Fifa

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 Marshall Islands is the last country without a national football teamCredit: Shutterstock
Brit Lloyd Owers has been appointed as football technical director of the Marshall IslandsCredit: Paul Tonge
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.
The Marshall Islands football strip has been selling more than 100 replicas a week since it went on sale last monthCredit: Marshall Islands Soccer Federation
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 developed a football programme for schoolsCredit: SUPPLIED
The Marshall Islands has a population of around 40,000 peopleCredit: rmisoccer/instagram
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.”
Progress is being made on the Marshall Islands’ new stadiumCredit: rmisoccer/instagram
The Marshall Islands is a small South Pacific Island nationCredit: Shutterstock
The Marshall Islands and Bikini Atoll on a map
Nearby Bikini Atoll is known for being the site of breakthrough Atom bomb testsCredit: Getty More

FOOTBALL is supposed to be the people’s game.It’s supposed to be about the fans as well as the players.
Nobody outside a chosen few inside Fifa headquarters in Zurich was celebrating the latest brainwave pulled off by world football boss Gianni InfantinoCredit: PA
Lionel Messi lifts the World Cup trophy in Qatar – a tournament allegedly powered by giant solar fields in the desert that NOBODY has ever seenCredit: Getty
And the World Cup, the pinnacle of the sport, is supposed to be a global party.
But nobody outside a chosen few inside Fifa headquarters in Zurich was celebrating the latest brainwave pulled off by world football boss Gianni Infantino.
A World Cup covering half the globe, spread over 39 days and involving 48 teams and 104 matches.
Starting with three games in South America, before the rest of the tournament is split between the Iberian peninsula and North Africa.

Yet what was inconceivable is now, overnight, a looming reality, coming our way in just seven years, in 2030.
A kick in the teeth for fans around the planet, who still love the beautiful game, no matter how ugly it can seem.
And further irrefutable proof that what counts in football now is not the sport, the emotion and the passion.
That went out of the window long ago.
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The brutal truth is that it is now only about the money, the politics, the deals and the TV contracts.
Who in their right mind would conceive of sending fans halfway around the world — then back — for ONE match?
Fifa, of course.
The blazers in their ivory towers, who know they get executive travel, first-class seats and the biggest suites in the swankiest hotels, all meals and match tickets included, for nothing — plus £400 a day in cash for spending money just to keep them sweet.
No worries about saving up for the journey for these men and women.
The same Fifa that trumpeted the green credentials of a £185BILLION World Cup in Qatar, allegedly powered by giant solar fields in the desert that NOBODY has ever seen.
That’s before you even get into the other issues in the Gulf state — the treatment of migrant workers and legalised homophobia.
Yet it’s as much about the sheer cost of the concept as well.
Playing the opening three matches in Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay pays homage to the centenary of the tournament that was first played in Uruguayan capital Montevideo in 1930.
Divide and rule
There is a romantic element in that — although many real fans of the game will argue that the 2030 tournament should have been hosted entirely back where it all began.
But Fifa is asking some fans to fork out thousands to fly 6,000-plus miles to see their team in action in South America and then back across the Atlantic for a tournament split between Morocco, Portugal and Spain.
Where, of course, tickets will be at premium rates for travelling fans. Someone has to pay the bills. And it’s you.
Does anybody in Zurich care about that? It doesn’t look that way, does it?
For Fifa President Infantino, football’s version of The Hood from Thunderbirds, it is an ingenious, some would argue brilliant, solution.
After all, he has handed six countries and three continents a piece of the action.
That allows all the potential bidders to keep face at home and also ensures the maximum interest and pay cheques from the European TV companies who fund his global projects, pitches and training centres in countries that otherwise would not be able to afford them.
Infantino may not have been a protege of former Fifa chief, disgraced Sepp Blatter.
But he has learned from the Blatter play book of divide and rule — and brought it into the modern age.
And seasoned, and cynical, Fifa watchers know what the real end game is here.
It is less about 2030 — although that is what has captured immediate attention.
Instead, it is more, far more, about 2034 — and giving Saudi Arabia and Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman what HE has craved for years.

The door for the Saudis to walk through and host that tournament is not ajar. It is wide open.
Nominally, Australia could bid as well.
But it would be a forlorn and expensive waste of money. The die is cast.
“All the fish is sold,” as they say in Fifa land.
It does not matter that there will be another desert storm of protest, that fans will not be able to get a drink — to be fair, the absence of booze in the stadiums in Qatar made for a far less aggressive and hostile atmosphere.
Nor that the Saudi record on human rights is pretty compatible with that in Qatar.
Indeed, the Qataris do not, as far as we know, have a track record of dismembering critical journalists in any of their embassies.
Doha 1, Riyadh 0.
Effectively gifting Saudi the tournament means another winter World Cup in November and December of 2034 — and another enforced six-week break for the Premier League.
And because the new 32-team Club World Cup — Chelsea, Manchester City and almost certainly Liverpool play in the first version in the USA in 2025 — is held in the same country as the next World Cup, the situation will be similar 12 months earlier, with players going to Saudi in 2033.
Scant consolation
Two successive European club seasons ruptured in half, just to ensure MBS gets what he wants.
Have the fans, players or even the clubs been asked about that? Of course they haven’t. They never are.
The good news, the only good news, is that Infantino will not be around to bask in the reflected “glory” of his masterplan when it comes to fruition.
Even after dismissing his first three years in the job as not counting, he must give up his place as Fifa President in 2031.
Canada’s Victor Montagliani is a potential successor.
But that will be scant consolation to the fans forking out money they really can’t afford to follow their teams in 2030 or four years later.
They are barely an afterthought.
Scenery for the TV pictures.
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Willing victims who pay for the privilege.
As Sir Alex Ferguson once said, in very different circumstances: “Football. Bloody hell.” More