It's a muggy Saturday afternoon in August at the Waipio Soccer Complex, where Field 21 is packing a crowd. Spectators roll up with beach chairs, giant umbrellas and coolers in tow. One group has brought their own Polynesian drums. In white is Hawaii's top semipro team, Paradise Soccer Club. In blue is the senior men's national team from American Samoa. From the sidelines, the high-octane beat of the wooden toere drum reverberates across the field, calling for something special to happen.
It's not every day a national team plays in your backyard, which explains the big turnout. What's more, it's American Samoa, the squad featured in the 2023 movie Next Goal Wins, directed by Taika Waititi, based on a 2014 documentary of the same name. The story follows the lowest-ranked team in the world, seeking redemption after suffering the most humiliating defeat ever in an international match, a 31-0 loss to Australia in 2001. The team hires ex-Major League Soccer coach Thomas Rongen to prepare them for the World Cup Qualifier in 2011. (Spoiler alert: American Samoa goes on to score two goals against Tonga, giving them their first international win.)
Now, thirteen years later, the team is in Honolulu for a seventeen-day training camp in advance of the 2026 World Cup Qualifier, which will be held in Apia, the capital of Samoa, on September 6. The crowd has come to see just how good—or notoriously bad—the team is. Answering the call of the toere, midfielder Zach Manao nails a forty-yard goal, securing a 2-0 victory for the sport's most famous underdogs. After the postgame team cheer ("Sau ia!" [come on]! "Uso!" [brother]!), they pose for a photo with Paradise Soccer Club and present them with a case of canned tuna, American Samoa's top export (in 2020 the StarKist cannery processed two million cans a day).
The win lifts the boys' spirits, which are frayed from the twice-a-day practices and being around each other 24/7. The Football Federation of American Samoa (FFAS) chose Honolulu for training because the weather is similar to that of Apia, where the four lowest-ranked teams in the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) will compete to advance: American Samoa will meet archrival Samoa, and the victor plays the winner of Tonga vs. Cook Islands. FFAS has rehired Rongen—the same high-energy, cool-running Dutch-American coach, now 67, who inspired success in 2011-as head coach.
Fielding a national team—much less a competitive one—is a challenge for a place like American Samoa, to put it mildly. The talent pool is shallow: The unincorporated US territory covers a scant seventy-seven square miles, slightly larger than urban Honolulu, with a population of forty-five thousand (about the size of Pearl City). Funding comes solely from Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA); corporate sponsors won't even glance in the direction of such a small market. Every international match incurs exorbitant travel costs that are prohibitive for families in a territory with a median household income of $28,352. And soccer is less popular in American Samoa than rugby, volleyball or even cricket. If the deck weren't stacked enough, the most talented young athletes set their sights on American football, its scholarships and professional contracts being more reliable tickets to a better future.
"When I stand on that soccer field, I feel a strong energy. Everyone I grew up with, all my family members—they're with me," says veteran goalkeeper Nicky Salapu, who was born in American Samoa and raised in Samoa.
Still, FIFA requires that all national team players or their parents or grandparents be born in the country they represent. The current squad has eight players from American Samoa, three from Oahu (when the US Navy withdrew from the territory in 1951, American Samoans were offered free passage to Hawaii, and more than a thousand took the offer). Twelve more live on the US continent. It's hard to ignore the fact that several American Samoa players are related to key FFAS executives. If it looks and smells like nepotism, that's because it might be. But when you're short on resources, it's natural to lean on people you know.
This year team members come from nine different US cities. Their time in Honolulu is as much about esprit de corps as it is about honing technique. "Trying to create team chemistry can be challenging because everybody is the top dog wherever they came from," says assistant coach Shani Simpson. "But if they're willing to fight and work for one another, they could do well." Simpson is a former United Soccer League championship and MLS player who now serves as director of coaching for the San Francisco Seals, a professional youth soccer program that his father started in 1982.
Tavita Taumea, CEO of FFAS for the past 19 years, and Rongen know very well how abrasive cross-cultural dynamics can be. Taumea, whose stoic, mild manner is the opposite of Rongen's animated, brash personality, recalls how Rongen's Western standards quickly clashed with faa Samoa, the Samoan way, when he first arrived in 2011 and saw that there weren't any beds in the team's quarters.
"Where do the players sleep?" Rongen asked.
"You just walked across the room where they are sleeping," Taumea replied.
"Where are the beds?"
"In Samoan culture the boys are not used to sleeping on the beds."
"No, we need to have beds for the players," Rongen protested. "So where's the equipment person?"
"What that means?"
"Someone to fix the beds for the players."
"Hey, Thomas," Taumea said, "our culture, no one fix your bed. You have to fix your own bed."
Rongen admits it took time to adjust. He remembers the first time the prayer curfew bell—sounded by clanging an oxygen tank in each village—interrupted a practice. "Cars and buses are stopping, people are coming off the buses. While I'm looking at that, my players are all sitting on the ground," he says. "I'm going, 'Guys, training is still happening.' They go, 'Coach, every day at 6 o'clock we have to reflect.'"
Rongen got used to it, even came to appreciate it. "A beautiful part of their culture is slowing down and understanding what is really important in life: family, religion, staying true to their culture. In Western society it's the total opposite." Rongen borrows from his own experiences to instill the importance of mutual respect in his players. On his flipchart he scribbles three phrases: NAO LE MANUMALO PEPI. "Just win, baby," he translates. Underneath that: FAA MATAI. "I want everybody to be chiefs of their own capacity." And finally: FAA SAMOA. "The closer we can get to this, the closer we can get to 'Just win, baby.' That may be even more important than the footballing part."
American Samoa's men's national soccer team celebrates a 2-1 victory over the Cook Islands, sweet redemption after an emotional 0-2 loss to archrival Samoa in the World Cup Qualifier last September. It was American Samoa's first win in nine years.
After the training in Honolulu ends, the team flies to Pago Pago's humble airport in American Samoa, where relatives flock to meet them. It's a momentous trip for two 15-year-olds from Hawaii, Kody Savelio and John-Kacey Ferreira-Sala. Their dads, Patrick Savelio, FFAS' Honolulu liaison, who's instrumental in coordinating logistics for the team, and John Ferreira, who started a banana bread business to support John-Kacey's soccer endeavors, are proud chaperones. John-Kacey's grandfather and grandmother (his mom's parents, his American Samoa bloodline) and extended family from American Samoa are also tagging along as his cheerleaders.
"For 15-year-olds to play in a World Cup qualifying game? That is pretty awesome," says Rongen, who says these class of 2027 grads could be the team's next leaders. "Have they proven they belong? No doubt. But it's a lot to ask of a 15-year-old to compete against men-and in the case of Western Samoa, pros and semipros. The big question is, Are they ready to play at that level?"
The two class of '27 grads say they are. "It's not just about wanting to win, it's about refusing to lose," Kody Savelio says, repeating one of his favorite Rongen mantras. Ferreira-Sala, who was named the 2024 Interscholastic League of Honolulu Defensive Player of the Year, adds, "We're playing for our country—that's forty-thousand-plus people in American Samoa—along with people supporting us from all the places we're from. That's a lot of energy behind us."
Anticipation builds as the World Cup qualifier approaches. The players practice drills and scrimmage against each other. They stretch, they take ice baths in truck beds and kiddie pools, and on Sunday they go to church. Falling easily into the unhurried rhythm of equatorial island life, they're more relaxed here, and kicking the ball around on the FFAS field feels, well, like home.
On September 3 the team hops the short flight from Pago to Apia, amped to play in spite of a few not-so-trivial challenges. A leg injury plagues veteran striker and Aiea resident Frankie Beauchamp, whose wife and two toddlers have also made the trip from Honolulu, and goalie Felise Fata is battling an excruciating tooth infection. Then, three nights before the game, Rongen leaves for the Netherlands: His 94-year-old mother has been hospitalized with a broken hip.
From grassy pitch to sandy beach: The team—twenty-three players from nine cities—spent two weeks on Oahu training for the World Cup Qualifier. Left to right: Alii Mitchell, Ziion Best, Kauvaha Tua and Kaleopa Siligi kick it at Bellows Beach, Oahu.
Apia is to Pago what Oahu is to Molokai. Samoa's capital city is more dense and developed, with resorts and restaurants that cater to Western preferences—at Western prices. (A Big Mac meal at the sole McDonald's is a whopping 72 tala, or about $26.) Inland and away from the colonial buildings in the city center, lush foliage surrounding the thatch and tin-roofed fale (houses) softens the landscape, interrupted only by the palatial churches that pop up like castles out of the forest. At the local grocer, 10 tala ($3.60) fetches a pound of turkey tails, a very fatty meat that's a Samoan favorite.
In the village of Lepea, there's a popular swimming hole called Papaseea ("sliding rock"), where a series of small waterfalls is believed to be guarded by the spirit woman Telesa. Some say they hear Telesa singing but never see her. The phenomenon spawned a Samoan proverb: E tetele a Pesega, ae matua i le o o E tetele a Pesega, ae tua i Nuu Lelei. Loosely translated, "Whenever something bad happens, good always comes of it, even if we don't see it at the time."
If anyone can live by those words, it's Nicky Salapu, who somersaults off the cliff and down a sixteen-foot face of slick boulders at Papaseea, his old stomping grounds. Never mind that he's 44 and the starting goalie. Leaps of faith come easily to Salapu, who was crucified after the 2001 drubbing with disparaging headlines like "The Keeper Who Conceded 31 Goals." When you've been deemed the worst in the world, there's nowhere to go but up.
The team wasn't entirely responsible for that historic loss, though. It was mostly a consequence of FIFA's last-minute decision to require US passports for every American Samoa player. Of the twenty-man squad (most of whom were born in neighboring Samoa), Salapu was the only one left eligible. The U20 (under-20) players, the most obvious substitutes, were sitting for exams, forcing FFAS to recruit pretty much anyone with a passport who could kick a ball. At age 20, Salapu was the elder statesman of a team of teenagers hopelessly mismatched against professionals. Ironically, Salapu's performance led to a contract with Palm Beach Soccer Club (now Gold Coast City FC), and a few months later he was living in Australia.
Players flew to Pago Pago, American Samoa, for a final week of training and scrimmages on their home field. Here, Ben Stefanon (left) and John-Kacey Ferrera-Sala (right) defend the goal for white. Every huddle included a prayer and cheer: "Sau ia [come on]! ... Uso [brother]!"
Salapu was born in Fagaalu, American Samoa, but he was taken to Samoa at three months old to be raised by his grandparents. He had been born with his left foot bent backward, a deformity his grandmother corrected by wrapping his foot with lapalapa (coconut stalk) and regularly massaging it into position. By the time he was 11, he was playing soccer with the adults in his village of Lepea, "where the [soccer] legends are born," one OFC staffer says. Salapu played for Samoa's national teams for eight years before returning to American Samoa after his grandparents died.
The tournament gives Salapu a chance to reconnect with family he hasn't seen in five years. Every time he returns, he donates jerseys and cleats to Lepea's soccer club—he hasn't forgotten the days when he had to cover the holes of someone else's discarded shoes with electrical tape or play barefoot. He stops at his parents' house, where his youngest sister hugs him like he's been gone forever. He pays his respects at the graves of his grandparents, father, sister Erica and brother Michael—both gone too soon, he says. Before he dons his goalie gloves at game time, he will write all their names on his wrist tape.
Rongen calls the showdown between American Samoa and Samoa an "El Clasico," referring to the standoffs between Spain's soccer powerhouses Barcelona and Real Madrid. It's fair to say that the two Samoas exhibit a similarly fierce rivalry with relatable geopolitical differences. The Samoan archipelago was split in 1899 as Britain, Germany and the United States jockeyed for power in the South Pacific. Germany controlled the western; the eastern went to the US, which had already established a naval coaling station at Pago Pago. (On April 15, 2025, American Samoa will celebrate the 125th anniversary of Flag Day, when the American flag was first raised on the main island of Tutuila in 1900 in a declaration of sovereignty over Tutuila and neighbor island Aunuu.) Local chiefs formally ceded the eastern islands to the US in 1904, and "American Samoa" became a strategic US Navy base until 1950, when oversight was transferred to the Department of the Interior. American Samoans do not have US citizenship or voting rights, but the US government recognizes their right to self-determination and does not interfere with their system of communal landownership and other traditional practices.
The agony of defeat: Mitchell kneels at the end of the match against Samoa.
After World War I, New Zealand seized Western Samoa from Germany and retained control until 1962, when Western Samoa became the first Pacific Island nation to gain independence. It officially changed its name to Samoa in 1997. Its population is about three times that of American Samoa, but American Samoa has a higher GDP thanks to subsidies from the US government. To align more closely with trading partners Australia and New Zealand, Samoa made two bold changes: In 2009 it switched to driving on the left side of the road, and in 2011 it shifted to the western side of the international dateline, skipping December 30 and jumping ahead to December 31. That put it twenty-four hours ahead of American Samoa, even though they're only forty miles apart.
"We're the same people, same culture, same language. So there's a camaraderie, but it's also, like, who's the better Samoa?" says Jaeyah Saelua, a faafafine (a third gender recognized by Samoans) who made history as the first transgender player in a FIFA World Cup qualifier when she started for American Samoa's men's national team in 2011. (Saelua figured prominently in Next Goal Wins.) Samoa has never lost to American Samoa, and they don't intend to. "Every time we play Samoa, the slide tackles, the tussles for the ball—they're much harder. The speed is up, and the level of play is higher."
When the national anthems play, nobody feels the emotional tug more than Salapu. "When I stand on that soccer field, I have a strong energy. Everyone I grew up with, all my family members that are still alive and have passed, they're with me. I feel like I'm representing them, not only American Samoa," he says. "When I'm playing, my heart is in American Samoa, but my soul is here in Samoa with my family." With hands over hearts, love of country is on display, but, as the players stand shoulder to shoulder, another allegiance is also apparent: a universal devotion to the beautiful game.
The two Samoas played a confrontational match in Apia, the capital of Samoa, which hosted the first round of the World Cup Qualifier.
While the world's finest stadiums boast retractable fields with UV lights and irrigation systems to keep the turf pristine, Samoa's Toleafoa JS Blatter Stadium makes do without an electronic scoreboard, a concession stand or even a game clock. Someone climbs the flagpole barefoot to raise the national flags.
It's eighty-six degrees at game time—hot enough to warrant official cooling breaks—with humidity at 70 percent. Dark clouds bode a downpour but no one is fazed. Saelua passes out American Samoa flags as the crowd of six hundred, mostly home-team supporters, trickles in.
Assistant coach Hugo Gutierrez, who lives in Mililani on Oahu and is the boys varsity soccer program director at Punahou School, says the players were quiet in the locker room, feeling the weight of the moment. Gutierrez, a seasoned competitor who's played professionally in Mexico and coached in Brazil, explains that the work has been done. "You have rehearsed and rehearsed," he reminds them. "You don't read the play, you write the play. If you read the play, it's already been written. If you write the play, you're in charge of that play. The moment you stop thinking and you start feeling, you're at a different level of soccer."
Both teams are fired up, and it's clear the game is going to be physically brutal. Three minutes in, American Samoa misses an opportunity to score when the ball caroms off the crossbar. Still, they maintain position on the field, and Samoa has a hard time penetrating their midblock. The cringe-worthy roughness results
in stop-and-start action with players tumbling and trainers running onto the field—it's painful to watch. Before halftime, rightwinger Petu Pouli goes down with cramps, John-Kacey Ferreira-Sala takes a knee to the ribs and Beauchamp is carted off on a stretcher.
As substitutions are made, momentum shifts. "Coming into a heated game like that, if you're not mentally prepared, it can be a whirlwind," says starting forward Alii Mitchell, who along with returning players Beauchamp, Salapu, Kaleopa Siligi and team captain Justin Manao, still feels the agony of losing to Samoa and failing to advance in 2015.
Mitchell, a certified medical dosimetrist who works with cancer patients in Atlanta, is widely respected by his teammates for his dedication. His dad was born in American Samoa and moved away after joining the military. (True factoid: More soldiers enlist from American Samoa per capita than any other state or territory.) Their family sport was golf—his brother and sister both played in college-but at 16 Mitchell decided he wanted to play soccer. He loved it so much that he drove an hour each way to play for the nearest club. After high school he played for Middle Georgia State University.
Pouli “Petu” Pouli prepares mentally with his teammates. “In soccer, you can dominate shots on goal, possession, tackles won—and still lose,” says head coach Shani Simpson. “It’s a cruel game,” adds assistant coach Hugo Gutierrez. “You still love it.”
During his sophomore year Mitchell became curious about his Samoan heritage. He read about the Next Goal Wins documentary online and discovered FFAS was recruiting players for 2015. "Since I was a kid, I've always wanted to be a part of history. I just didn't know how I would do it," says Mitchell. He sent FFAS a clip, and after impressing them at tryouts in Seattle that May, he made the team. A month before the tournament, as misfortune would have it, he popped his ankle three times. He still played, but not at 100 percent. "As soon as we didn't advance, I had a lot of guilt because I couldn't do what I had wanted to do for the team. To sit on that for nine years—it stinks," he says, hungry for vindication.
At halftime the score is still nil-nil, but some of the American Samoa players are rattled, convinced they should have scored already. "When you get into a pressure situation, if you go in with any doubts, those doubts get magnified," says Simpson, who's subbing for Rongen, in the locker room. He lets them vent before telling them, "You guys are frustrated, anxious or whatever's going on in your head, but you're playing really well. We just did exactly what we've been training to do. Sit back, absorb pressure, force them to hit long balls, counterattack."
When play resumes, the refs call a penalty—a cheap one, according to those on the visiting side-against American Samoa that results in a crucial first point for Samoa. At seventy-two minutes Salapu gets kicked above the eye while diving for the ball, and the goalkeeper is down for almost eleven minutes. As regulation winds down, the window of opportunity for American Samoa starts to close.
"Depending on which side of the ball you're on, the clock moves at different speeds," says Gavin Coffin, a FIFA superfan and teacher from Hilo who flew over for the game. Two minutes before the game ends, Samoa scores a second goal to cement the win. At the final whistle the heavens release a deluge, and Mitchell sinks to a squat, pinching his forehead as the raindrops mix with his tears.
Former Major League Soccer coach Thomas Rongen was hired to train the team in Honolulu. Rongen previously led American Samoa to its first international win in 2011.
"As you mature you realize you're not just playing for yourself, you're playing for the kids in American Samoa who aspire to be like you or hope to someday make history, because American Samoa deserves it. We just come up short sometimes," an anguished Mitchell says. "I want the best for the people, the kids, my nieces and nephews. I want everyone to realize American Samoa does produce soccer players and not just football players."
A few days later Samoa defeats Tonga, advancing to round two, which takes place in Vanuatu and New Zealand in November. (Spoiler number two: Samoa didn't advance to round three.) The tournament concludes with American Samoa beating the Cook Islands in a friendly match. It's the first game the team has won in nine years, and the players leave on a positive note. "Hopefully, after the emotions subside and they get a little distance, they can look back and say, 'Yeah, we actually did play well,'" Simpson says, underscoring that success is not measured by wins only. "You can lose but still win big."
With their next reunion uncertain, saying tofa (goodbye) is bittersweet. "You wouldn't think you can really build anything in that amount of time, but in those short weeks you go through thick and thin. Every single day you wake up, and you might be tired of seeing those guys," Mitchell laughs. "But at the end of the day, we're all usos. We're all brothers. And we push each other to be better. We know we're different, but in our hearts we're all Samoan."
