Listen to an interview with American Samoa goalie Nicky Sarapu. Sports Witness Podcast With BBC Sound.
Imagine your worst day at work and multiply it by 31. We may come close to what Nikki Sarapoo experienced on April 11, 2001.
It was the day the American Samoa goalie suffered the heaviest loss in international soccer history.
Sarap told the Sporting Witness podcast that strangers still approach him to ask about this extraordinary contest.
The trigger was the World Cup qualifier against Australia. Led by a hastily cobbled together team full of teenagers, American Samoa continued to churn out 31 goals without reply.
Sarapu, now 43, says he had to hide the tears from his teammates after losing 31-0.
“I waited until the game was over, suppressing all my emotions,” he says.
There were many mitigating factors for such a large loss. First, American Samoa's population at the time was just 58,000, while Australia's population was 19 million. These small fry were admitted to FIFA just three years ago.
In addition, before qualifying for the 2002 World Cup, FIFA stipulated that only players with American passports could represent Pacific Island countries. Out of a team of 20 players, Sarap was the only one eligible.
What followed was a frantic scramble to assemble a team.
“We had to find someone within two weeks,” he explains. “In the end, I had to choose from high school students.”
The team had three players who were 15 years old, with an average age of just 18, and Sarap, 20, was a relative veteran.
Unsurprisingly, the novice team got off to a bad start in their qualifying campaign, losing 13-0 to Fiji and losing 8-0 to Samoa. It must have felt like a relative success when they lost just 5-0 to Tonga in their third group game.
Meanwhile, Australia, who narrowly missed out on qualifying for the 1998 World Cup, had a point to prove. The Socceroos defeated Tonga 22-0 and headed into their final group game against American Samoa.
Sarap said his biggest goal before the game was “not to get past the 22-0 mark.”
It took eight minutes for Con Bousianis to score Australia's first goal. Three minutes later, Archie Thompson scored. The 22-year-old, who had played two other games for his country, completed his hat-trick by the 27th minute. In 75 minutes, he scored 13 points.
David Zdrilic contributed eight goals, while Vusianis scored a hat trick.
Sarapu said he spent the match urging his teammates to “go forward” instead of “bundling” in front of him because he felt it was difficult to see the ball at times.
American Samoa's only attack of the match came in the 86th minute, forcing a save from Australian goalkeeper Michael Petkovic.
Sarapu said he thought the Socceroos' approach was unsporting.
“How many goals do we need to make a difference?'' he asks.
If he had been coaching Australia that day, he says, when his team had scored 20 points, he would have told them to “keep holding the ball until the end of the game.”
Sarap had to wait 10 years to somehow erase the memory of that humiliation. By this stage, American Samoa had lost 38 games in a row and had a minus-217 goal differential. They are ranked 204th in the FIFA rankings, sharing last place with Andorra, Montserrat, Samoa and San Marino.
However, the team had just appointed Dutchman Thomas Rongen as manager, and Sarap was confident enough in his project to come out of retirement.
One of Rongen's innovations was changing the formation from 4-4-2 to 4-2-3-1 to provide better defensive cover.
On November 23, 2011, American Samoa faced Tonga in their first qualifying match for the 2014 World Cup.
“The whole team was confident that we would win,” Sarapu said.
Just before half-time, Tonga keeper Shalom Luanio diverted Ramin Ott's shot into his own net.
In the 74th minute, American Samoa scored their second goal when Caneti Farera sent the ball past Luanio.
“I was so happy that I thought, 'I have to keep my emotions in check because I have to concentrate in the match,'” Sarap recalled.
Tonga pulled one back in the 87th minute, but it wasn't enough. The match ended 2-1, giving American Samoa their first FIFA-sanctioned victory.
Ten years after that humiliation against Australia, Sarapu's moment of redemption came.
“It was the first time I cried while playing soccer since the game against Australia in 2001,'' he says.
Rongen's exploits in American Samoa were chronicled in the 2023 Taika Waititi film Next Goal Wins, directed by Michael Fassbender.
Sarapu still plays for the national team, while his son Dylan plays for the U-17 team as a midfielder.
