Champions
We've won the league already.
Champions
It feels like we just started — and we’ve already gone up as champions.
We sealed the deal with a big 4-2 victory over Lion Heart in the 18th game of the season. Our win, in front of a moderate crowd of 432, clinched the trophy for us and served as the first major win of my career.
It’s the first time that PanSa East F.C. have won the FFAS Senior League title since 2005. The board is simply beyond belief, as they thought the best we could hope for this season was a mid-table finish.
Hopefully it will only get better from here!
The Stars
I’ve already talked about a few of our stars.
Toa Maile will likely win the top scorer award here in American Samoa. His first half hat trick against Lion Heart puts his goal total up at 29.
As I’ve mentioned before, the man in second place is Petu Pouli, who has scored 23 for second place Vaiala Tongan so far. Pouli is going to join PanSa East F.C. once the season ends in mid-November.
Third in the scoring is Antonio Pouli with Utulei, who has scored 21. I’ve also got an offer in for him. Isn’t the world of amateur teams fun?
Other star players include Pela Malani, an attacking left winger who overcame a few rough mid-season starts to explode as one of our best players, and Corey Nortey, a 15-year-old midfielder who managed to score 9 goals from way out there.
Champions League
It feels like we’ve barely started, and yet we’re already making our first Champions League appearance.
We’ll be in the Oceania Champions League. I believe we’ll start out with a few qualification matches, and will move up from there if we win.
I don’t think we stand much of a chance, but we can always hope. My plan is to try to get as much attention as I can in hopes of moving on to a more established club in some place like Fiji or New Zealand. It might take a while, though. For some strange reason, most people don’t tend to think very highly of football in American Samoa…