WHEN Thomas Rongen was offered the chance to coach the American Samoan national football team ahead of a World Cup qualifier, he jumped at the chance to move to the South Pacific paradise.
But this was no ordinary coaching job in the sunshine.
Dubbed the worst team in the world, the side had lost all 30 of their official matches during their 20-year history and in 2001 had suffered the most crushing defeat ever in an international, losing 31-0 to Australia.
A decade on, Dutch-born Thomas — who had played alongside such legends as Johan Cruyff and George Best in the US before becoming a Major League Soccer coach — had just three weeks to knock them into shape before their qualifying matches for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.
But the seemingly impossible task would prove to be a lifeline for players and coach alike, offering redemption to the ridiculed 2001 goalie whose own son called him a loser, while putting Thomas in touch with a spirituality which allowed him to finally grieve for the loss of his teenage stepdaughter.
The moving story, told in a 2014 documentary, Next Goal Wins, has now been turned into a Hollywood movie of the same name by director Taika Waititi, with Michael Fassbender in the role of Thomas.
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The classic underdog-to-victory tale, to be released on Boxing Day, sees the former US Under-20 coach taking on a squad too unfit to last 90 minutes and leading them to their first international victory, a 2-1 win against Tonga, in November 2011.
It also focuses on star player Jaiyah “Johnny” Saelua, the first transgender footballer to play as an international, with trans actor Kaimana in the role, and the seemingly fractious relationship between her and the coach.
It was only after taking up the job in American Samoa that Thomas realised the uphill task ahead of him when he watched a few games in a tournament before meeting the team.
The rag-tag bunch had turned out at the Pacific Games representing their tiny island territory, which lies 1,317 miles east of Fiji and has a population of just 44,620.
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Thomas, now 67, told a sports website: “Nobody could play 90 minutes. OK, I’ve got three weeks, that’s an area where we can improve.
Uphill battle
“I thought I could make a few tweaks, but I’m not sure you can do anything big in three weeks.”
The team were also still mentally bruised by the humiliating Aussie defeat ten years earlier. It had come about after a last-minute demand for the players to produce American passports, which 19 out of 20 could not do.
They were replaced by a new squad of inexperienced players with an average age of 19, two of whom, including Jaiyah, were just 15.
Goalkeeper Nicky Salapu was the only original squad member who could produce the required passport — which he would live to regret after having to pick the ball out of the net 31 times. He retired from the game shortly afterwards.
Thomas told us: “When he walked down the street with his son, they would say, ‘You’re the guy who gave up 31 goals’.
“He said, ‘My son thinks I’m a loser and I’m done with this’.” The defeat haunted Nicky until Thomas persuaded him to return for the 2011 Tonga game which ended in victory.
The coach explained: “He came back and the greatest moment was hugging him and he said, ‘I just called my son and he now thinks I’m a hero’. Those things end up being more important than some of the other stuff.”
The first goal came from captain Ramin Ott, who scored a rocket in the 44th minute.
Shalom Luani doubled their lead in the 74th.
Tonga scored with three minutes to go, but it was too late to snatch the landmark victory from the ecstatic American Samoan team.
Portrayed in the film as a hard-drinking divorcee — which director Taika has admitted “twisted” the story — Thomas was battling demons when he arrived on the island in 2011.
He was struggling to cope with the death of his stepdaughter Nicole, a 19-year-old college footballer, who died in a car crash in 2004.
Although an atheist, Thomas embraced the deeply religious culture of the island, which is more than 98 per cent Christian, and found the daily prayers helped him to confront his grief for the first time.
He said: “It’s a small island and there are a lot of tribes and around 4pm they all do their big bells, and everyone stops, even cars. People sit down and reflect and pray. This happened during a training session, and I was like, ‘What the f***?’ Then the third day I joined them in church and I just cried.
“That was an awakening of a part in my body that I had suppressed and it allowed me to be free again and think about my daughter with a smile now.”
Maori New Zealander Taika, who is married to British singer Rita Ora, says Next Goal Wins is inspired by the 2014 documentary but only loosely based on it.
He told an audience at this year’s Toronto Film Festival: “I saw the documentary a few years ago and I thought it was a story I had to tell, and twist it — other- wise you might as well see the documentary.”
Thomas’s own incredible career is worthy of a documentary in itself.
He first made his name as a player, rising through the ranks as a promising defender with Amsterdam-sche FC. Then, in his early 20s, he moved to the US to compete in the new North American Soccer League.
He played — and roomed — with his hero Johan Cruyff, and George Best and Franz Beckenbauer, who all played out their later years in the US.
Keeping up with George proved a challenge — particularly off the pitch. Thomas told sport website The Athletic how the Manchester United hero’s first wife Angie confronted him after a night-long booze-up on Christmas Eve 1979.
He said: “Our routine was we’d drag him up the stairs, undress him and get him into bed and the next day we’d make sure he was OK. So we open the kitchen door and (Dutch footballer) Wim Suurbier steps in first, and Angie is standing there with a butcher knife.
“She’s six feet away, she takes two steps forward, she has it above her head and she goes towards Bestie.”
That drama ended without mishap, and peacemaker Thomas is similarly seen as a hero in American Samoa. But in the film he is at first portrayed as a bad guy, especially when it comes to Jaiyah’s identity.
She is a member of the island culture’s “third gender”, or Fa’afafine, who are widely accepted in American Samoan society. Her team-mates were supportive throughout her career and she was known for her killer tackles and “taking no prisoners” on the pitch.
But in the film Thomas initially deliberately misgenders her, calling her by her male name before she finally punches him to the ground.
Jaiyah — who changed her name legally in 2017 and fully transitioned in 2019 — is behind the film but she insists the tension between her and Thomas is hugely exaggerated, calling their relationship “not bad”.
She added: “It was a nice little twist to make Thomas — or Fassbender — into a villain in the movie.”
Despite beating Tonga, American Samoa failed to qualify for the 2014 World Cup — they drew another qualifier 1-1 against the Cook Islands but lost another, against Samoa, 1-0.
But under Thomas’s leadership they found a new sense of optimism and for Taika, Next Goal Wins was more about celebrating American Samoa than the team’s rise to victory.
He told Time magazine that when audiences watch the movie: “I just want them to experience a little bit of a different culture that they probably never think about.”
As for Thomas, he was originally to be played by Russell Crowe, a friend of the director, but he added: “He (Taika) said Russell is so heavy he can’t run up and down, so we went with Fassbender.”
Now living in South Florida, Thomas is currently in talks to coach American Samoa for the 2026 World Cup qualifying campaign.
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He said: “That might be a sequel.”
- Next Goal Wins is in cinemas from December 26.
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
