We've lulled Portugal into false hope

Serves us right for laughing, I suppose. You remember the year, month, day, hour, minute and second? Me too. In fact, I think I have a tea towel somewhere commemorating the moment. November 18th, 1993, eight seconds into the game. Stuart Pearce lost his bearings, misjudged his back-pass and Davide Gualtieri snuck in to score the fastest goal in international football history to put San Marino 1-0 up against England. And with that we almost forgave them for Oliver Cromwell and Bob Monkhouse because England had all but made up for those tyrannies by giving us the hoot of our lives. If, as they say, laughing makes you feel younger, you and me went to bed wearing baby-gros that night. In my Book Of Really Useful Quotes To Pad Out A Column When You Still Haven't Written It And You're Already Two Hours Late, Mark "Twainie" Twain, commenting on the Irish nation's reaction to Gualtieri's goal (i.e. the bit where we all rolled around on our living-room floors) said: "The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter." Too true, in one fell swoop we'd levelled the tie: Cromwell and Monkhouse 1, San and Marino 1. Everything to play for, Brian.

Thomas Hobbes, though, summed it up better. "Laughter is nothing else but a sudden glory arising from some sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly." Perhaps a slightly below-the-belt reference to our 0-0 draw with Egypt in Italia '90, but, in fairness, Hobbo had a point. The fact that England went on to win the game 7-1 is neither here nor there, in our football folk memories they lost, morally, 1-0 to San Marino. So, whenever you or me meets a mate from Manchester, a pal from Plymouth, a friend from Fishguard, a chum from Carlisle or a buddy from Bogsworth (enough already) that's exactly what we sing: "1-0 to San Marino." "But that was eight years ago," they'll protest, and you'll say, "you're right, it's ridiculous to harp on about the past, we've moved beyond all that now, we've matured as a nation, we forgive you, let's have some closure here," before declaring "I KNOW WOLFE `WOLFIE' TONE WOULD NEVER HAVE KILLED HIMSELF - YOU MURDERED HIM, YOU *******S."

Back to San Marino. When Scotland were struggling in 1991 against the same opposition (the one that beat England 1-7 two years later) BBC Radio Scotland commentator Ian Archer uttered the immortal line: "We've been playing for 61 minutes here in Serravalle, and it's just occurred to me that Scotland are drawing 0-0 with a mountain-top."

So, Wolfe Tone's murderers lost 1-0, morally, to a mountain-top? As Big Ron Atkinson probably put it: "Wot a terrible beauty is born," when Gualtieri found the back of the net eight seconds after the ref hooted his hooter. Wednesday night? Did we lose 1-0, morally, to a ski resort, the very same ski resort that ground out a scoreless draw with the Faroe Islands (whose national dish is puffin stuffed with rhubarb) a couple of years ago and went on the beer for a month in celebration? Well, it feels that way, yeah. The worst thing is that the game was shown live on Sky Sports in England so if your mate from Manchester, pal from Plymouth, friend from Fishguard, chum from Carlisle or buddy from Bogsworth happened to be down the boozer in and around the time household-name-in-no-sense-at-all Ildefons Lima headed past Shay "holy smoley" Given he/she was very much entitled to smirk and croon "2-1 to Cromwell and Monkhouse and Ildefons `who are ya' Lima".

Conclusion? The smirky, condescending, patronising, haughty cockiness that some (most?) of us exhibited in the build-up to the Andorra game is alien to our better nature, and is precisely the source of our mirth when England calamitously lose 1-7 to these class of teams, because some of their players and most of their managers exhibit a pre-match smirky, condescending, patronising, haughty cockiness towards their "minnow" opponents, especially if their players' names end in vowels. Like Gualtieri. Or Lima.

THAT'S not to say that Andorra deserve big respect - let's be blunt, Frank, they're brutal (apart from their Benito-Carboneheadband-wearing-lookalike-number-11 who passed the ball a whole lot better than any of our lads, and their goalie who, from my vantage point, appeared to be no loftier than Gary Doherty's knees but still managed to pluck from the air most of our hopeless hit-from-the-half-way-line "crosses").

But. The morning after the 90 minutes before I double-checked FIFA's world rankings and was heartened by the sight of their 203-nation list, as published on April 11th, 2001.

So, calm down, calm down, hear ye, hear ye, let's put it in context - there are 59 (count 'm fif-ty-ni-ne) teams below Andorra in the world rankings, including leviathans the like of Djibouti, Brunei Darussalam and the Turks and Caicos Islands. Feeling better already? No? Well, then you'll concede Wednesday was a no-win situation, and as Alan Minter once said, "sure, there have been injuries and deaths in boxing - but none of them serious". Harry. Eh? Actually, watching Wednesday's proceeding I couldn't help but think of then Aston Villa manager Big Ron's explanation for why he left his seat in the stand early in a game to go down to the dug-out. "I went down to pass on some technical information to the team - like the fact the game had started." But, indeed, once our lads realised the game had started on Wednesday, in and around the time yer man headed past Givo, we were grand (apart from the missing five second-half goals) - as Bryan Robson once put it: "If we played like that every week we wouldn't be so inconsistent." Never a truer word was spoke. Anyway, we're done with the ski resort, next up is Portugal, that sunny suburb of the Algarve. Sure, what would they know about football? After all, Figo's name ends in a vowel. Say no more. Smirk.