It’s an unseasonably chilly September evening at the San Marino Stadium, in the municipality of Serravalle. In the deserted stands, a lone figure wearing a white San Marino shirt is unfolding a modest-sized flag. Five others soon arrive, all decked out in the European microstate’s light blue and white. The ‘Brigata Mai 1 Gioia’ are ready.
Their name comes from a popular phrase in Italian, translating roughly as ‘never any luck’, and they’re a fan club unlike any other. Since their formation back in 2012, they have attended every San Marino home game, and some away matches, priding themselves on the fact that they never see their heroes succeed. The Brigata are not from the landlocked country – they mostly hail from Italy’s neighbouring Emilia-Romagna region – although some come from Rome and one of their number even travels to games from Germany. We’ve all heard of fair-weather fans, but these are bad-weather obsessives.
The Brigata are attracted to football’s ultimate underdogs, one of the few areas in which San Marino are unbeatable. The Sammarinese sit rooted to the bottom of the men’s FIFA rankings in 211th place, just below Anguilla and the British Virgin Islands. While minnows such as the Faroe Islands, Luxembourg and Andorra have gone from strength to strength, San Marino’s national sides have given fans relatively few moments of optimism, apart from a shock 4-0 win for their under-19s over Gibraltar this August.
Soberingly, San Marino’s senior team come into tonight’s game against the Seychelles on a run of 123 international encounters without a victory. The next biggest current winless streak for a European side was just 22 matches, from Liechtenstein.
Marco Brigoli, 35, the first member of
