Stoppage Time: The Marshall Islands' Journey to Form Their First National Soccer Team
Jul 04, 2024
USL Arkansas
What if you could be part of history by helping to establish a national soccer team? In this week's Stoppage Time edition of Pitch to Pro, we share the remarkable story of the Marshall Islands' quest to form their first-ever national soccer team. You'll hear from me and Lloyd as we recount our serendipitous journeys into this project, from stumbling upon an article that sparked our interest to teaming up with Shem Levai and working alongside Justin Wally. This episode is packed with passion, unexpected connections, and the incredible potential of a small island nation to embrace the global soccer phenomenon.
Join us as we take you through the project's evolution from its humble beginnings in late 2022 to its rapid momentum in 2023. We explore the increasing enthusiasm for soccer among the youth in the Marshall Islands, driven by their admiration for global icons like Messi and Ronaldo. Learn how our diverse backgrounds in brand marketing and coaching came together to create a powerful strategy, and discover the challenges and triumphs we've encountered along the way. This is not just a story about building a soccer team; it's about igniting dreams and fostering a community's love for the beautiful game.
What if you could be part of history by helping to establish a national soccer team? In this week's Stoppage Time edition of Pitch to Pro, we share the remarkable story of the Marshall Islands' quest to form their first-ever national soccer team. You'll hear from me and Lloyd as we recount our serendipitous journeys into this project, from stumbling upon an article that sparked our interest to teaming up with Shem Levai and working alongside Justin Wally. This episode is packed with passion, unexpected connections, and the incredible potential of a small island nation to embrace the global soccer phenomenon.
Join us as we take you through the project's evolution from its humble beginnings in late 2022 to its rapid momentum in 2023. We explore the increasing enthusiasm for soccer among the youth in the Marshall Islands, driven by their admiration for global icons like Messi and Ronaldo. Learn how our diverse backgrounds in brand marketing and coaching came together to create a powerful strategy, and discover the challenges and triumphs we've encountered along the way. This is not just a story about building a soccer team; it's about igniting dreams and fostering a community's love for the beautiful game.
Speaker 1:
Welcome to the Stoppage Time edition of the Pitch to Pro podcast. This is a highlight reel of some of the best moments from the show so far, and every other week we will be bringing you a special five to seven minute segment featuring the best stories, tales and moments of the podcast. How did this project get started? How did you guys get to be involved? Did this project get started? How did you guys get to be involved? How did you guys start along this path of creating the last nation in the world to have a national soccer team.
Speaker 2:
I guess that actually predates us. So, before myself and lloyd got involved, there are a board in the marshlands right now who are taking ownership of furthering um furthering projects. So, back in 2020, um, a guy called shem levai and a couple of other guys in the marsh islands. Basically, interest in the sport has grown massively, I think in parallel with how it's grown in the states as well. Opportunity of soccer um, so kids are, they have awareness of what's going on. Messi, ronaldo, they watch games and in the playground they're kicking the ball. Hg fans and shirts yeah, man city yeah, literally, um, but there's no, there's no structure, there's no organized soccer taking place. So they recognized this and thought there's an opportunity and something needed to be done. Created the martial and soccer federation board um, an organization. Obviously, covid happened, stuff like that. Yeah, nothing really. They were pretty like laying low for a couple of years.
Speaker 2:
Um, myself and lloyd, both simultaneously not knowing each other, read an article online on the athletic about the last national soccer team and this board or mission to change this. Um, and I think both of us were like, wow, this is in our diagram of love and passion and skills. Yeah, travel, soccer um adventure and I'm being marked into. I was like I need to get involved in this. Yeah, um searched up lem levi or shem levi on facebook, wherever I could any social media, found his email pestilence. I wanted to work for free, let me get involved. Um, yeah, that was in probably fall 22, maybe. Yeah, yeah, um started to get involved in a project. I was looking at it from like top. What we're going to do Obviously, my background brand marketing, sure Lloyd's, obviously coaching, so you had yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:
So then mine was very similar. I read the same article but at the same time I was doing blog sites and interviews on the site and did one with a couple of guys from samoa and we started talking about their role and I had a few people connect and watch and read the article, the interview from the pacific. I reached out to a couple of different nations couple, one of them being shem from the marshall islands, and uh yeah, he basically said look, can you help us on the technical side, can you help to grow the game? And obviously I started working on that project. You started working on the marketing side. Then, randomly, on LinkedIn, we realized hang on, we've never been introduced by the way.
Speaker 3:
Shem's both working on something project. They never told us about each other. They never told you guys. We just happened to find each other. Oh, they were talking about the motion. Yeah, what I'm doing as well, yeah. And then because, like what, who are you? Like, what are you doing? Oh, I know Shem. Oh, I know Shem, he's not sold us. No, no, I know Shem. Shem knows, yeah, he knows, I know you. We had the market inside. I reached out to a guy called Justin Wally, who's part of our sort of trio of people. He looked after the press and communications and together we just worked out a strategy of okay, what do we do? How do we do this? From January 23, we just basically hit the ground running. It's been a full year from that point onwards, yeah, 14 or so months.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, since that point, Incredible incredible.
Speaker 1:
Well, you touched on it a little bit and I'll have a little bit of an aside here. So you talked about kids knowing what's going on. You're seeing PSG shirts. You're seeing all these other different kids out there that's not sitting in the pool, chad.
Speaker 2:
All these other different kids out there. There's no cinnamon bullshit. Is IBL in a room?
Speaker 1:
we need to discuss right now.
Speaker 2:
There's something in the room.
Speaker 1:
For those that don't know, lloyd is a Chelsea fan. I actually see cinnamon shit out there as well. Sorry, liverpool are recently crowned Carabao Cup or League Cup champions. The kids came out in the end to beat Mr Ower's Chelsea. I had I had to wear this today. Uh, this is kind of my uniform. I do wear uh soccer kits from all over the world today, so, uh, but I understand you guys may be able to change.
Speaker 2:
To be honest, it's a change, for noid's sake. He's I can see he's boiling up of rage. In honor of um yeah, appearance, we have a Cameroonian Marshall Islands Soccer Federation. That's our first ever national team jersey. Oh wow, I have history in the making. I think you'd wear this a lot.
Speaker 1:
He looks better. Oh, that would be incredible. I'd be happy to Happy to. This is great. Look at this, Look at this. We'll get this on here. You even got the number right that was that.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, that was the number 10.
Speaker 1:
Wow, very well, I like it, we'll get it. We'll get it on there for the episode here. There we go. So there we go yeah, there we go.
Speaker 3:
He's a rep in both loads, to be fair.
Speaker 1:
Still a little red just teasing you, yeah, yeah, yeah, just a tease, just a tease. There is a color, so I mean, you guys kind of touched on it a little bit. Bring people into your world. What is it like to start a national team from scratch? I mean, yeah, yeah, we're, we're. That's what we're doing with this show is is bringing people into our world here at usl arkansas. And what is it like to to start a professional soccer club? Yep, you know, kind of from scratch. You guys are doing something similar, but there's definitely different nuances to it, not just from the location, obviously, but also a national team is very, very, it's very, very different, right? Um, and so bring people into your world. What's that like?
Speaker 2:
before we start, I think we'll give some shout outs so people who couldn't be with us today. Obviously, myself and lloyd we're on this trip this week. We're lucky enough to be invited in today, um, but there's a lot of other people behind the scenes, yeah, so you can mention, obviously, the board in maduro.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, so we have shem navai, obviously, as a president, the vice president, uh, divine weighty, um. The general secretary is john kelimana, and then you have the treasurer, paul domingo, and, uh, the non-executive board member who is like the link to education system, is guy called Tony Thieme. So they're the board members, but then we obviously yeah, myself and Matt we have Justin Wally, who is part of our main sort of trio and British guys involved, and then so Justin's just finished, actually, in the Marshall Islands himself. He's just finished a trip there, wonderful.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, we've got Pat McStay, who's assistant Actually US based as well. Yeah, he's in Virginia. He's helping us with like supplier recruitment. We've got a couple of volunteers, so M Miller, who's with us, actually in Springdale.
Speaker 1:
Yeah.
Speaker 2:
Assistant for kind of social media and outreach, and Max, who's Max Hoochin, who's a university student in the UK. So we're a small gang and I think what we've achieved so far kind of belies. We're all volunteers, by the way, like none of us are getting paid a dime for this, it's purely for the love of it, and it's probably taken over our lives much more than we can imagine. Yeah, so it's probably. Rule one is it becomes all-encompassing when you're starting a team.
Speaker 1:
It's fantasy football or fantasy soccer, it's everything. Um, yeah, look, your question is how do you start? How do you start? I mean, there's differences right between you. Know, we had to find a league, we had to get, yeah, an expansion.
Speaker 3:
You know, we asked, we want to go there, obviously yeah, yeah, game, like mass said, you know the game, the sport was liked anyway, people liked the sport, people wanted to play the sport but didn't really have the structure or the infrastructure, I guess, to actually do it. And we're talking as low as equipment wasn't there Balls, bibs, cones, goals, whatever weren't there. So the first thing for us was making sure that we managed to get an awareness around the project and once we announced on social media, the worldwide media took an interest quite quickly and it was brilliant because it helped us to gain that awareness quite quickly. Um, and then what that led to is people donating, so we had the kit and equipment going out to the martial islands. We were able to use that. But then it was a case on, like the technical side. Oh, I can cover that bit a lot, you know, you know, obviously you can cover the other side of it, but I think from the technical aspect it was a case of how do we grow the game, how do you get people to want to play?
Speaker 3:
Yeah, the main thing was working from top down, bottom up and meeting in the middle. Top down being can we find players that around the world who are marshallese? And fortunately we did that and that's why we were in springdale. But then on the flip side we had how do we get kids playing? Yeah, so wrote like a school curriculum has been signed off. The ministry of education is allowing that to go into schools. Long term, kids will obviously grow up playing the game and that's part of their PE physical education curriculum. They can grow up to play the game and then, before I was able to obviously get out in the summer and have actual physical sessions that now run weekly, we had to make that appearance of this is what we're doing. This is why we're doing it.
Speaker 1:
Thank you for joining us for this Stoppage Time special of the Pitch to doing it. Thank you for joining us for this stoppage time special of the pitch to pro podcast. If you've enjoyed the conversation, you can click watch the full episode here. Be sure to tune in next Thursday for a new episode of the pitch to pro podcast, the official podcast of USL Arkansas, available on YouTube, Instagram and everywhere you get your podcasts.
