Vatican City national football team
 |
|
| Nickname(s) |
Il Guardia Svizzera Pontificia (The Pontifical Swiss Guard) |
|---|---|
| Association | Federazione Vaticanese Giuoco Calcio |
| Head coach | Gianfranco Guadagnoli |
| Top scorer | Alessandro Quarto (1) |
| Home stadium |
Stadio Petriana, Rome, Italy Stadio Pio XII, Albano Laziale, Italy |
| FIFA code | VAT |
| Elo ranking | |
| Current | 229 |
| First international | |
 Vatican City 0–0 San Marino  (Rome, Italy; 8 May 2004) |
|
| Biggest win | |
Vatican City 4–0 SV Vollmond  (Rome, Italy; 3 February 2006) |
|
| Biggest defeat | |
 Palestine 6–0 Vatican City (Al-Khader, Palestine; 12 June 2011) |
|
The Vatican City national football team (Italian: Selezione di calcio della Città del Vaticano) is the football team that represents Vatican City under the control of the Federazione Vaticanese Giuoco Calcio, headquartered in the Vatican's Cortile di San Damaso. The Vatican City football association was founded in 1972. Its current president is Domenico Ruggerio. Gianfranco Guadagnoli, an Italian, is the current head coach. The team has been managed by Giovanni Trapattoni in the past. His first match as manager was played on 23 October 2010 when Vatican City faced a team composed of Italian financial police. The team played its first match in 1985, a 3–0 victory against a representative of Austrian journalists.
In the year 2000, Pope John Paul II established a Vatican sports department with the aim of "reinvigorating the tradition (of sport) within the Christian community". In 2006, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone suggested that the Vatican could field a team of men from Catholic seminaries. About the prospect, the cardinal stated, "If we just take the Brazilian students from our Pontifical universities we could have a magnificent squad." The cardinal also noted that in the 1990 FIFA World Cup, there were 42 players in the final round who attended Salesian training centres worldwide. For example, Marcelino, Spanish hero of the 1964 European Nations' Cup was a former seminarian. It was Bertone's proposal that the Vatican's players, even if accepted by UEFA, would be drawn from the population within the Catholic Church worldwide, not just citizens of Vatican City. He was unclear at the time whether the Vatican would grant these players Vatican citizenship to make this possible.
...
Wikipedia