Walter Finch
SPANISH football fans were delighted when over 100 Spaniards descended on a lowly-ranked UEFA Nations League match to troll the Gibraltar men’s team.
The Spanish contingent watching San Marino versus Gibraltar on Friday were mostly made up of Erasmus students studying nearby in Italy, which completely surrounds the tiny landlocked country.
They had arrived to watch the League D match, in which Gibraltar were seeking promotion to League C -and San Marino just their second competitive victory ever.
Gibraltar scored early on with an 11th minute penalty from Liam Walker to put themselves in the lead against FIFA’s lowest-ranked team.
But there was drama at the end when the referee awarded San Marino a penalty in the 91st minute to dent Gibratlar’s promotion charge.
Cue the one hundred Spanish fans going crazy in their support for the supposed ‘underdog’ when it was dispatched by Nicola Nanni.
They celebrated wildly with the locals in the stands at the Stadio Olimpico di Serravalle as the result now means San Marino can overhaul Gibraltar to claim promotion if they win their final game against Lichtenstein tonight.
Spanish football fans online were very amused with the behaviour of the Erasmus students and congratulated their own.
“We are the best country in the world. We celebrated a draw between San Marino with 100 Spaniards,” one wrote on Twitter/X.
“If Spain didn’t exist, we would have to invent it,” chimed in another.
