Next Goal Wins for ‘world’s worst football team’

{{In 2001, Australia set a world record for the largest ever victory in an international football match, netting 31 goals without a single breach of their own defence.}}

The game’s top scorer, Archie Thompson, broke the record for most goals scored by a player in an international match by claiming 13 goals.

While Thompson is now the tricky answer to particularly tough pub quiz question, the team Australia beat, American Samoa, is stamped on the memory of any football fan who heard the brutal score line.

The defeat sent the team spinning to the bottom of Fifa’s world rankings – an unenviable slot they would occupy for the next 10 years. No wins, just two goals scored.

So, in 2011, when the qualifying rounds for the approaching World Cup in Rio brought a maverick new football coach to the tiny South Pacific island, British documentary makers Kristian Brodie, Mike Brett and Steve Jamison decided to chart the team’s progress.

The result is Next Goal Wins, which has already been enthusiastically received at film festivals across the world.

“We’ve been in a dark room editing this movie and have felt an incredible connection with American Samoa and the journey we went on was incredibly emotional,” says Brett. “But to start to share that with audiences is an amazing experience.”

Producer Brodie adds: “Everybody in football is familiar with American Samoa because of that defeat and I think it sparked something in all of us that there was something behind the result which said something about the sprit of the game.”

“If you are a team that loses all the time – and that’s what American Samoa was – it says something about your spirit that you’re still playing.”