Vatican City national football team

Vatican City Vatican City
Nickname(s) Il Guardia Svizzera Pontificia
(The Pontificial Swiss Guard)
Association Federazione Vaticanese Giuoco Calcio
Head coach Gianfranco Guadagnoli
Top scorer Alessandro Quarto (1)
Home stadium Stadio Petriana, Rome, Italy
Stadio Pio XII, Albano Laziale, Italy
FIFA code VAT
First colours
Second colours
Elo ranking
Current 229
First international
Vatican City Vatican City 0–0 San Marino B San Marino
(Rome, Italy; 22 November 1994)
Biggest win
Vatican City Vatican City 5–1 Sportverein Vollmond Switzerland
(Rome, Italy; 3 February 2006)
Biggest defeat
 Monaco 2–0 Vatican City Vatican City
(Cap-d'Ail, France; 22 June 2013)
Vatican City Vatican City 0–2 Monaco 
(Rome, Italy; 10 May 2014)

The Vatican City national football team (Italian: Selezione di calcio della Città del Vaticano) is the football team that represents Vatican City. The Vatican City football association was founded in 1972. Its current president is Domenico Ruggerio.[1][2] Gianfranco Guadagnoli, an Italian, is the current head coach.[1] The team has been managed by Giovanni Trapattoni in the past.[3] His first match as manager was played on 23 October 2010 when Vatican City faced a team composed of Italian financial police.[4]

Overview

Albert II, Prince of Monaco greeting team in June 2013

In the year 2000, Pope John Paul II established a Vatican sports department with the aim of "reinvigorating the tradition (of sport) within the Christian community".[5] In 2006, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone suggested that the Vatican could field a team of men from Catholic seminaries. About the prospect, the cardinal stated, "If we just take the Brazilian students from our Pontifical universities we could have a magnificent squad." The cardinal also noted that in the 1990 FIFA World Cup, there were 42 players in the final round who attended Salesian training centres worldwide.[6] For example, Marcelino, Spanish hero of the 1964 European Nations' Cup was a former seminarian. It was Bertone's proposal that the Vatican's players, even if accepted by UEFA, would be drawn from the population within the Catholic Church worldwide, not just citizens of Vatican City. He was unclear at the time whether the Vatican would grant these players Vatican citizenship to make this possible.[7]

With the smallest population of any nation, approximately 900, it is difficult to form a squad. The Vatican City squad consists entirely of employees of the Vatican: police officers, postal workers, government officials and members of the Swiss Guard, the Vatican’s de facto army, charged with protecting the pope. Since most Vatican citizens are members of the Swiss Guard, they cannot be amassed in large numbers for a long time. Therefore, the national team has played only a few rare international matches, often drawing a fair amount of interested press.[1] When Vatican City played its first match in 2002, only one player, Marcello Rosatti, had a Vatican passport. In 2006, Vatican City was invited to participate in the Viva World Cup by the N.F.-Board and were expected to participate[8] but were unable to do so because they could not assemble a 15-man roster.[9] In total, Vatican City have played only four full international matches against other nations, one draw and three defeats to Monaco in 2002, 2011, 2013, and 2014 respectively.

In addition to its full international matches, the team has played a friendly match, its first, against the San Marino reserve team in 1994.[10] The final score of that match is believed to be a 0–0 draw but Steve Menary’s book ‘Outcasts: The Lands that FIFA Forgot’ states that Vatican insiders told him that the match ended 1–1.[11] In 2010, the Vatican organized a team to play a friendly game against Palestine. However, the team was made up of Catholic priests and was not considered the Vatican City national team.[12] In 2006, the Vatican City played SV Vollmond, a team from Switzerland, at Stadio Petriana with Vatican City prevailing 5–1.[6][13]

The Vatican's stance on football

The first Vatican league was created in 1973 and was first won by employees of L'Osservatore Romano, the newspaper of the Holy See.[14]

Giovanni Trapattoni coached the team in 2010.

The Vatican has typically expressed strong support for football. Pope John Paul II was reportedly a goalkeeper in his youth in Poland, and an ardent supporter of Cracovia Kraków.[15] The former German pope Pope Benedict XVI is an ardent supporter of Bayern Munich since his youth growing up in Bavaria, Germany.[16] Benedict is quoted as saying, "The sport of football can be a vehicle of education for the values of honesty, solidarity and fraternity, especially for the younger generation."[15] In October 2007, the Pope was presented with a #16 shirt (in reference to the sixteenth use of his papal name) by Serie B side Ancona after Benedict supported their initiative to become a "beacon of morality" by adopting an "innovative, ethical model of practising football".[15] In 2010, Benedict and the Vatican reaffirmed their belief that football should be a beacon of morality by lashing out at Serie A after matches for the upcoming season were scheduled at 12:30pm on Sundays to appease pay-per-view companies wishing to spread out Serie A matches over the weekend. The Vatican previously questioned the league's decision to play matches on Sundays at all, but "I consider this a truly harmful development," Monsignor Carlo Mazza told Tuttosport. "Putting people in front of the television screen at 12.30 CET, when they are having lunch with their families, to me seems like a 'pitch invasion' on life."[17] Additionally, on 18 December 2006, Tarcisio Bertone, Cardinal Secretary of State of the Holy See, stated, but only in jest, that he did not preclude the possibility that the Vatican, in the future, could put together a football team of great value, that could play on the same level as, Roma, Internazionale and Milan or Genoa.[18][19] The current Argentinian pope, Pope Francis is an ardent fan of his hometown club San Lorenzo,[20] and exhibited disappointment when Argentina lost the 2014 World Cup final against Germany.[21]

FIFA membership

The Vatican is one of only nine fully recognized sovereign states whose national team is not a FIFA member. The others are the Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Monaco, Nauru, Palau and Tuvalu. In May 2014, Domenico Ruggerio, president of the FA, stated that "I prefer to be amateur...To join FIFA, at that level, will be like a business" after stating "The important message of friendship and love is demonstrated by the sport — the real sport, not the business that is in football these days...It is not just important to win a match; it is how you carry yourself." Therefore, that, he added, meant that "the ethos of the Vatican’s soccer team was, at odds with FIFA membership."[1]

Kit

The team's current kit is provided by Diadora. The shorts are all white while the top is solid yellow with a narrow blue and white line around the right upper quadrant of the body.[22]

Matches

Against other nations

      Win       Draw       Loss

Other

Current squad

Players called up for the international friendlies against Monaco on 22 June 2013[22]

0#0 Pos. Player Date of birth (age) Caps Goals Club
1GK Andrea Giulii Capponi Vatican City Santos
1GK Marco Caterini Vatican City Santos
2DF Maurizio Baroncini Vatican City Santos
2DF Andrea Mayer Vatican City Santos
2DF Simone Palmieri Vatican City S. Pietro Team
2DF Vincenzo Pietropaolo Vatican City Fortitudo
2DF Enrico Rimauro Vatican City Santos
2DF Mario Tiburzi Vatican City DIR.TEL.
2DF Eric Cardona Italy Palermo
3MF Cataldo Francesco Vatican City Fortitudo
3MF Fabrizio Gaudio Vatican City Fortitudo
3MF Mario Pacenza Vatican City Santos
3MF Angelo Palma Vatican City Santos
3MF Roberto Perinelli Vatican City Santos
3MF Sandro Troiani Vatican City Santos
4FW Simone Batalocco Vatican City S. Pietro Team
4FW Daniele Carilli Vatican City Gendarmeria
4FW Lorenzo Pierotti Vatican City S. Pietro Team
4FW Alessandro Quarto Vatican City Santos

Coaches

See also

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 4 Montague, James. "A Friendly Game for a Beatific State". The New York Times. Retrieved 13 May 2014.
  2. ↑ "Vaticano". fedefutbol.net. Retrieved 19 March 2012.
  3. ↑ "The things they say: Giovanni Trapattoni". FIFA. Retrieved 19 March 2012.
  4. ↑ "Trapattoni betreut Vatikan-Auswahl" (in German). fussball24.de. Retrieved 16 May 2014.
  5. ↑ "Vatican Cup lifts spirits in Rome". FIFA. Retrieved 19 March 2012.
  6. 1 2 Saffer, Paul. "Pray as you play". Retrieved 19 March 2012.
  7. ↑ Relano, Alfredo. "Lo que el Vaticano quiere es Selección" (in Spanish). opinion.as.com. Retrieved 15 May 2014.
  8. ↑ Colchester, Max. "The World Cup For Everyone Else". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 15 May 2014.
  9. ↑ Parada, Gonzalo. "La Selección de fútbol del Vaticano vuelve al verde césped" (in Spanish). gamacero.blogspot.com. Retrieved 15 May 2014.
  10. ↑ "Vatican Football". The Path Less Traveled. Retrieved 25 June 2014.
  11. ↑ "Praying for a win – the Vatican City at World Cup 2014?". http://sbbu.wordpress.com. Retrieved 15 May 2014. External link in |publisher= (help)
  12. ↑ Willey, David (19 December 2006). "Vatican plays down soccer 'joke'". BBC News.
  13. ↑ "Fussball im Vatikan" (in German). 1. FC Ratzinger. Retrieved 15 May 2014.
  14. ↑ Mattei, Giampaolo. "Lo scudetto vaticano? Ai Gendarmi E per gli Svizzeri". vatican.va. Retrieved 14 February 2014.
  15. 1 2 3 "Pope: Football a moral guide to life". CNN. 10 January 2008.
  16. ↑ "Pope heading to World Youth Day aboard 'Shepherd One'". news.com.au. 9 July 2008.
  17. ↑ "Vatican slams Serie A Sunday lunchtime kick-offs". ESPN. Retrieved 19 March 2012.
  18. ↑ "Vatican team will have the hand of God". Agence France-Presse. 18 December 2006. Archived from the original on 30 June 2007.
  19. ↑ David Willey (19 December 2006). "Vatican plays down soccer 'joke'". BBC News. Retrieved 2011-09-03.
  20. ↑ "Pope Francis to celebrate birthday with visit from his favourite football team". Catholic Herald. 17 December 2013. Retrieved 2014-11-17.
  21. ↑ "Former Pope Benedict Please With Germany's World Cup Victory, Hopes Argentina 'Recovers Soon'". Christian Post. 16 July 2014. Retrieved 2014-11-17.
  22. 1 2 "First half goals secure Monaco win against Vatican City". Non-FIFA Football. Retrieved 23 June 2013.

External links

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