Guam 1, NMI 1

While most of the world focuses on the best international teams in football during this year's World Cup, on the tiny island of Saipan in the Western Pacific, 195th ranked Guam challenged unranked Northern Mariana Islands (NMI) in the fourth annual Marianas Cup.

NMI scored in the middle of the second half and led heading into the final minutes, but Guam was able to even the score in the 89th minute.

Team heartthrob, Brad Ruszala, had this to say of today's game, "Guam sucks!"

This was the fifth meeting in four years for the two squads. The teams met twice in 2007; they drew a 2-2 tie on Saipan, but a week later Guam slaughtered NMI 9-0 in Guam. The next year Guam bested NMI 3-2 in Saipan and last year Guam defeated NMI 2-1 in Guam.

2009 Marianas Cup

These photos are by Peter Bosner.

CNMI U-14 Team

The CNMI U-14 Team is in Guam this week competing against teams from nine other countries (Guam, China, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, Macau, Hong Kong, Mongolia, and Taipei) in an EAFF Football Festival.

Go CNMI!!! Make us proud!!!

Who wants to watch a soccer game?

Looks like we're going to be superstars here in the near future because there'll be a screening of the men's 2008 Marianas Cup match between the CNMI and Guam tomorrow night! Yep, so come on down to (Mom's) Round Two for the 6:30pm showing of the big game.

Copies will be available for sale!

*This is not the play-by-play version that will be shown on KSPN2. According to the station, their video is already cut and ready for sale.

PS- Feel free to bring a friend

Our First Win!

The CNMI Men's team lost to Guam 3-2 in Saipan and 9-0 in Guam. Last week we lost to a local club, Onwell, 2-1. Back in the spring, we lost a handful of friendly exhibition games against other local teams.

Today we won our first game!

We defeated FC Arirang, a local club composed of mostly Koreans, 4-2 today.

We're definitely improving.