The Matao's yearlong success was named the Pacific Daily News' top sports story for the second straight year.
In 2015, the team achieved its highest ranking to date - No. 146 in the world - follow back-to-back victories over Turkmenistan and India and a scoreless draw with Oman in the team's 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia and AFC Asian Cup UAE 2019 Joint Preliminary Qualification Round 2 campaign.


The complete story is below:
No. 1: Matao shock the world
By Grant Wieman ( gwieman@guam.gannett.com)

No local team had more international success in 2015 — and none did more to paint Guam in a positive light around the globe — than the men’s national soccer team.
The Matao shocked the world with monumental victories early in the summer and kept attention into the fall with results that outsized their standing in the international football world.
By hosting, and winning, the first FIFA World Cup qualifier matches in Guam history, the Matao showed how much a group of dedicated, talented and focused individuals can accomplish from an island so small in a world so large.
The Matao’s success this year was the biggest sports story in Guam, and one of the most covered in the world.
The magnitude of Guam’s win against India can’t be understood with numbers because the scale is unimaginable.
If every resident of Guam was suddenly cloned 8,000 times, India would still have a larger population. During the three days between Guam’s 1-0 World Cup qualifier win against Turkmenistan and its game against India, there were more births in India than people alive — total — in Guam. The idea that a nation so outmatched in terms of size could top another with skill is perhaps the greatest thing about sports, and that symbolism took hold around the world.
For months, tiny, overlooked Guam led its World Cup qualifying group. Media outlets across Europe, Asia and the United States picked up the story and ran with it.
The Matao were featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post. On ESPN, CNN and TIME.com. Soccer magazines and world sports organizations plastered Guam’s success across the banner spread of their websites.
Guam soccer takes center stage. Guam spring another surprise; Shock win over India puts tiny Guam on the map.
“No one in the world thought we would even score a goal in any of our games,” Guam head coach Gary White said in a text message to the Pacific Daily News, “let alone win two and tie one … to teams with a long and storied soccer tradition.”
On purely a macro sense, the Matao’s round of matches was a game-changer. Countless other local sports federations look at the success of the soccer program in awe.
There have been calls for change in a variety of national-level sports, and each time the refrain is a variation of the same: “If we do X, we can be like soccer.”
Perhaps the sentiment is true, or perhaps the Guam Football Association program caught onto an unsustainable tide.
Did the Matao create a new model — spend the money; work hard; build from the youth up; find the best eligible talent, on- and off-island — or did they find the perfect team at the perfect time?
White believes the future is bright for the island and the soccer program.
The micro impact of the 2015 Matao has already begun.....

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