Australia is shamed by its national coach and players.

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Thursday, April 12, 2001) -- Archie Thompson should be ashamed of himself. So should the striker’s coach Frank Farina, and so should his Australia teammates.

Australian striker Archie Thompson displayed a lack of class, running up a world record for goals in a rout of American Samoa.

The Aussies took running up the score to a new level yesterday in Oceania World Cup qualifying, defeating American Samoa 31-0 or 32-0, depending on who was counting, with Thompson netting his 13th or 14th goal in injury time.

By establishing world records for most goals by a team and a player in a single match, Thompson and his teammates have etched their names, properly permanently, in the record books for one of the most classless acts in history.

The exact final score has not yet been verified; apparently the official scorekeeper couldn’t bear to watch any longer.

The old record was 10 goals by Denmark's Spohus Nielson against France in the 1908 Olympics, thus Thompson had the record well in hand, but wasn’t satisfied without running the scoring up against his helpless opponent.

"We were asking the Lord to help keep the score down," American Samoa coach Tunoa Lui said. "We will work at it and try to improve. God is the righteous one and, because of him, losing by so many goals does not matter."

Before yesterday, few might have thought Thompson was destined for greatness, and yesterday’s pitiful display surely further convinced observers of that. His only previous goal had come in a relief performance in the Aussies opening 22-0 embarrassment of Tonga, then establishing a world record for goals that wasn’t destined to stand for long.

On his club team, the renowned Marconi Stallions of the Australian professional league, Thompson, by all accounts, he is not the dominant player.

American Samoa, listed as the 203rd-ranked and worst team on the globe by world governing body FIFA, was weakened in this competition, courtesy of the host Australian government which refused to admit seven American Samoa players into the country, saying they did not have proper visas because they did not carry American passports. The resulting team averaged 19 years of age, and two 15-year-olds were used.

The Samoa fans were not deterred, singing folk songs in the stands before the game. Bonding with their players, the fan support appeared to help, at least for 10 minutes when Australia finally was able to score on defender Con Boutsianis’ in-swinging corner kick straight into the net. In keeping with the high-minded spirit of the "Sockeroos" -- as the Australian national team is called -- Boutsianis was available for his national-team debut, according to Reuters, only when he was fined and not jailed by an Australian court last month for driving the getaway car in a 1998 armed robbery.

By halftime, the score was 16-0. By the 65th minute, the count was 23-0 and a new world record was in hand. That did not satisfy coach Frank Farina who was concerned with the all-important goal differential. Sit on the lead and a 46-goal loss to Fiji tomorrow would mean his lads would be eliminated from World Cup contention.

Thus, near the end, the Sockeroos picked up the scoring pace with goals in the 80th, 81st, 84th, 85th, 88th, and 91st minutes.

Then the controversy. The manual scoreboard operator seemed to get a bit confused -- were there one or two goals tallied in that decisive 85th minute. FIFA will not certify the final score and Thompson’s scoring record until they are able to review the game report.

Assuming a breakdown against the 133rd-ranked Fiji is not imminent, Australia will face New Zealand, the almost certain winner of Oceania’s other group, to decide the confederation’s representative in a playoff against South America’s fifth-place finisher for a 2002 World Cup berth in South Korea and Japan.

"It's a result and really, that's all that matters," Farina said. "We now move onto Fiji, and as I said prior to the tournament, the aim was to win all four games, so it's a result. I was pleased again with the professional attitude of the players, the way they went about it was in a very professional manner, and that, from my point, is the most pleasing aspect of the whole night."

Despite the obvious mismatch in the qualifiers, Farina took no chances calling back nine players from Europe, infuriating some European coaches in doing so. Especially angered was Glasgow Rangers’ Dick Advocaat because Farina called in two of his Scottish League starters, Craig Moore and Tony Vidmar, while not calling in Leeds United’s Mark Viduka and Harry Kewell of England’s Premier League.

FIFA is not without fault in this shameful exercise. Oceania is an embarrassment to world soccer. The confederation is led by Australia and New Zealand, neither really a soccer power , ranked 77th and 95th, respectively.

The rest of the confederation is comprised of Fiji (133), Solomon Islands (137), Tahiti (138), Vanuatu (171), Cook Islands (173), Samoa (174), not to be confused with American Samoa, Tonga (178) Papua New Guinea (194) and American Samoa (203).

Logically, Oceania should be merged into the Asian Football Confederation. Australia and New Zealand should be full members with the Pacific island nations playing among themselves in preliminary competitions with the top team or two moving on to the next round in the same way the minor Caribbean nations compete within CONCACAF. Oceania, of course, would resist that and the attendant loss of power in FIFA’s internal politics.

FIFA is even more to blame for the current debacle at Coffs Harbour. When Oceania -- which is politically dominated by Australia -- did not move to aggressively demand that Australia allow the entire American Samoa team to enter the country for the competition, FIFA should have stepped in and moved the competition elsewhere. But that would have taken some measure of backbone, something FIFA does not display in any abundance.

In FIFA’s Code of Fair Play, it tells all teams to " respect your adversaries." Apparently Farina can't read or was never told. Australia can’t be blamed alone for this travesty. That fewer than 2,500 fans showed up at Coffs Harbour pretty well demonstrated how much the home fans care about Farina and his team. This is a coach without class, and a team without much either. We can now all root for the Kiwis, and if they can’t get the job done, I know I’ll be there rooting for Colombia or Ecuador or Uruguay, one of which will be the South American representative Australia will have to beat to make the World Cup.

Senior correspondent Robert Wagman's "It Seems To Me . . . " appears regularly on SoccerTimes. He can be e-mailed at bobwagman@soccertimes.com..