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WORLD CUP
World Cup

Marshall Islands rare nation untouched by soccer's sprawling reach

Soccer - especially during the World Cup - has a worldwide reach that unites nations. Except for one - the Marshall Islands.

MOSCOW — Soccer’s strongest and most frequent boast is it’s the world’s game, the sport that encapsulates and sometimes unifies the planet by reaching its corners.

It never seems more global than in summers like these, when 32 countries played in the World Cup. More than five times as many had their hearts and minds occupied by the tournament’s twists over a span of close to five weeks.

Yet there is a place, perhaps a paradise for soccer haters, that is immune to the game’s charms.

The Marshall Islands.

Soccer doesn’t just occupy a lowly place on the sporting totem pole, but is barely known in this nation, a collection of islands and atolls.  .

“I have no idea (about soccer),” Marshall Islander Kelly Lorennij, 19, told USA TODAY Sports. “I have seen it in movies. But on the island we don’t really play it.”

She’s not alone. Recent college graduate Robert Schellhase, 23, hasn’t caught the soccer bug either, and doesn’t expect to. “Soccer?” he said. “I know nothing about soccer. (I’ve seen) it only on YouTube, some funny clips, that’s all.”

Basketball is by far the most popular game in the Marshall Islands, situated near the equator in the Pacific Ocean, just to the west of the International Date Line, and site of fierce battles between American and Japanese forces in World War II.

And while World Cup games were shown on television during June and early July, the time difference meant most telecasts began in the middle of the night, with no one bothering to get up to watch them save for a few Australian and New Zealand expats.

There are about 53,000 citizens of the Marshall Islands, yet there are plenty of smaller countries where soccer is played. The Faroe Islands competes, albeit with difficulty, against some of the best in the world in UEFA (European) qualifying for World Cup and continental championships, as does San Marino. Iceland, with about 330,000 residents, even qualified for the World Cup.

On the Marshallese capital of Majuro there is no organized soccer structure to speak of, no league either amateur or professional, no national team and no membership in FIFA.

The last part is in itself something of a miracle. World soccer’s governing body has let very few nations, principalities or overseas territories escape its clutches. Indeed, the Marshall Islands is the only sovereign nation on earth not to have had a national team of some description, although there are a handful of tiny nations that have only partial FIFA status.

Australian businessman Mike Slinger arrived on Majuro in 1991 and tried to get a soccer competition started.  He built interest from about 60 players including some talented locals, playing for fun at an old weather station, on a baseball field, or indoors at a multi-purpose sports court.

However, the closure of various venues led to a decline, the frequency of the soccer meet-ups dwindled, then stopped altogether, and the idea of joining soccer’s global community went with it.

”Belonging to FIFA has a lot of requirements,” Slinger said. “You’ve got to have a facility, be available for international competitions. Our budget was very limited and it was difficult to fund facilities and matches. Marshallese people love (sports) though. If we had an area where they could play soccer, I think people would go for it.”

But they haven’t found one so far, not yet at least. Sometimes visiting teachers from countries where soccer is popular make a push for school soccer programs. Once they leave, interest invariably wanes. Visitors who are fond of the islands say it is a little bit like stepping back into a more innocent time.

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“We are very much in the American orbit,” Giff Johnson, editor of the Marshall Islands Journal newspaper, said. “After WW2 when the U.S. took over the islands from Japan, baseball was king, then basketball started taking off, then volleyball, and those are the sports people here are into and follow.

“Generally, soccer is not thought of much here, it is mainly an expat community interest – not much playing. Over the years now and then you will see a game, but not lately.”

Despite soccer’s inability to catch on, other sports have flourished to some degree. Kenneth Kramer heads the country’s Olympic committee, which has seven sports under its remit.

“It took us 10 years to get approved by the (International Olympic Committee),” Kramer said. “We are much more competitive in individual sports (like wrestling, weightlifting and taekwondo) rather than team sports.

“The Marshall Islands is mostly made up of water, there is very little land mass here and it is difficult to find fields. We are just not exposed to (soccer) enough.”

The anomaly of the Marshall Islands and its relationship, or lack of one, with soccer, is as much a story of globalization as it is of sports. Even the game with the longest arms has limits on how far it can reach.

It would be nice to think that some outlet may emerge that would allow a Marshallese youngster interested in the game to pursue that keenness. And who knows, by the time the next World Cup rolls around in 2022, soccer may have gotten a foothold, just like it did in North America. Yet the fact that there is a dot on soccer’s all-encompassing map that isn’t consumed by the game is just fine – and actually quite sweet.

Contributing: Karen Earnshaw.

Follow Martin Rogers on Twitter @RogersJourno

 

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