Let us do a little dreaming . . . your international team's central defender, like nearly all the rest of the side, is an amateur player whose daytime job is that of fireman; one of your midfielders is a policeman and another an insurance salesman. The team captain and playmaker is a former professional who once played for Barcelona but whose expanded girth bears witness to the fact that these days he is a travelling salesman who spends most of his time in a car.
Despite all this, here you are at the Stade de France, Paris playing in a European Championship qualifier against the reigning World Champions. Even better still, you manage to huff and puff so effectively that it takes the World Champions all of 53 minutes to open the scoring. By the end of the night, you trot off the pitch well pleased with a 2-0 defeat. Fifteen minutes of glory are still 15 minutes of glory . . .
The above, of course, is no football fantasy. The side in question is Andorra, the little co-principality tucked away in the Pyrenees between France and Spain, and the latest member of European soccer's international community. Last month, the men from Andorra went to do Euro 2000 battle with France, returning home "delighted" with the 2-0 defeat.
Coaches of the bigger European nations will continue to question the value of allowing such as the Republic of San Marino, the Faroe Isles, Liechtenstein and Andorra to compete in the qualifying rounds of major championships. Their presence congests an already-overloaded fixture list.
There is a line of thought that suggests that such sides should be pooled along with Luxembourg, Cyprus, Malta et al and obliged to play a pre-qualifying tournament, but to eliminate even some of these minnows is to deny potential Davids their Goliath-killing day.
Remember that the Faroe Isles started their competitive international history with a 1-0 win against Austria in a 1990 European Championship qualifier. Remember, too, that Liechtenstein once held Ireland to a 0-0 draw in a Euro 96 qualifier, while in 1993 San Marino had the same score against Turkey.
However, whereas San Marino is situated in soccer-crazy Italy, and its amateur clubs compete in highly competitive Italian leagues, Andorra nestles high in the rocky Pyrenees and has to work hard to carve out two grass soccer pitches from a terrain better suited to skiing. There are only 150 players from which to choose the side.
The team's "star" players are goalkeeper Jesus Luiz Koldo Alvarez and midfielder Jesus Julian Lucendo, two players with brief past experience of soccer at the highest level. Lucendo once (and we mean once, i.e. one game) played for Barcelona, featuring in a 2-0 away loss to Valladolid on the opening day of the 1989-'90 season.
Lucendo was taken off after 75 minutes and was never again used by coach Johan Cruyff. After a fairly rapid downward spiral of smaller clubs, Lucendo eventually married a woman from Andorra and adopted Andorran nationality. These days, he lives in the co-principality, working as a travelling salesman by day and training with local club FC Andorra, who play in the Spanish fourth division, by night.
Goalkeeper Alvarez has a similar story to tell, having spent a season as reserve keeper with Atletico Madrid before he moved to Andorra, and settled down to playing with FC Andorra.
There are two other former professionals: Antonio Lima (exEspanyol) and Justo Ruiz (exAthletic Bilbao).
As for the rest, well it's over to your local fireman (defender Francesco Ramirez), your local insurance agent (midfielder Oscar Sonejee) and your local policeman (midfielder Genis Garcia) . . . Keep on dreaming, Andorra.
