By Kyle Terwilliger
Variety News Staff

“WE already have our plane tickets to Macau,” joked Northern Mariana Islands Football Association’s President Jerry Tan during Saturday’s press conference.
GFA’s president Richard Lai would reply with “I told Jerry to book the tickets because our team has a lot of gear and a lot of soccer balls, and we need someone to carry it for us.” This was the mood for the whole press conference regarding both the Men and Women’s matches that were played on Sunday.
The friends and former teammates had set up the Women’s match to play in the first half of the double header to give both Women’s teams experience in international play with the East Asian Football Championship coming up next year. As for the men the match was a much more serious event with the winner advancing to Macau in July.
The winner from the preliminary competition will then advance to Chongqing, China in February to play for the Championship. Guam played CNMI last week in Saipan and won 3-2 with Zach Pangelinan scoring the winning goal.
The match on Guam would once again feature Pangelinan as he scored five goals to lead Guam to a 9-0 victory over CNMI and will advance to Macau. Guam began the game scoring fairly quickly when Pangelinan scored on a header off the cross by Elias Merfalen in the sixth minute of the game.
Pangelinan would score once again in the 21st minute on a penalty kick and again in the 42nd minute to put Guam ahead 3-0 going into the half. Guam would come out running in the second half using their young talent and legs to their advantage.
The speedy edges of Guam led by Elias Merfalen and Marvin Mendoza would continue to open the middle of the field for Pangelinan as he would score the fourth goal of the game of a pass from Mendoza in the 54th minute giving him his fourth consecutive goal on the game.
Marvin and Merfalen would then get in on the goal scoring action scoring with Mendoza scoring in the 56th minute and Merfalen scoring a minute later to give the Men’s National Team a seven nothing lead. Pangelinan would score his fifth and final goal in the 61st minute sealing the MVP performance for the night. Guam would score two more goals on goals by Alan Jamison and Edward Calvo in the 85th and 90th minutes.
In the post game interview Pangelinan would credit Mendoza and Merfalen for getting him shots. “They’re two of our quickest players on our team,” Pangelinan would say of his teammates.
The game was seen by an amazing 1324 people who were in attendance. Pangelinan would also give credit to the fans, “Thank you very much for your support,” he would say of the fans.