The “Most Serene Republic” of San Marino has a population of 32,000. It’s 24 square miles in size; it’s a speck surrounded completely by the nation of Italy. It’s shocking that European football's governing body, UEFA, allowed such a small nation — oh, sorry, an "enclaved microstate" — to be a member nation and field a national soccer team, but they have. You could argue San Marino hasn’t stopped paying for it since.
San Marino is arguably the worst soccer team in Europe and has been for a long time. They have played 138 games in team history and have won exactly 1. They debuted in FIFA’s World Rankings in 1993 at 121st in the world, and quickly fell to 179th in 5 years. They currently sit at 196 out of 209, although it should be mentioned that they are ahead of one UEFA team, Andorra. San Marino is the kind of team against whom other teams break their record for all-time largest win with golazo after golazo after golazo.
So when I say that San Marino holds the record for fastest goal scored in international soccer history, you should be shocked. When I say it came against England, you sould think it's all a joke. You should not believe it, and then you should watch this video because it’s 100% true.
By the way, of course it happened against England.
That was Davide Gualtieri getting his moment in the spotlight cementing his place in Sammarinese football history. Literally the only goal he ever scored for his country was the fastest goal in international soccer history, and as a reward he received, per The Guardian, “a plaque at a lavish ceremony, while in 2000 he was given a silver medal by San Marino's Olympic federation. They may have gone on to lose the game but that goal remains a high point of San Marino's sporting history.”
Davide Gualtieri holding up the jersey of England's Stuart Pierce: the defender who messed up. Photo: @LaMediaInglesa | Twitter
San Marino didn’t just end up losing the game, they got hammered 7-1 by then-11th-ranked England, and still Gualtieri was hailed as a hero. That’s how bad San Marino is at soccer.
For the curious, the official time on Gualtieri’s fastest goal in international soccer history is 8.33 seconds. Lukas Podolski recently came close to beating that mark when Germany beat Ecuador in 2013, but he was a second slow.
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