They literally only had two balls for the national team,” Rongen told Goal.com. “I said, ‘Well, that might not be enough.’ I took some of my clothes out and transported some balls. If you put it on an airplane or a boat it takes weeks to get there.”
The Dutch-born coach didn’t have weeks. He didn’t even have time for jet lag. (“Immediately when I got there, I got to work. It’s amazing what the psyche can do.”) All he had was a job to do.
This was, easily, the most unique job of the 55-year-old’s extensive career.
After failing to break into Ajax’s first team, Rongen joined the NASL’s LA Aztecs in 1979. He jumped around several teams in different leagues across the United States, including a stint playing indoor soccer, and eventually settled in Florida.
It was there that he won the inaugural MLS Coach of the Year award in 1996, having posted the best record in the league with the Tampa Bay Mutiny. Since then, he’s coached the New England Revolution and D.C. United, where he won the MLS Cup in 1999. For the last decade (broken up by a spell on the Chivas USA sideline), he’s headed the U.S. U-20 team.
After failing to qualify for the most recent U-20 World Cup, Rongen was relieved of head coaching duties, but remained contracted to U.S. Soccer as a scout. That led him to the U.S. territory of American Samoa.
Source:goal.com
The Polynesian island has a population of under 70,000, none of whom can vote in presidential elections. It has a non-voting delegate in the House of Representatives. According to the C.I.A. website, 74.6 percent of the island is obese, the highest rate in the world. (The United States is sixth, with 33.9 percent.) That partially explains why American Samoa produces more American football players than soccer players.
“Physically, although they are strong, they weren’t soccer-fit in terms of their endurance and explosiveness,” Rongen said.
That was just the start. Since joining FIFA in 1994, 17 years ago, American Samoa had yet to win a game before Rongen showed up. Not a single one – 30 straight defeats. It is ranked dead-last in the FIFA rankings, in a five-way tie for 204th. An overall scoring record of 229-12 included the infamous 31-0 loss to Australia in April 2001. That match, the most lopsided scoreline in international soccer history, featured a good ol’ fashioned score recount at the end because the officials had lost track.
“They had major scars,” Rongen said. None more so than 31-year-old goalkeeper Nicky Salapu, the only holdover from the loss to Australia.
Salapu admits that after that match he turned to alcohol abuse to cope, and would beat Australia with Samoa (American Samoa wasn’t available) on a PlayStation with the other controller idle, racking up double-digit scores of pixelated revenge.
Rongen sought healing of a more analog sort for his shattered team. He brought Western tactics of yoga and meditation, doubling as a psychologist as well as coach.
“I just felt by individual conversations with Nicky, but also meditation with the group, that we really let go of the past,” Rongen said.
To help erase recent history, the 55-year-old coach reached even further back. He took his team to the harbor, marked by a giant gun, where a small group of American Samoans defeated the Tonga army, which had enslaved them. Tonga also provided the first test in Oceania World Cup qualifying.
“I related it to the 90 minutes of the game. I’m not a big ‘game is a war,’ but I felt for 90 minutes that it was a war,” Rongen explained. “We respect our opponents before the game, we don’t fear them, and there’s peace afterward, but we’re going to win this war again.”
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Rongen also led his team on a four-hour hike to the highest point on the island, where none of the players had gone before. The goal was “to conquer something that they thought they couldn’t conquer. Because of all their losses in their past it was important for me to get things they could do that they could succeed at.”
Of course, the American Samoan national team didn’t follow Rongen blindly up mountains – he’d earned a certain amount of trust. For one example, Rongen put his wife in a hotel but slept on the pavement with the rest of his team.
“I felt early on that I needed to show them that I was part of the group. I tried to suffer with them. It wasn’t suffering for them – they’re used to sleeping on the floor; I’m not. I’m a little spoiled from that standpoint,” Rongen said.
“But I hung in there. I got up at 4:30 just like them, ate their foods, some of which I had no idea what I was eating, but showing again that I wanted to totally integrate myself to their culture and be part of them. I think they really appreciated that.”
After training in the morning he would drive the players out to their jobs in the truck the federation lent him. The team is amateur, after all. (Tuna fishing and processing makes up most of American Samoa’s economy, though 30 percent was unemployed as of 2005.) Then Rongen would drive them back at night and lead another training session.
Tactically, Rongen shifted to a 4-5-1 to give his team more defensive ossification. He coached the wingers on transitioning into defense immediately upon losing the ball, and when to support the attack.
“I knew if we were solid in the back we would get our chances on that level,” Rongen, who was coached by Rinus Michels while a youth player at Ajax, mused. “The other teams are a little bit better than us, but not a lot better than us.”
In a few short weeks, the team had transformed tactically, physically and mentally.
“I knew before the game that they really believed that they could win. That was a tremendous step for them to take from a pure psychological standpoint,” Rongen said.
On Nov. 22, American Samoa beat Tonga 2-1. Bizarrely yet fittingly, a 17-year-old high schooler scored the clinching goal from an assist by a transgendered defender.
At the final whistle, Rongen immediately sought out his goalkeeper, Salapu.
“The first thing he said to me: ‘Coach, my son can look to me now and know I’m a winner. He thought I was a loser,’” Rongen recounted. “And then he broke down and he cried, and then I cried as well.”
Salapu’s son is four.
The team continued in the first round of World Cup qualifying. Amateurs, sleeping on the floor, singing religious songs before sharing indecipherable foods, Rongen couldn’t help but get caught up in the moment.
“It became – for me more so than them – a real spiritual journey,” he said. “I wasn’t raised religious.”
A 1-1 draw with the Cook Islands set the stage for a do-or-die match against Samoa. A 90th-minute goal by Samoa meant American Samoa didn’t advance to the second round of qualifying, but for the first time it had won a game and it had competed as equals. The experience changed the lives of the players, and certainly Rongen.
With his contract set to expire at the end of the year, Rongen’s had plenty of offers. He says both MLS and European teams have contacted him, and several other countries in Oceania would like him to work his healing magic.
“I’ve become the healthy soccer witch doctor in a short amount of time, which is great that I’ve been recognized, not only there but internationally,” Rongen said.
Ideally, though, he’d like to remain with U.S. Soccer (“so we don’t have to reinvent the wheels in some areas, i.e. the international scouting department”) as well as working with other nations in the Oceania Football Confederation. He says U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati will discuss such an arrangement with OFC officials, including president David Chung, in Japan this week.
“That would be, for me, the best of both worlds.”
Whatever happens, it’s impossible to imagine this story without a happy ending.
May 10th, 2012 
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mpions League, he will almost certainly surpass his own total over the next few weeks.
