'Last nation without a team' to make international bow

Marshall Islands assistant manager Justin Walley admits the country's imminent first ever international football match still feels like a dream.

The Marshall Islands have long claimed to be "the last nation on earth without a football team", and did not even have a federation until 2020, let alone the national set-up which has only existed for the last two and a half years.

For some members of the squad, Thursday’s meeting with the US Virgin Islands at the Outrigger Challenge Cup in Arkansas, USA will be their first competitive game of 11 v 11 football – ever.

"There’s a sort of unrealness to it that we can’t believe it’s actually happening," English-born Walley, who now lives in Bosnia and Herzegovina, said.

"But we’ve been working very hard and we’re really focused on what’s ahead of us. We’ve already had several days of hard work and planning. Hopefully we will be as ready as we can be."

Justin Walley previously led Matabeland, a region of Zimbabwe, to a World Cup for non-FIFA affiliated sides

Springdale, Arkansas might seem like an odd choice of location for the Marshall Islands-hosted four-team tournament, but it is an area which, as of 2019, boasted the highest concentration of Marshallese in continental United States.

Some members of the squad have been recruited from Majuro, the Kwajalein Atoll, and other parts of the Marshall Islands itself, with its population of around 37,500 – and no club football.

Several team members have moved to the United States, where some play for US colleges, while others have Marshallese heritage.

Their technical director and head coach, Lloyd Owers, who joined in 2022, is based in Oxfordshire, England.

As far as they are aware, the Marshall Islands is the only recognised UN member state not to have played an 11 v 11 international fixture.

The Marshall Islands are north-east of Papua New Guinea and Australia in the Pacific Ocean

Some local to Majuro participated in an initial team meeting 18 months ago, but, revealed Walley: "In terms of an actual national team training camp, this is the first one we have ever done.

"The guys flew in on Friday and Saturday, the first training session ever was on Saturday. We’re trying to cram in five days of camp to be ready.

"We try to train like we would with any normal club side. We just try to develop what we’ve got. Some of the guys do play club football, some have never played 11-a-side. They’ve played futsal.

"We’ve been developing that all week, we’ve played a few sort of mini-games, so it’s not as if they (will have) never played 11-a-side before, they will be ready."

The Marshall Islands sent four athletes to the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris

Walley hopes what started out as a group of men with a vision – but no infrastructure – will lead to FIFA recognition by 2030 at the latest, though the first step is acceptance into a confederation.

Funding for their big international debut has come from sponsorship, a £21,573 (€25,000) crowdfunding campaign, and about 2,000 shirts sold over the last couple of years.

"I think people weren’t taking us seriously," admits Walley, who says the side want to give "the best account of themselves possible" in their historic match.

He added: "They weren’t thinking that we could possibly pull this off, playing national teams. We’ve come a long, long way in a short time."

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