When Micronesia lost the opening match of the Pacific Games 30-0 to Tahiti, they probably thought it could not get any worse than that. After this 46-0 defeat to Vanautu on Tuesday, they have now conceded 114 goals in their last three games.
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The Cyclones scored four goals in the first six minutes and were 24 points ahead by half-time.
As you may or may not have heard, the Micronesian football team hit the news over the weekend after finding themselves on the wrong end of the biggest winning scoreline ever recorded in worldwide competition.
This is the most lopsided result in global soccer history, surpassing the time Australia beat American Samoa 31-0.
Both matches were part of the group stages of the 2015 Pacific Games being held in Papua New Guinea. We had a benchmark set by Tahiti and as we’re playing them next we didn’t have any other options. They are not a member of the Oceania confederation or Federation Internationale de Football Association, so their only funding to help develop their approximate 500 players, mostly from school teams, comes from worldwide agencies like the United Nations.
However, ears were pricked as goals rained in and it became a case of how many the Fijians could score; the answer was a whopping 38.
“Most of these guys are from small villages where they don’t play soccer, so they’ve come a long way, they’re not used to a crowd in a big tournament like this against real quality players.”
“I’m hoping that Federation Internationale de Football Association will be coming (to Micronesia) next week for inspections and to hopefully affiliate us with Asia”, Foster said.
The top two sides in each group go through to the semi-finals of the Olympic qualifying tournament.
“The problem is it’s not a squad of footballers, it’s just a squad of normal blokes”, he said.
He says Federated States of Micronesia will be back at the next Pacific Games in Tonga.
They won one out of the two games.
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“That will be for the future to see”.
