Gibraltar’s players could be forgiven for thinking that international football was more fun before Uefa granted them official status and they left behind a life full of endless friendlies against fellow minnows. Last season they conceded 38 times but, being an optimistic bunch, they prefer to take much heart from the one they scored. You cannot, it seems, to judge by their strikingly perky demeanour in the Algarve last night, get a bad team down.
Their skipper, Roy Chipolina, described the 7-0 defeat in Dublin as their "most damaging" setback. "It was a very poor performance," he said, "but we learned a lot from the experience and we're a better team than we were then. Hopefully we'll show that now."
Under new manager Jeff Wood, an English journeyman professional goalkeeper then coach, there is certainly a renewed sense of optimism. His task over the next three years is to make what progress he can with the national team while ramping up Gibraltar's fledgling coach education programme so that standards can be improved down the line.
Recognition by Uefa brought with it substantial new revenue which quickly exposed weaknesses in the association’s management structure; something they have, with the European federation’s help, been working to address.
Better fit
On the pitch, meanwhile, Wood seems a much better fit than the national team’s previous coach, Allen Bula, who caused considerable consternation by publicly targeting a play-off place in this, the team’s first ever campaign.
The proposal to build a new national stadium on a precious piece of open parkland has caused problems too and so the association is still grappling with how to improve facilities from a point where all but one 11 a-side team in Gibraltar – including all of the league sides – plays on a single pitch.
The exception, of course, is the national team.
It consists of players drawn almost exclusively from the local league; part-timers, some of whom have yet to play a competitive game this season. There are a couple of exceptions like Jake Gosling who is at Bristol Rovers and Dublin-born defender Jamie Bosio who, having only recently joined champions Lincoln Red Imps, is now on loan to Ashford United in Kent where he is training to be a teacher.
Bosio's parents lived in Dublin while his father trained to become a doctor and he first played football with Home Farm. A year ago he was involved in the squad for the Dublin game but in the end failed to make the bench. Under Wood the 23 year-old's prospects have improved and he could feature at some point against Ireland. Something, unsurprisingly, he says he would "love".
His story is a reminder that everything is relative. Having featured ever so briefly for Imps against Midtjylland of Denmark in the Champions League he headed off to England to study and signed for Ashford, a side in what is effectively the ninth tier of English football, rather than a Conference side because, the club suggested, it made for a manageable commute.
Controversy followed with other Southern Counties East League outfits accusing Ashford’s owner Don Crosbie, of trying to buy this year’s title, having finished second in each of the last two years.
