Watching England take apart San Marino in the Euro 2016 qualifier was not fun, so much so that I switched to the Swiss play against Slovenia. The Swiss played better, but unfortunately lost. At least the game was fun to watch.

Despite supporting England, it was painful to see how easy it was to win the ball (I only watched the second half). If they had played in the same way against a top team, the outcome would have been very different from the 5-0 score line against San Marino.

Admittedly, small teams have been getting better recently, but they are still miles away from anything that can be considered decent, even because many play semi-professional football and hold regular jobs. Whenever one of the small teams manages a win, or even a draw, it makes the headlines. It’s like arbitrarily getting a team from the bottom division and making them play top flight football – the outcome is obvious.

The recent entry of Gibraltar in the footballing fray has made the situation worse – Poland demolished them 7-0, and I guess their for/against tally won’t be pleasant reading for the Rock at the end of this campaign.

So here’s what I think should be done; get all the minnows – San Marino, Lichtenstein, Luxembourg, Faroe Islands, Gibraltar, Andorra and yes, Malta (do you remember the 1-12 result against Spain? And we also lost to Gibraltar in a friendly and lost 3-0 at home to Norway yesterday) – and place them in a pre-qualification group. The winner will then be allowed to compete in the actual qualifying games for big competitions.

In this way, we avoid the silly score lines for starters. Secondly, these nations will (hopefully) put more money into the game in a bid to get into the qualifying stages. Thirdly, people from these nations – me included – will watch their nation play in a competition they CAN actually win. Imagine that…