Thursday, 29 May 2008
Australia 31 - 0 American Samoa
Back before Australia reclassified itself as an Asian country it's national team regularly had to face-off against the assorted motley crews of part-timers and weekend warriors that made up the rest of the OFC. With the possible exception of New Zealand none of them had a chance against the might of the Socceroos, the best they could hope for being to survive the 90 minutes with some shred of dignity intact.
On the 11th of April 2001 American Samoa (who occupied a vertigo-inducing 200th position in the FIFA World Rankings and had never won an officially-sanctioned match) attempted to do just that. They failed.
Initially the scoreline was listed as 32-0, however it was later confirmed by FIFA to be a much less embarrassing 31-0. Regardless it was still enough to count as a new World Record with Aussie striker Archie Thompson also claiming the individual record by hitting the back of the net an astounding (and possibly unlucky) thirteen times.
Despite the humiliating result for the Samoans then-manager Tony Langkilde remained upbeat. Sadly his optimism was misplaced as he was later sacked and, at the current time, American Samoa are still yet to claim their first victory.
And you thought San Marino were bad.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment