Next Goal Wins
AMERICAN Samoa will forever be associated with the most infamous result in international football history, the 31-0 defeat by Australia in a 2002 World Cup qualifier. This compelling and beautifully-rendered documentary takes a look at the Pacific Island as they look to pick themselves off the floor and rid themselves of their reputation as the worst team in the world. The film starts before the 2014 World Cup qualifying campaign. American Samoa are at rockbottom. In the previous 17 years, they have conceded 229 goals and scored just two. We watch as the players, ever blindly hopeful, believe that a corner may be turned as they prepare for the Pacific Cup. Instead, it’s the same old story as they lose all five games and concede 26 goals in the process. Salvation arrives from an unlikely source. Thomas Rongen, a colourful Dutch football coach, responds to a plea by the US Soccer Federation for a professional manager to commit to the side for one campaign, simply to give them a chance. Rongen is a force of nature but midway through the movie, we discover his own deeply emotional reasons for attaching himself to the biggest of all underdogs. Eight years earlier, his teenage daughter was killed in a car accident. ‘We are doing all this for Nicole,’ explains Gail, Rongen’s wife. The Dutchman scours the lower leagues in the US for players with a Samoan heritage but his greatest achievement is convincing Nicky Salapu to return from his day job in Seattle. Salapu was the goalkeeper for the most notorious football result of all and the scars still cut deep — at one point, he tells how he used to sit at home playing FIFA on his PlayStation, being American Samoa and beating Australia in an effort to banish the demons. The star of the show, though, is
Jaiyah Saelua, the team’s centre-half. Saelua is a member of Samoa’s third gender, the fa’afafine (way of the woman) and becomes the first transgender player to play in a World Cup qualifying match. Her team-mates’ easy acceptance of Saelua is one of the most heart-warming features of a heart-warming documentary. I won’t give the ending away, though you can probably guess it. But should you get the chance to watch this, you won’t be disappointed. It reveals a rare beauty in the beautiful game.