Why Luxembourg Aren't as Bad as You May Think
When thinking of the European minnows that constantly are getting destroyed by their opponents by ridiculous scorelines, Andorra, San Marino, Gibraltar, and Luxembourg and several others come to mind. While looking at results only, it probably is valid to say that Luxembourg belongs in this group of perpetual strugglers. However, if one were to look at the scorelines of some of their games, there is certainly some reason for hope.
Way back in last October for EURO 2016 qualifying could this increasing sense of hope be found. Yes, they did lose to Slovakia, but having the spirit to continue fighting and scoring 2 goals after being 4-0 down displays their toughness. They then were able to pull of a shock friendly win over Greece with a 90th minute winner a month later. Greece probably weren't at their best at that moment and were probably still reeling from their EURO qualifying disaster, but this was still a memorable win for Luxembourg regardless of the match's importance. The following friendlies leading up to the current World Cup qualifying cycle was all losses. One positive that can be taken from these matches though is that none of the losses were by more than 3 goals, which proves that they can stay defensively disciplined even against opponents with superior talent.
What really got the ball rolling for Luxembourg though was the opening fixture of the 2018 World Cup qualifiers, a 4-3 loss to Bulgaria. Again, of course a loss is not what they would've wanted but if you put it into perspective that they put up 3 goals against a pretty decent Bulgaria side and it begins to seem impressive. One of the major problems of these so called European "minnows" is that they can't score and have essentially lost after only conceding 1 or 2 goals. The fact that Luxembourg has proven their ability to score in a few instances has shown that they are slowly starting to break away from this "minnow" label. This is further supported by the following result, a 1-0 lost to Sweden. Now of course Sweden don't have Zlatan anymore and looked pretty awful in the EUROs, but this is a team that should've been scoring almost at will against Luxembourg, but they managed to limit the damage. That brings me to their 1-1 draw with Belarus today. Belarus are no pushovers considering that they held France to a 0-0 draw. Luxembourg could've easily given up after they suffered a red-card in the 44th minute and were scored on in the 80th. However, they kept fighting and managed to score an equalizing goal only 5 minutes later to secure the draw.
It may take many more years for Luxembourg to truly shed the title of "minnows" that they have been called for so long. However, the fact that they have shown that they can score frequently on specific occasions, and if possible, impressive losses, are showing that improvement is being made with this team.
