“I remember the teacher having a go at me in front of the whole class, laying into me. He would later become a politician and the telling-off I got … ‘What are you going there for?! You’ll make fools of yourselves; you’re going to embarrass the country before the entire world.’ I was 18, thinking: ‘Why is it my fault?’” Not for the first time, Ildefons Lima laughs. Not for the last, either. There’s a grin. “He apologised afterwards,” he says.
It was June 1998 and a bunch of mates were going to play Brazil. It was Lima’s third game for the Andorra national team and his teacher wasn’t alone in thinking it was a ridiculous idea; this month, after 26 years and 137 games, Lima finally played his last, aged 43. As he pulled off the captain’s armband, the Tourbillon stadium, Sion, handed a standing ovation to the man who had just concluded the longest international career in history. So much for embarrassment. No shame, just pride. “I’ve read people say: ‘We knew Andorra because of Ildefons,’” he says.
Lima’s club career spanned six leagues and every position, even goalkeeper, taking him from the principality high in the Pyrenees, where he now sits on a terrace in the autumn sunshine, to Greece, Mexico, Switzerland, Spain and Italy. His international career spanned four decades and the country’s entire footballing history. If it feels as if he has always been there, that’s because he has. His first game was Andorra’s second; it was also the first time they sent a team anywhere, heading into the unknown. “I saw this creature get born,” he says. “We’ve witnessed how football changed; how the world did.”
In the beginning, there was nothing. “When we left for Estonia in 1997, we travelled blind,” Lima says. “We didn’t know what we would find, anything about international football, what you did. The country’s only team were FC Andorra, who played in Spain’s Segunda B. The federation had to pick a team [but] there were probably only about 25 people they could pick; Andorra didn’t have a footballing tradition and there are only 30,000, maybe 35,000 people with passports.”
Lima wasn’t yet one of them. To qualify you had to have been resident for 20 years; he had arrived aged two months and lived there his whole life but was still only 17. There might have been no team at all had Uefa not provided special permits. Listening to him relive the adventure, it’s like Cool Runnings in reverse. From a snowy microstate of 181 square miles in the Pyrenees with Europe’s highest capital city and few pitches – for years, internationals were played in Barcelona – they were out of place. Until they weren’t.
“Andorra is a village; we all knew each other. There were kids, others in their 30s. Me and my brother, Toni: the coach called us Limon and Limilla. We went to Estonia for 10 days, built ties that still bind. Estonia had not long broken from the Soviet Union. Supermarkets were empty, we went hungry, queued at phone boxes to call home. But we had so much enthusiasm, like the Jamaicans in Calgary. ‘We are playing an international?!’ The absolute business. That feeling’s impossible now, the innocence lost. Even kids ask: ‘What will they pay?’ None of us cared.”
This was priceless. That day in Kuressaare, Lima scored. “There’s no footage,” he says, which is a pity and also an opportunity he’s invited to seize. “It was an overhead kick rabona,” he jokes. “I reckon it was the unconsciousness of youth, a counter where I kept running, saw a defender coming, thought: ‘There’s no way I can dribble anyone, so hit it.’ It was wet and it flew in. We lost 4-1 but went absolutely wild. Andorra’s first ever goal, and it’s with you for ever.”
That was one thing, this was another. “We had played Estonia, then Latvia. We had a Brazilian coach, Miluir Macedo, with contacts at the CBF [Brazilian football federation] and he suggested a friendly. Us?! With Brazil?! Brazil don’t know where Andorra is. Before you know it, you’re on a plane to Paris. We get a few blocks from the Stade Bauer and the roads are closed, fans everywhere. A teammate looked out: ‘What have we got ourselves into?’
“In the tunnel there’s Ronaldo, Roberto Carlos, Dunga, Taffarel, Rivaldo. You think: ‘Bloody hell, this is serious.’ The first move, Giovanni controls on the chest and flicks it over my head. Whoah! There’s a photo of my brother asking Ronaldo for his shirt, Ronaldo looking at him: ‘You’re touching me?! You’re Andorra and I’m Ronaldo Nazário.’ I remember Roberto Carlos preparing to take a free-kick. I’m laughing, shouting: ‘Don’t hit it hard!’ If he hits it well, he’ll kill me. That day changes everything. They only beat us 3-0.
“That was Brazil’s last warm-up for the World Cup. They reach the final and lose to France, whose first game afterwards with the star on their chest, is … Andorra, in Paris. [Zinedine] Zidane, [Laurent] Blanc, [Fabien] Barthez; 90,000 people. At half time it’s 0-0. I remember the headline: ‘Andorra resist better than Brazil’!
“You then play France at Montjuïc and lose 1-0 to a penalty. Everything’s different then. I’ve played Brazil, I’ve played France. Bring anyone on, bring the team from Escape to Victory, Sylvester Stallone and Pelé.”
Maybe not them but over the 1990s, 2000s, 2010s and 2020s Lima played against just about everyone else, except Lionel Messi (“I told one of the guys at Fifa: ‘Hey, when there’s a legends game, invite me too.’”) Sure, he lost to just about everyone too. And? In his 137 games, there are just six wins. Except that just isn’t the word. Each little win is a huge triumph. Many of the losses are too.
“In my 26 years the worst is 6-0, I think: Russia, Ukraine, England, Belgium. Those aren’t third division teams. Take our level and England’s level and the score’s 80-0, maybe more. We know often it’s damage limitation; there have been matches when we’re frantically bailing out water like we’re on the Titanic. You’re Andorra but you try to win, harbour that hope. All I’ve got is a little water pistol but maybe if I get them in the eye, rob the ball and then … The worst team in the world will get a chance, always.”
It took 20 years for Lima to win his first competitive international, 1-0 against Hungary in a World Cup qualifier in June 2017. “We had one shot, it went in. I don’t think I’ve cried so much in my life. It had been so long, all those almosts, you think: ‘We’re cursed.’ Estonia score in the 95th minute. There’s always something. When you get a win, you celebrate like it’s the World Cup.”
When they had beaten San Marino 2-0 in a friendly that February with Lima scoring the opener, it was different. Andorra had gone 86 games without a win; their opponents had gone 74. “I could barely eat,” he says. “I was more nervous playing San Marino than going to Wembley. San Marino are our reality. How do I explain losing to them at home? If you lose against England, well, what do you want? There’s [David] Beckham, [Steven] Gerrard, [Frank] Lampard.”
Which is not to say that Andorra didn’t compete, certainly not that they cared little about defeat. The sneering and dismissiveness which once came from opponents and the classroom as well as from football fans or the media could serve as motivation. It gets short shrift, sitting here now. As does the idea that nations such as his should not get to play the biggest countries, as if their very existence is an affront and the games where they met were not qualifiers already.
“A small country playing a big [one] shouldn’t be a reason for anger,” Lima says. “If you’re so much better, show it. It’s funny. Since 1996, when we were founded, some of those have won the same as us: nothing.
“‘He works in a bank, he’s a fireman, he’s a policeman, they’re not professionals.’ But we’re every bit as professional; the difference is we don’t earn millions. The hours and dedication is the same, or more. We’re closer to normal people, whereas [star] footballers are deified. I sometimes feel like a fan on the pitch. And talk is cheap: ‘How bad are the Andorrans?!’ Yeah, you try it. If you know our reality, you appreciate it more. ‘Bloody hell, these lads playing Brazil are phenomenons.’ We’re very limited in geography and population but we leave everything on the pitch.
“And,” Lima says, “if you’ve been doing it 26 years, you must have something.”
It might not have been quite so long, retirement coming sooner. Lima liked the idea of bowing out at Wembley, like his brother Toni had. But his suggestion that players be Covid tested before training led to him being left out the squad for over a year, ostracised when he should have been celebrated. That still hurts; it also prolonged his career.
“That was the worst moment of my career. I cried a lot, didn’t understand why. It didn’t make sense. They threw stones at their own roof. I sacrificed myself and often my clubs for the national team, my country. That person’s behaviour was totally wrong – the federation intervened to fix it – but I wasn’t going to walk away. I was determined my career would end on the pitch.”
It did, in Sion. “Sometimes things happen for a reason and without that [ostracism], I would have retried sooner because past 40, 41, it’s harder by the day, physically and mentally. If I had retired at Wembley, most probably wouldn’t have realised. Or maybe they would? Maybe they would have said: ‘Bloody hell, this madman’s been playing 24 years’. But I will never forget Switzerland. It ended well, the right way.
“I had always wanted to retire away from home to really breathe football. [Xherdan] Shaqiri asked me when I was going to retire, how long it had been. I’d said: ‘Relax, next time will be the last.’ That recognition is nice and when the time came he, [Granit] Xhaka and [Ricardo] Rodriguez embraced me as if I was one of them. Everyone stood to applaud. My family were there. It’s the nicest feeling I ever had on a pitch because I’m not a star and yet the send-off was brutal. I love the idea I was an ambassador for Andorra; it makes me proud.
“It’s life, nothing’s easy,” he says. “Twenty-six years, a record [in men’s football]. Four different decades. I told the kids: play until you can play no more. There’s nothing like it. I’m only stopping because I can’t go on: I’ll be 44 soon. I played both Ronaldos – the first didn’t score against us, the second filled his boots – and when I look at my shirts I see Shevchenko, Lewandowski, Bale, Van Persie. I went from Ronaldo Nazário to Mbappé: that marks the passing of time. I didn’t play against a generation’s idols; I played against various generations’ idols.
“Maybe one day someone will break the record. Congratulations. Take a picture, put it on Instagram. Brilliant. But this? The experiences? The journey? Estonia and Hungary and Wembley? No one can ever take what I lived.”
