bright lights of the English Premier league, and fiction books of adventure and mystery. He can be found on X.
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