A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 16
This is the third year in a row I’ve run this series in April. Today’s story: Dutch soccer coach hired to lead American Samoa effort to qualify for World Cup 2014:
D.C. United color commentator Thomas Rongen is preparing for a trip to the South Pacific soon — not for vacation, but to oversee a national soccer team that has never won an official match in its history.
Destination: Pago Pago, American Samoa.
“I’m an explorer,” Rongen told me after wrapping up his studio broadcast work for Comcast SportsNet’s coverage of United’s 2–1 loss at Vancouver late Wednesday night. “It’s a part of the world I’ve never been to — once in a lifetime.”
Rongen, 54, is the second U.S.-based coach in recent weeks to take over a foreign squad. But unlike Bob Bradley, the 2010 U.S. World Cup boss who has a realistic chance of guiding Egypt to the 2014 tournament, Rongen inherits a team that, from the best I can gather, has lost all 30 international matches since joining FIFA in 1998 and has been outscored 229–12. American Samoa holds the dubious distinction of being on the losing end of the most lopsided result in international history: 31–0 against Australia in a 2002 qualifier.
Hollywood has a long history of underdog sports movies: Rudy, Hoosiers, The Rookie, Breaking Away, Major League, The Natural, Bull Durham, The Bad News Bears, Rocky, Slap Shot, Remember the Titans and on and on and on.
Then there is a sub-genre: Coach gets stuck leading a poor team like The Mighty Ducks and The Big Green. And then a sub-sub-genre: Coach gets stuck leading a poor team in a different culture like The Air Up There and Cool Runnings.
Well, here you go: Take the world’s most popular sport [soccer], a veteran professional coach, a unique subculture [American Samoa], put them in a blender and… voila! A Disney movie!
You want underdog? Here is the national men’s team of American Samoa getting hammered by Australia 31–0:
But check this out:
APIA, Samoa — American Samoa’s players raised their arms and fell to the ground, as if they had won a major championship.
It was only a 2–1 victory over Tonga in the start of Oceania World Cup qualifying Tuesday night, but for soccer’s worst national team it was a triumph like no other.
Led by former U.S. Under-20 coach Thomas Rongen, American Samoa won its first international soccer match after 30 consecutive losses over 17 years. American Samoa is a U.S. protectorate in the South Pacific with a population of about 55,000.
“This is going to be part of soccer history, like the 31–0 against Australia was part of history,” Rongen said.
What would you do with this story idea?