As expected England thrashed San Marino at Wembley last night, running out 5-0 winners in a game that played out more like a pantomime performance than a serious World Cup qualifier.
There were sarcastic cheers every time keeper Joe Hart touched the ball and whenever an England player misplaced a pass they were treated like the pantomime villain, in fact I was half expecting the crowd to shout you need to get in behind them.
Despite San Marino’s infamous record of 1 win in their entire history, rather alarmingly England still took a full 35 minutes to take the lead and even then it was from the penalty spot, you’d think even a Vatican XI captained by the Pope would have gone in front sooner.
On a more serious note I think FIFA should be taking a much closer look at the qualification process and evaluating whether teams like San Marino should be involved, because last night really was a farce, the only interesting thing about it was guessing what the score would be.
San Marino from the very first second made it clear the only reason they were all there was so they could go back to the office on Monday morning and say guess what I did this weekend, they made no effort to be competitive and spent the whole game poorly executing a badly conceived damage limitation exercise.
While I think they have every right to play the game, I think before they become involved in serious competitive international matches like World Cup qualifiers, they need to be able to prove they can give teams a game first.
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