LONDON –

It was the most pointless exercise in football — literally. San Marino, the worst European team ever to play international football, came to Wembley in its usual lambs-to-the-slaughter role and lost 5-0 on Thursday.

Roy Hodgson could have fielded his fourth XI and England would still have won. San Marino is that bad. It doesn't even kick opponents. Victory over San Marino is inevitable, the only question is the margin of defeat inflicted on a bunch of guys who are serial losers. The Wembley win was the expected non-event.

In one respect, playing San Marino is the hardest task Hodgson faces. He would have to prepare for the game in the same way as if England were playing Germany. Yet he could hardly have said: "Watch the runs from deep of the number 10," or whatever.

In fact, there was nothing Hodgson could have said about San Marino other than: "They are the worst team you will ever play." There is no team worse than San Marino in world football. It is joint last in the FIFA world rankings alongside Bhutan, with zero points.

No matter how much the players would have tried to be as professional as possible, they knew they would win. Not probably win, would win. As definite as anything can ever be on planet football. The biggest problem was probably maintaining concentration. Goalkeeper Joe Hart could have finished a crossword with only the occasional interruption.

What the San Marino coach would have said, heaven only knows. "Keep it tight at the back, lads." That means trying to keep the scoreline down to 7-0. In that respect, it succeeded.

Since making its competitive bow, San Marino has never won a game. Not one. It beat Liechtenstein 1-0 in a friendly 10 years ago, the only occasion the Sammarinese have celebrated victory. The result remains an embarrassing blot on Liechtenstein's football history.

Ironically, San Marino's greatest moment came against England in November 1993. David Gualtieri intercepted Stuart Pearce's weak back-pass to David Seaman and scored what remains the fastest goal in World Cup qualifiers or the finals — 8.3 seconds. It took England 20 minutes to equalize and eventually win 7-1.

This was the fifth meeting between the two countries and brought the goal-difference to 31 goals scored and just the record-setting one conceded.

"It's a job well done," said Hodgson. "The thing that impressed me most in the game was the fact that at 5-0, on the one or two occasions we lost the ball, we had three or four players sprinting back to try and win back possession. That type of recovery run and desire — in a game you've wrapped up a long time ago — is a very commendable trait."

The change of format for Euro 2016 means it is close on impossible for the top two group seeds not to qualify. Slovenia, which beat Switzerland on Thursday, presents the only realistic banana skin to England and Switzerland, with Estonia, Lithuania and San Marino the bit-part players.

Playing England will hand their national associations a television windfall, but Hodgson has eight more qualifying ties that will provide little or no challenge to his team. His biggest worry is probably a player picking up an injury that will rule him out of club matches.

And so to Estonia on Sunday, a game which probably won't end 5-0, but Hodgson's target of 10 wins out of 10 qualifying ties should be kept on target.

There were times when what happened in the dressing room, stayed in the dressing room. Now what happens in the dressing room is revealed in a book. The walls have lucrative ears.

And when secrets of the inner sanctum are made public, there is usually another book for a victim to reply to the initial criticism. It is like insults tennis.

Roy Keane's latest autobiography, "The Second Half," published this week, disappointed no one who expected the former Manchester United captain to use both barrels on a variety of targets. He takes icy revenge on what Sir Alex Ferguson said about him in his autobiography in a manner any of those in "Goodfellas" would approve of (but without the baseball bat).

Yet the person Keane, now assistant manager with Aston Villa and the Republic of Ireland, is hardest on is himself; he admitted how he struggles to control his anger and that his midlife crisis "has been going on for years."

"The self-destruct button is definitely there," he writes in an absorbing book that is far more than score settling. "And I suffer for it. With my drinking, I used to go missing for a few days. I think it was my way of switching off, never mind the consequences. It was my time. It was self-destructive, I can see that, but I'm still drawn to it. Not the drink — but the madness, the irresponsibility. I can be sitting at home, the most contented man on the planet. An hour later I go: 'Jesus — it's hard work, this.'

"My midlife crisis has been going for years. Someone once said to me — an ex-player and it's going back to my drinking days — that going out with me was like going out with a time-bomb."

Keane's Saddam Hussein-type beard only adds to the stereotype of a man no one really knows, including himself.

Christopher Davies was a longtime Premier League correspondent for the London Daily Telegraph.