San Marino national football team ends 176-game unbeaten streak

Nicko Sensoli plays semi-professional football in Italy’s fourth division and became a national hero in San Marino on Thursday.

In the 53rd minute of San Marino’s match against Liechtenstein in the UEFA Nations League, Sensoli scored what would prove to be the decisive goal. It wasn’t just big in the context of this one match, it was historic: the 1-0 victory is San Marino’s first ever in a competitive setting.

In fact, the country’s national team has only once before been defeated. In 2004, 14 months before Sensoli was born, San Marino defeated — you guessed it — Liechtenstein 1-0 in a friendly.

More than 20 years later, the country finally achieved a “real” victory. The reactions looked good:

San Marino’s first league victory was a long time coming.

The country’s men’s national football team was founded in 1990 and, as of Thursday, had appeared in 176 competitive matches between World Cup qualifiers, European Championship qualifiers and the Nations League. Of those matches, 171 had ended in defeat, while the other five had ended in a 0-0 (4) or 1-1 (1) draw. Along the way, San Marino had scored 23 goals and conceded 750.

As a result of the team’s inability to play competitive football, San Marino found itself at the bottom of the FIFA World Rankings before Thursday, with the tiny nation ranked 210th out of 210 national teams.

Compared to this, Liechtenstein, ranked 199th, went into Thursday’s match as a powerhouse. But in the end, that didn’t matter.

For the first time, San Marino can call itself a winner.