“The morals of football are to lose well rather than to win badly,” Monsignor Luis Ladaria Ferrer claimed before a friendly between Vatican City and Monaco in 2014.
It is not a belief espoused by modern managers such as Jose Mourinho, but it is a doctrine that Vatican City's national football team hold dear, having never won a game against another national team in their history.
Founded in 1972, they are currently ranked 220th out of 239 countries in the ELO ratings, sandwiched between Macao and Laos.
Vatican City is just one of nine sovereign states that is not a member of FIFA, although UEFA have admitted they would accept any application to join Europe's governing body.
However, membership is unlikely as the football team of the Holy See have so few players to choose from – the UN estimates that just 801 people live in the city today. Despite the low population, there is an eight-team football league and it is this which feeds the national squad.
The kick-off of that 2014 friendly match with Monaco was delayed because of traffic issues as Pope Francis was addressing a congregation. The current pontif was invited to attend as he is a big football fan, growing up a supporter of San Lorenzo in Argentina.
A couple of months later, then-FIFA president Sepp Blatter revealed that Pope Francis had followed his country's run to the final of the 2014 World Cup final.
"He certainly was not happy about Argentina’s defeat [to Germany]," the Swiss was quoted as saying by the Catholic Times, "But he told me that football is good because it unites people."
Despite popular belief, the Vatican City team does not consists of priests, but anyone who lives in the city is eligible.
Their star player in 2014 was 35-year-old Alessandro Quarta, a government clerk who had previously played semi-professional football in Italy's lower divisions, while another key member of the team was Bruno Mariotti, who worked in the Vatican post office and played well into his 50s.
They have even had famous managers, with former Juventus and Italy boss Giovanni Trapattoni taking charge of the team in 2010 for a charity game against a team comprised of Italian policemen.
Since their international debut in 1994 – a scoreless draw with San Marino B – Vatican City have played over a dozen games against other national teams, clubs, associations and charities. They have played Monaco five times, but have only scored one goal against the principality.
Their most recent game was a 2-2 draw with Raetia, a province on the borders of Italy, Switzerland, Austria and Germany who have competed in the CONIFA World Cup alongside teams such as Northern Cyprus and Kurdistan.
That fixture, like the majority of their home matches, was staged at Campo Pio XI, a 500-capacity stadium situated outside the border of Vatican City in Rome, but still just 400 metres from St Peter's Basilica.
Campo Pio XI is used by Roma's youth team for small tournaments and witnessed the only ever victories in Vatican City's football history – a 5-1 win over Swiss amateur club SV Vollmond in 2006 and 2015's 1-0 win against Germany's Lutherstadt Wittenberg.
They have been on the wrong end of a few hammerings, losing 8-1 to both Azzurri Schaan, from Liechtenstein's eighth tier, and Weisweiler Elf, a team made up of retired Borussia Monchengladbach players.
In 2019, the first-ever Vatican City women's team were due to face Austrian team Mariahilf but pulled out of the game before the match kicked off after their opponents protested the church's stance on abortion and gay rights.
Fans in the stands unveiled banners stating "Against Homophobia" during the Vatican anthem, while one Mariahilf player revealed a shirt containing the words “My body, my rules."
"The game was called off because we are here for the sport, and not for political or other messages", spokesman Danilo Zennaro told ORF.
The men's team have usually avoided similar scenes, but declined to join CONIFA due to political reasons as they cannot be seen to promote or give credibility to some of the disputed territories that are currently members.
Another friendly against Monaco looks likely once football returns, as Vatican City continue the search for their first win against another nation.
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