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Next Goal Wins: nextgoalwinsmovie.com/
Welcome to the Worst Soccer Team in the World. Historically, of all the tiny islands and nations to field a national soccer team, one had stood out below the rest. Since Joining FIFA in 1998, by far the worst team in the world has been American Samoa. Located here, American Samoa is officially an unincorporated territory of the USA and along with Guam, The Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and The US Virgin Islands, has its own national soccer team, with quite an interesting history.
After joining FIFA in 1998, American Samoa proceeded to spend its first thirteen years going 0-29-0 with notable losses to Tahiti (0-12) in 1998, Tahiti again in 2000 (0-18 this time), Australia by a score of 0-31 which remains a FIFA Record for largest loss ever and they lost to OFC Powerhouse Vanuatu, 0-15. In their first 29 games American Samoa conceded 237 goals while scoring just 9 times, that's an average of over 8 goals per game allowed while scoring just 1 goal every 3 games. And it should be noted that with the exception of the loss to Australia, these games were all played against other small island nations with populations under 300,000.
But lest you think this is just about shitting all over American Samoa, we've got to talk about what happened after that 29th loss? Well, on 11/22/2011 American Samoa earned its first ever victory as a FIFA member in a 2-1 defeat of Tonga in a 2014 FIFA World Cup Qualifier AND two days later American Samoa went on to draw 1-1 with The Cook Islands AND only just missed qualifying for the next round on a final match-day 1-0 loss to Samoa.
This unlikely run is chronicled in the award winning 2014 Documentary "Next Goal Wins", give it a watch and you'll find yourself rooting along.
After their unprecedented run in 2011 American Samoa shot up in the FIFA World Rankings to 186 and after a similar run trying to qualify for the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia, they shot to their highest ever rank of 167 but have since slipped back to their current position at 189.
Honorable Mention Time: As you scroll through the island and micronations that perpetually inhabit the bottom 1/5 of the FIFA World Rankings there are 2 glaring exceptions.
1. The People's Republic of Bangladesh, with a population of 160,000,000 and a GDP of $690,000,000,000,000 sits below American Samoa at 192. But not to be outdone
2. The Islamic Republic of Pakistan with its 202,000,000 people and $1,000,000,000,000 GDP rests comfortable at an even 200.
Good job fellas.
And thank YOU for watching
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