By 2009, Pohnpei's soccer team –– which had never won an international match –– had effectively disbanded. 'They were listed as the world's worst team,' Paul Watson says. 'Wikipedia told us they’d never won a game.' He wanted to bring it back.
"I sort of found myself drifting," Paul says."And at the age of 25, you know, still had this vague hope that one day I would make it in this kind of fairytale way that people do. And that's basically where this idea was born from, this kind of desire to beat the odds and not to give up on my dream of playing international football.
"And he said to us: 'You can't go there and play. It's harder to get a Micronesian nationality than it is to get a British one,'"Paul recalls."You know, you have to renounce your citizenship of your country, you have to marry a local — even then it's hard to get a passport. But he said, you know, 'Why don't you come over and coach? The team's basically disbanded, so come over and coach the team.
While Paul and Matt prepared to move halfway around the world, they spent time researching this place they were planning to go to. And as they learned more about Pohnpei and its people, they realized coaching a football team in this part of the world was going to be a significant challenge. Charles Musana, the man who proposed the idea of coaching the team in the first place, would come along to make introductions.
"So for me, it was like, it was an amazing place, a beautiful place. But also, you know, a place that obviously has had its problems. And I think it's quite well demonstrated as you go around Pohnpei. It’s stunning beauty to your left and your right. And then there's kind of litter everywhere a lot of the time."
As for the facilities, they certainly weren’t ideal. They would use the football pitch at Pacific Island Community School, which, despite its picturesque surroundings, really suffered due to the weather. With Matt staying behind, Paul thought he’d have to take on the challenge alone. But when he returned to Pohnpei, he met a young man named Dilshan Senarathgoda.
"I was trying to tell them to believe in themselves and to really get them pumped up and think, you know, 'We can do this.' On the other hand, half of me was thinking, 'Well, maybe we will lose 30-0.' And if we did, we'd just come back, and there'd be a sense of 'Well, what was the point in that? We may as well stop again.'"
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