This nice little piece over at ESPN/Soccernet (<--Click) talks about the run of America Samoa, who have been dead last in the FIFA rankings for some time now. Pretty cool stuff that Thomas Rongen, the US U-20 national team coach, lent a hand to help them out.
American Samoa players celebrate after a historic a 2-1 win over Tonga in Oceania World Cup qualifying in November.
Reading through this article, I came across this:
""Walking in the first day for the first meeting," he said, "there's literally a very good-looking what I thought female walking into the room. And I thought she must be a team administrator, or a massage therapist. And I actually said to her, 'What's your position?' And she said 'center back.'I came to find out that it was a fa'afafine, a third-sex transgendered, who became one of our more important players. So that was an interesting cultural thing, totally accepted in this culture --dress every day as a woman, date men, but play sports with other males -- and probably became our best defender. So those things are pretty amazing, quite frankly.""
Why haven't we heard more about these fa'afafine?! This is ridiculous if you ask me. The fact that FIFA, who has been super stringent on the most absurd issues allows a third-sex transgendered person play, is different to say the least. But hey, when you're dead last in FIFA world rankings and have about 60,000 people in your nation, I guess you can let fa'afafine play for you any day of the week
