LITTLE Luxembourg, for so long the laughing stock of international football, are two wins away from having the last laugh.
Incredibly, the nation once ranked 195th out of 205 by Fifa, are on the brink of a footballing miracle as they close in on a shock place in this summer’s European Championship.
Victory for head coach Luc Holtz’s battlers against Georgia in Tbilisi tonight would send them through to a final Play-Off match against either Kazakhstan or Greece.
Win both and they will be lining up in a major football tournament for the first time, taking their place in Group F alongside Turkey, Portugal and the Czech Republic in Germany.
It’s a remarkable turnaround in fortunes for the Red Lions, who were more like the Red Lion for most of their history.
As recently as 2006 they were regarded as the pub team of international football when they played eight internationals, lost eight – including a 7-0 drubbing by Germany – and failed to score a goal.
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At that point they had failed to win a game for a decade – a record winless stretch of 83 matches!
FIFA ranked them 195th out of 205 nations, just one place above Montserrat – a Caribbean island that had been destroyed by a volcano – and American Samoa, who had suffered a world record 31-0 defeat to Australia!
The turning point for the nation of 600,000 inhabitants came in 2004 when the Grand Duchy drew up a grand plan for the future.
Paul Philipp, Luxembourg manager between 1985-2001, took over as President of the Luxembourg Football Federation.
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He sent out scouts to scour the country for the best 400 eight to 11-year-olds and placed them in regional centres of excellence,
The best progressed to the recently built National Youth Academy at Mondercange where the top 250 of Luxembourg’s young talent between the ages of 12 and 19 are trained by professional coaches every day.
They play one international match a week and for their clubs at the weekend. The pay-off came when Luxembourg qualified for the Uefa Under-17 Championship in 2022.
Luxembourg now exports their talent and only one of the squad who beat Liechtenstein in the Euro 24 qualifiers play locally, while the rest ply their trade in Germany, Italy, France, Belgium and the Netherlands.
Luxembourg beat Bosnia and Herzegovina home and away, drew in Slovakia, took four points off Iceland and six off Liechtenstein to finish third in their qualifying group.
Losing 6-0 at home to Portugal and 9-0 away from home was a painful reminder of the past – but at least it is the exception now rather than the rule.
“We are small and we will always be small,” said Philipp.
But that won’t stop Luxembourg from dreaming big tonight.
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
