IN concrete basketball courts on tiny islands in the Pacific Ocean, bare-footed footballers dream of representing their country.
Yet few other aspiring soccer stars have so much standing in their way as those on the Marshall Islands.
The first problem is that it is the last country on the planet without a national team.
Last year the nation — 1,225 islands 8,000 miles from Britain, some sitting atop submerged volcanoes — didn’t even have an amateur league.
There are no football grounds and in the US-dominated culture there has been little interest in the beautiful game.
But that is all changing in the country most famous for witnessing nuclear weapon tests on its Bikini atoll in the Forties and Fifties.
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Three Brits are part of the Marshall Islands Soccer Federation, which is aiming to become a member of football’s governing body Fifa and to take part in World Cup qualifiers.
They include football coach Lloyd Owers, who led the first training sessions on the islands this summer.
The Marshall Islands will next year have a stadium with a proper pitch and in the summer intend to field a side against neighbouring islands.
‘Playing barefooted’
They already have a football strip, which has been selling more than 100 replicas a week since it went on sale last month, even though there is not yet a team to cheer on.
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Lloyd, 34, from Oxfordshire, whose previous jobs include working as a scout for League Two Mansfield Town FC and under 23’s manager at non-league Oxford City, tells The Sun: “When we started in January there was nothing. There were no leagues, no kids sessions, no anything.
“We want to be confederation members, we want to be part of the international stage qualifiers, Olympic qualifiers.
“Long term, we want to be Fifa members, World Cup qualifiers, that’s genuinely something we want to do.”
In many ways, it is surprising that the Marshall Islands, which has a population of 42,000, doesn’t have a national side.
There are plenty of smaller coun- tries with one.
Even the neighbouring commonwealth Tuvalu islands, with just 12,000 people, has a team affiliated to the Oceania Football Con- federation, which has 11 members af- filiated with Fifa, including New Zealand.
And despite having only 760 citizens, Vatican City in Italy has managed to field a team for international friendlies.
The Marshall Islands, which are named after the British explorer John Marshall, who visited the long-discovered islands in 1788, was fought over by several nations before gaining independence from the US in 1986.
But America still has a military base on Kwajalein Atoll, with around a thousand personnel, and has a big influence on the isolated nation.
As a result, basketball and baseball are the most popular sports.
That, though, has changed since football superstars such as David Beckham and Lionel Messi raised the profile of the game stateside.
When the son of oil worker Shem Livai, who lives in the capital Majuro, became a fan, the idea of a national side took root.
Shem formed the federation in early 2020, became its president and, once the Covid pandemic was over, set about kicking off the team’s development.
Lloyd, whose coaching consultancy work has taken him to the US, Canada and Sweden, wrote a blog which Shem read.
The pair got into a conversation over the internet “quite randomly”, according to Lloyd, and he found himself taking up the part-time job of technical director for the fledgling football federation.
By the start of this year Lloyd and his fellow Brits, communications director Justin Whalley and commercial director Matt Webb, set about raising sponsorship and the project’s profile.
That included a competition in April to design the nation’s football shirt. “When the sales started rolling in, you realised how popular the project is. We sold 400 in three weeks in 40 different countries,” he says. In the summer Lloyd flew to the Marshall Islands for his first coaching sessions.
It is a 46-hour journey — if there are no delays.
Lloyd’s connecting flight from Hawaii to the islands was cancelled and he had to wait two days for the next one, although he admits that being stranded in Honolulu was no hardship.
They are very tough
When he got there he realised the scale of the task.
He reveals: “It is an eye-opener, they are playing barefooted.”
Locals would enjoy a kickabout wherever there was space, which was mainly on basketball courts.
Lloyd set about organising a league, which now consists of four futsal teams.
Futsal is a five-a-side game which can be played in smaller spaces and is good for developing skills.
He continues: “The men’s futsal league takes place on concrete, the majority are still playing barefooted, they are very tough.”
Lloyd developed a programme for schools and the government has agreed to include football in PE lessons. He also taught 23 locals how to coach the game.
Playing the traditional 11-a-side game remains a challenge.
Lloyd explains: “One of the battles is a lack of space. The main island of Majuro is literally a 24-mile drive from one end to the other, one long road with buildings either side and you are surrounded by water.”
Climate change is only going to make that problem worse. The highest point on Majuro is only ten feet above sea level, and scientists have warned that the oceans could rise by six feet by the end of this century in a worst-case scenario.
Lloyd says: “It is a real battle. When I visited, I went to one of the ends of the islands and that’s where it is going to be at threat.
“There is talk that by 2030 that whole area could be submerged.”
For this reason the country’s first stadium is being built on reclaimed land. The multi-purpose complex, which includes a track and field for athletics and a football pitch, is due to open in July next year.
“The football stadium used to be part of the ocean, but they have built it in landfill, similar to what they did in Dubai,” explains Lloyd.
On top of shrinking land, the nation also suffers from a shrinking population, with the Marshallese heading to Australia, New Zealand and the United States to find work.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk used Kwajalein Atoll for his early SpaceX rocket launches.
But the logistics of getting supplies to the remote eight-acre Omelek island proved to be so tricky that the staff reportedly mutinied in 2005 when they ran out of food.
These days SpaceX operates in Texas.
Fortunately, a free movement agreement with the US means there is a potential pool of players among expats.
There are an estimated 30,000 Marshall Islanders in the US, with half of them in the state of Arkansas.
Lloyd says: “We have had a few players contact us that play in the US college system, for example. They will be part of the plans over the next few years.”
The main aim, though, is to develop a grassroots game on the islands themselves so the team has players with sand between their toes.
The federation will need to show there is an established, competitive league to apply to membership of either the Oceania Football Confederation or Fifa.
Lloyd says: “You need football to be regular, you need it to be benefiting every group possible, regular competition.”
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What gives him so much hope is the way the islanders pull together.
He concludes: “It is very much a together community feel, everyone helps everyone. I have never been to a place which is so hospitable.”
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
