Ildefons Lima, 43, ends longest men’s international career ever

26 years after he got started, an Andorran legend is done with international soccer

Andorra’s Euro 2024 qualifier against Switzerland came with an extremely odd scene: a 23rd minute substitution of a healthy player to a standing ovation, all while the nearly eternal underdog Andorran side was holding on at 0-0.

The reason? Andorra captain Ildefons Lima walked off the pitch one last time for his country as he ended the longest international career in men’s soccer history.

Lima, 43, was applauded off by Andorran and Swiss fans as he was replaced by Cucu, who was born two years after Lima made his first international appearance in 1997.

Lima scored in that debut, a 4-1 loss to Estonia. Despite spending most of his career as a center back, his 11 goals make him Andorra’s all-time leading goalscorer. His 9,579-day international career is only bettered by Brazil legend Formiga, whose own 26-year run in women’s soccer ran 9,670 days.

Over that amount of time, a player will tend to set some records. On one hand, Lima has almost certainly suffered the most losses in his country’s colors; per Soccerway, Andorra has ended up on the wrong side of a result 162 times, winning just 13 times since the country began fielding a national team in 1996.

On the other, Lima joined Finland’s Jari Litmanen and Wales’ Billy Meredith to become just the third European player to receive a cap in four different decades when he appeared in a June 2021 friendly against the Republic of Ireland. Lima was on the field for Andorran soccer’s finest hour, a shock 1-0 win over Hungary in a 2018 World Cup qualifier.

Rather unsurprisingly, Lima is the oldest player to appear in a men’s match in UEFA competition, breaking a record held by Gibralter’s Lee Casciaro by appearing in June’s 2-1 home Euro 2024 qualifying loss to Switzerland.

Lima’s seemingly endless Andorra career required overcoming some real obstacles. At one point between March 2007 and May 2012, the nation lost 35 straight games; still, when the call came to join the side, Lima kept answering.

More notably, the Andorran federation (FAF) barred him from the national team in 2020 after he called for better Covid-19 testing within the program. International pressure and the intervention of FIFPro eventually saw the FAF relent in 2021.

Lima’s record may stand for some time. In fact, one of the only candidates within remotely realistic reach is his Andorra teammate Marc Pujol, whose international career began in 2000. Pujol was an unused substitute against the Swiss on Tuesday, but started in a 0-0 draw with Belarus on September 9.

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