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These are busy days in Toni Lima’s line of work. As technical director of a football club, grand or provincial, the end of August always is. “Transfers, you know how it is,” says Lima, his telephone ringing again. Lima’s club, Eivissa, of the Spanish third division, will make none of their new recruits millionaires, but they can offer to a South American youngster or an Iberian journeyman a nice location on the island of Ibiza, where the best footballers only tend to migrate for their summer holidays.

Lima’s job is almost entirely to do with planning these days, his career as an active professional – its peak spent in the Spanish second division – mostly behind him now he is 37. Half a dozen days a year though, he winds back the clock and plays international football. With more than 50 caps, Lima is one of Andorra’s most celebrated players and next Saturday against England at the Olympic stadium in Barcelo-na – where Andorra tend to play their home games against more important opponents – he will sing the national anthem of the tiny mountain principality. Part of him knows he ought to have called time on his international career. “The thing is,” says Lima, “we just have such a small pool of players to choose from, so we need some experience still. We are a population of just 70,000.”

So it is that Lima exchanges his business suit for his red strip. Alongside him in defence will be an insurance salesman, Oscar Sonejee. Sometimes Andorra have a policeman in midfield. Against this pot pourri of Pyreneans, England’s superstars face their third meeting in the past two years. It ought to be straightforward: England scored eight goals in 180 minutes against the Andorrans when failing to qualify for Euro 2008. Following those games they began to regard Andorra as a bunch of bruisers with an irritating line in backchat. I wondered if Lima thought that fair? “Listen,” he says. “We have developed a game that sometimes pushes us to the limit of the rules. The gap between us and a team like England means we have to play defensively, and hard.”

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It is an approach that has been attracting complaints from opponents for 10 years. Andorra collected more red and yellow cards than any other European country in the preliminaries for the last World Cup. They have won a single competitive match in 12 years – against Macedonia – and their 2010 World Cup campaign has begun in familiar fashion with a 3-0 defeat in Kazakhstan in Group Six. So when they can hold a team like England for 45 minutes, as they did in Barcelona’s Montjuic arena in March 2007, it rates as a triumph. “I remember they weren’t so happy when they went into the dressing-room at half-time that night,” recalls Lima. “You could see that not just from the players but the coaching staff and the rest.” Equally, the frustration could be heard from the followers of an England team managed by Steve McClaren.

England won 3-0 in the end, two goals from Steven Gerrard doing little to appease the fans. Things would get worse even as they got better. Wayne Rooney got a yellow card and the striker earned a suspension, a blemish the Andorran defence regarded as a triumph. “When we managed to contain a forward like that, it’s an achievement for us,” says Lima. Rooney had become visibly riled, wound up. He and Rooney had something of a verbal joust, too, had they not? “Yes, that’s true, but he had plenty to say as well.” Had Lima not mockingly invited Rooney to come and sign for Eivissa? He had.

It is possible to detect a little gamesman-ship creeping into his forecast for Saturday. “I hope there’s a good, strong referee,” says Lima. “We will play aggressively because that’s our style, and no more aggressively than John Terry or Rio Ferdinand do.” Had he heard of the selection problems facing Fabio Capello, that there would be no Gerrard? “I think England have plenty of others who can make the imbalance between our two teams show. They are physically fitter and superior. But you never know: if they don’t score early, maybe they will get a bit nervous again.”