Did Andorra secure a moral win?
Moral crusaders?
Andorra coach David Rodrigo claims his side’s 0-2 defeat against England was a moral victory for the tiny country. While it was undoubtedly a better result for Andorra than England would have hoped for, it was a somewhat predictable outcome. In fact, I predicted it here. But I am not convinced that this adds up to a moral victory.
Rodrigo said: “We understand we will not beat England, but even though we lost 2-0 I am very proud of the performance. That is twice now we have managed to stop them scoring in the first 45 minutes of game. It will be nice if we could do it for 90 minutes. Overall, we did a good technical job on England’s players. Frankly, we did ourselves proud and this was a moral victory for us.”
Yes, England were the hot favourites to win this David versus Goliath clash, but the FA Cup regularly throws up matches with similar gulfs in quality. The teams which go down in history as the true moral victors are those who have a go against their superior opponents and occasionally pull off the shock result, not the ones who park the proverbial team bus in front of their goal.
So while victory of any sort may have been unlikely, Andorra cannot claim a 0-2 defeat as a moral win. Their ultra-defensive approach could, and probably will, be forgiven at Wembley, but at home (or as close to home as they will let an Andorra-England match take place) even the smaller nations should be attempting to win matches. Perhaps a judo-style passivity warning is in order.
England and Andorra had met in the Euro 2008 qualification games and shown just how well they could stifle England with 10 men behind the ball and some robust defending. Surely, even the smallest footballing nations should be looking to progress? There is an argument for saying, ‘maybe next time they will keep it to 0-1, and the time after get a draw,’ but where do they go from there?
When Lawrie Sanchez led his Northern Ireland side to a shock victory against England in 2005 it was not through sitting back and putting 11 men on the goal line, but by instilling belief in his players that they could win the match, that football matches are not played on paper, that it is only 11 against 11 out there, and probably a whole host of other clichés too.
Andorra’s game plan might have been to stop England playing and frustrate them, but I fear it could have the same effect on them in the long-term. Uefa bigwigs occasionally mutter about a preliminary qualification tournament to remove some of the dead wood from the qualification groups, and tactics such as Andorra’s are unlikely to make those ideas go away. Yes, they can park their bus in front of the goal if they want to, but they shouldn’t be surprised if they pick up a parking fine at some point.
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The fact is Andorra are one of, if not the worst team in Europe. 2-0 is a lot better than going for the shock win and getting hammered. If they really want to grab a shock win they should try doing it against the likes of Kazakhstan first.
Not a fan of Andorra’s style of play but you can’t fault them for playing the way they did.
The problem is why English players didn’t play according to the tactics dictated to them. Probably could have by 4 or 5 goals if they’d finished off an earlier opportunity and attacked better in the second half once they’d made space in the opposition half.
I agree with this article. I mean it’s ok to try and get a draw even in your backyard, but when you go 1 goald down at least show some guts and try to get back. It was the same thing over and over. I am Armenian and we have a really bad team. I used to go to many matches and we would loose most of the time, but when we had games that we would to take to our opponents (France 3:2, Unkrain 3:2), even though we lost, we still were really happy. That performave was pathetic. England wasn’t that good either, but having 11 people behind the ball, when you are 2;0 down is just pathetic. Why play?Just don’t show up at all. It will give you 3:0 loose, which in average will be better.
These sort of comments are pathetic. What is the Andorran coach trying to tell his players? That they were only good for defending 90 minutes of open play? On the other hand, I dont think even the Almighty can make the English play better. What crap display by both the teams………….
I don’t think you understand how inferior Andorra are. The players are not professional. Therefore, while Multi-Millionaires such as Frank Lampard strolled around the pitch, some Andorran bankers, milkmen and so on battled for their pride.
So, what’s the idea? Andorra do not fight England for supremacy. Andorra wish to build on a reasonable result with England as a leverage to put up a fight to Kazakhstan.
So, from the Andorran point of view, losing only 2-0 to England is quite reasonable and filled them with pride. If, after conceding the first, they would have come out and attack, it could have ended 6-0 (as Germany did to Liechtenstein).
You need to remember that every team has go its own goals. England want to qualify, Andorra want to do the best they can. Losing 2-0 to England is well respectable. If it wasn’t, we wouldn’t be reading this article.