Marshall Islands assistant manager Justin Whalley admits the chance to host the country's first international football match still feels like a dream.
The Marshall Islands have long claimed to be “the last nation on the planet without a soccer team,” and until 2020 they didn't even have a federation, let alone a national organization that has only been in operation for two and a half years.
For some members of the team, Thursday's meeting with the U.S. Virgin Islands at the Outrigger Challenge Cup in Arkansas will be their first official 11-on-11 match.
“It feels so surreal and we can't believe it's actually happening,” said Leicestershire native Wally, who now lives in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
“But we are working hard and we are fully focused on what lies ahead. We have been working and planning intensively for several days now. Hopefully we will be as prepared as possible.”
Springdale, Arkansas, may seem like an unusual location for a four-team tournament involving the Marshall Islands, but as of 2019, the region has the largest concentration of Marshallese in the continental United States.
Some of the team's members were drawn from Majuro, Kwajalein Atoll and other places in the Marshall Islands, a population of about 37,500 that has no club soccer.
Several members of the team have moved to the United States, where some play for American colleges and others have Marshallese roots.
Their technical director and head coach Lloyd Owers, who joined the team in 2022, is based in Oxfordshire.
To their knowledge, the Marshall Islands is the only recognized UN member state that has not participated in international 11-a-side matches.
Some Majuro locals attended the team's first meeting 18 months ago, but as Wally noted: “In terms of a proper national team training camp, this is the first one we've ever had.
“The guys arrived on Friday and Saturday, the first training session was on Saturday. We try to organize five days of training to be ready.
“We try to train the same way as any other club team. We're just trying to build on what we have. Some of the guys play club football and some of the guys have never played futsal. They played futsal.”
“We've been working on it all week, we've had some mini-games, so it's not like they've never played 11v11 before, they'll be ready.”
Sourse: breakingnews.ie
