31-0: An American Samoan Nightmare

By this point they were beyond even humiliation. The bedraggled and deflated American Samoan team stood in a line, their baggy shirts flapping in the light evening breeze. With arms around each other’s shoulders they faced the appreciative Australian crowd and sang, in spite of the tears welling up in many of the players’ eyes. It was a song of pride, of defiance, of home. But home must have felt a long way off for the youthful squad who had just become world news, and not in a good way.

‘After the game we walked into the locker room, I bowed my head down and I cried a little bit,’ the goalkeeper Nicky Salapu recalled years later. ‘I felt very embarrassed and like I don’t want to play soccer anymore.’

World Rankings: Anguilla’s Points Expunged

The latest FIFA rankings were published today with the confirmation that Anguilla’s sole remaining ranking points – two point left over from a 0-0 draw in a 2011 friendly match with the US Virgin Islands – have withered away to nothing. That last non-defeat now dating back more than four years it’s points no longer count towards Anguilla’s total, which now stands at a magnificent zero.

Of course this doesn’t make a huge difference in the grand scheme of things. Anguilla were already ranked last thanks to Bhutan’s rise so this hasn’t made any difference in terms of their labelling as the current worst in the world.