Team Guam’s glum record

Victory on the football pitch has eluded Guam for over a decade

Guam‘s national football team has the dubious title of being the joint worst team in the world.

 

Despite being in the game for the last 12 years, when the country joined Fifa, the sport’s governing body, it has yet to win a match.

 

The initial enthusiasm has not translated into results and it joins Djibouti, East Timor, Belize, the US Virgin Islands, Montserrat, American Samoa, Sao Tome e Príncipe and Aruba at joint 199 out of 199 in the Fifa world rankings. 

 

Guam‘s national football coach said the team’s attitude, especially towards training, was the main reason for Guam‘s failure to clinch a single victory after years of playing football.

 

Attendance was very low because players lacked the discipline required for training, Norio Tsukitate told Al Jazeera.

 

He said they chose to party instead of going for training, or preferred to spend time with girlfriends and wives, or attend family gatherings.

 

“Big problem, difficult situation. Difficult maybe but there is always hope every time they walk out on to the field,” he added.

 

Alan Jamison, the national side’s midfield player, said he occasionally dreamed of playing a part in scoring a goal for Guam.

 

Taiwan beat Guam’s national side 10-0

“Just to be involved in a goal, winning goal, any goal, would be fantastic for me and I do dream about that occasionally,” he said.

 

But a recent outing to Macau for an East Asian tournament resulted in shattered dreams for Guam, which lost the match 10-0 to Taiwan.

 

Jamison felt the result was not humiliating because the team did “a lot better than the result looked like”.

 

“It didn’t look too good for the keeper, the last line of defence,” he said, adding that he was “a little unsure of how many goals he’s let in with the national side”.

 

The good news for Guam is that since the Macau match, the team has scored three goals. The bad news is it has yet to win a match.