The last nation on Earth without a football team that dreams of reaching the big time
The Marshall Islands, a tiny nation situated just over 3,000 miles to the north-east of Australia, is the last nation on the planet without a national team.
It is made up of five main islands, 29 coral reefs and over a thousand tiny islands spread out over an area of 70 square miles. The population is a little over 54,000, smaller than the capacity of seven English Premier League stadiums!
A large number of the Marshallese population love to play football and there are ambitious plans to get the nation to compete officially on the international stage.
Anna Barbara Films, a film production company based in Los Angeles, will be producing a six-part docu-series called ‘The Last Team’, focusing on the Marshall Islands and their attempts to try and get a national football team together.
“This is the ultimate footballing journey following a vulnerable nation as they stand up to the world through the most popular sport in the world” producer Steve Hodgetts explained.
“They may succeed, they may fail. But one thing will surely remain true; football has the power to unify us all.”
2028 could be a momentous year for the Marshall Islands as a footballing nation and ‘The Last Team’ will focus on the build-up. They hope to make their debut at that summer Olympics and begin qualification for the 2030 World Cup.
Marshallese businessman Shem Livai formed the Marshall Islands Soccer Federation (MISF) back in 2020 when he saw a lack of regular training and facilities for his son to play on the island.
“I saw there were no facilities, no leagues and looking at the kids and how much they loved the sport, I knew I had to do something about it” Livai told ESPN.
The MISF has two missions. The first is to make football the most popular sport on the Islands. Baseball and basketball are currently the most popular due to a large number of the population’s American roots.
In the four years since the formation of the MISF, a lot of progress has been made. They have built an impressive stadium in Majuro, the nation’s capital and started several club competitions. But it doesn’t stop there as there are more ambitions to be fulfilled:
“The federation wants to be part of the OFC (Oceania Football Confederation), but also wants to eventually become a FIFA member” MISF’s Technical Director Lloyd Owers explained in an interview with the BBC.
Owers joined the Federation in December 2022 after impressing Livai when speaking to him online about his views on the game.
He had never visited the Marshall Islands, but flew out for the first time in the summer of 2023 and took several training sessions for men, women and children during his visit.
“It started via emails, then it became easier to speak via WhatsApp because of the time difference,” Owers told BBC Sport in October 2023. “Then it got to the stage where I was asked to put together a proposal alongside my own philosophy on how I saw the game growing.“
35-year-old Owers is currently the Under 23s coach at National League North side Oxford City. He played at a semi-professional level until the age of 24 and has since worked at three Football League clubs and also in Canada, the US and Sweden.
The opportunity to coach on a remote island several thousand miles away from home was too good to turn down.
“On a personal level it was the opportunity to be part of something that was as big as this; the only nation in the world without a defined national team” he explained.
As well as increasing the popularity of the sport, the second part of MISF’s mission is to use the sport to raise awareness of the threats to their nation and cause global change.
Climate change continues to impact the nation. It has been predicted that by the end of this century over 40% of the Marshall Islands may be underwater as sea levels rise.
Global warming has caused sea levels to rise in parts of Majuro (the country’s capital) by 10cm since 1993. It is estimated that it will almost double that amount in the next 30 years.
Between 1946 and 1958, the US government undertook 67 nuclear tests on the Marshall Islands. One involved a huge detonation that was a thousand times stronger than the bomb they dropped on Hiroshima at the end of the Second World War. Radioactive matter spread far and wide, with material found as far as Europe. Damage to the Marshall Islands was much worse.
The after-effects of this give the nation a worrying future, none more so than on Runit Island. A huge amount of nuclear waste was dumped there by the US government in a crater left by a nuclear explosion.
A concrete dome was built in 1977 to encase the radioactive matter, but concerns were raised in late 2019 that the concrete was starting to crack.
Radioactive waste could leak into the nearby seawater and soil. After being hidden for almost fifty years, it is slowly coming back to affect the current and future generations.
If the MISF were to make its mission come true and create a FIFA-affiliated national team for the Marshall Islands, they would be one of international football’s true underdogs.
On the international stage, a prime example of the underdog is San Marino. They are one of the lowest countries in the FIFA World Rankings and only recorded their first competitive win in September 2024 after beating Liechtenstein 1-0. Two months later, they would beat the same nation once again. It is stories like this that give the Marshallese reason to believe that anything is possible
A San Marino fans account on ‘X’ has nearly 200,000 followers. With Anna Barbara Films’ docu-series, this may help the Marshall Islands gain as much publicity.
If the Marshall Islands were to try and qualify for future World Cups, they would join the Oceania region. One team qualifies automatically from this region, with a second joining an inter-confederation play-offs.
The next World Cup in 2026 will be the first time that the competition will feature 48 teams. This means that there will be greater opportunities for the smaller nations to reach the biggest tournament in football.
Purists argue that this will make the tournament weaker, but this hasn’t been the case with the European Championships after it was increased to 24 teams in 2016. The three championships since the expansion have offered some great football.
Seven countries have made their debut since the expansion of the European Championships, with Wales being the most successful when they reached the last four in 2016.
In their six games at that tournament, Wales only lost twice. England beat them with a last-minute goal in the group stages before tournament’s eventual winners Portugal knocked them out in the semi-finals.
If the smaller teams in the world’s game can make an impression on the international scene, there must surely be a place for the Marshall Islands?
With a country that has faced such hardships in the past and will certainly in the future, it’d be wonderful for them to be able to join while they still can.
With the MISF providing more opportunities for the game to be played and enjoyed on the islands, it’d be wonderful to see the Marshall Islands compete on the international stage. With efforts from Lloyd Owers, Shem Livai and many others, it could be possible for this to happen and the nation would be known far and wide.
About Author
