The penultimate matchday of Under 21 European Championship qualifying ended 0-13 for Matteo Cecchetti‘s national team, who came up against one of the strongest sides in the tournament at the Stadium. In front of 721 spectators, Spain closed the first half 5-0 and kept scoring right into stoppage time. The undisputed star of the night was Carlos Espí, a Real Madrid forward making his first start for Spain’s Under 21s: five goals, all scored in his very first game from the opening whistle in this shirt.
The match had already turned sour early on. In the 9th minute, a right-footed strike from Rodrigo Mendoza, the Atlético Madrid midfielder, had opened the scoring; the 25th minute brought a second goal from Pablo García, and in the 32nd minute Jacobo Ramón, the Como defender, added a header. Then came Espí’s first goal from a corner, and in the 42nd minute the captain, Gasiorowski, made it five. The second half began even worse: inside twenty seconds, Jan Virgili, the Club Brugge winger, made it 6-0. From there, Spain scored seven more times, with Espí closing out his personal tally in the 74th minute.
Within that scoreline, however, there were flashes of resistance from the blue-and-white side. Goalkeeper Elia Amici kept his side in the game with a string of saves, including a reflex stop on a close-range header from Ramón and a save on a long-range effort from Virgili, and a couple of Spanish goals came from rebounds off his saves that fell to the opposition. Up front, Nicko Sensoli was the most active player, repeatedly testing goalkeeper Iribarne with shots from the edge of the box without success, while Bartolomeo Riggioni had perhaps the clearest chance with a right-footed effort from distance. In midfield, there was also the senior debut of Francesco Bucchi, born in 2009, who was given a starting berth by Cecchetti.
The ugliest moment of the night came in the fifth minute of stoppage time, when, following a collision in the box, Spanish midfielder Jesús Rodríguez, also of Como, struck Riggioni and was sent off for violent conduct. Play was halted for several minutes, and when it resumed Spain added a thirteenth goal through Pablo García.
Despite the heavy defeat, the head coach chose to defend his players’ performance. “They’ll think I’m mad, but I praised my boys,” Cecchetti told San Marino RTV after the match.
The group picture remains bleak. After nine matchdays, San Marino sit bottom with zero points, zero goals scored and 55 conceded; Spain lead the group on 24 points, ahead of Finland on 22. The final qualifier is set for Tuesday 6 October at 7pm at the AEK Arena in Larnaca against Cyprus, who have collected three points in the group and remain the only realistic opponent within reach.
