The United Nations recognises 195 international locations and 194 of these play soccer.
From San Marino to South Sudan, Vanuatu to the Vatican Metropolis, all of the nations on Earth have performed a world fixture, besides one — the Marshall Islands.
It’s a rustic that lies within the coral atolls of the North Pacific between Australia and Hawaii, far previous the place medieval explorers mapped the sting of the world. Millennia earlier than, the primary Marshallese sailors had already named the islands “Advert jolet jen Anij” — “Our blessed inheritance from God”. Cut up throughout two island chains — the Ratak, which means dawn, and the Ralik, sundown, — 60,000 folks name it house.
Their nation is understood for tuna manufacturing, unique holidays, but additionally for extra violent occasions — the USA examined nuclear weapons on its Bikini Atoll between 1946 and 1958. It’s identified for being extra in danger from local weather change than every other nation on the earth. It isn’t identified for soccer.
The Marshall Islands is just not a member of FIFA, has by no means had a nationwide soccer crew, and doesn’t even function a home league.
Now although, a bunch of lovers are racing to vary that.
They’ve a long-term plan to play in World Cup qualifiers — however this nation fashioned upon the skeletons of sunken historical volcanoes faces having its hearth extinguished by the rising sea.
Shem Livai is on the forefront of those efforts. He performed soccer casually at college, learning within the US Virgin Islands within the Caribbean, however his curiosity solely piqued when his son developed an curiosity.
“I’m simply an enthusiastic and reactive father or mother, and I puzzled why there was no soccer being performed,” he explains. “I wished to vary that for my son.
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