As if it were not enough that Finland's footballers could not find their way to the goal of lowly Andorra in their World Cup qualifying round encounter on Saturday, two of the strikers - Mikael Forssell and Alexei Eremenko - were unable even to locate the aeroplane bringing the team home from Barcelona, despite arriving at the airport with the remainder of the squad.
Finland played out an embarrassing 0-0 draw with Andorra on Saturday. The team spent the night in Barcelona and travelled home on Sunday morning, but the two players managed to lose the departure gate as smoothly as they have lost their scent for goals.
Both were in fact substituted in the second half of a match that coach Jyrki Heliskoski will want to put behind him as quickly as possible.
The slightly overweight part-timers of Andorra (ranked at #134 in the world, against Finland's 43rd place on the FIFA listings) are apparently rapidly emerging as a new force in international football: before this 2006 World Cup Qualifying competition they had never taken a single point in major tournament qualifying. Now they have five, after an earlier win and a draw against Macedonia.
Just about the only consolation for the hapless and rudderless Finns must be that it is Macedonia they will face in Tampere on Wednesday. Hopefully many of the players will now feel they have something to prove.
