The Federated States of Micronesia have been working hard in training to put in the best performance possible in their Olympic qualifying campaign, but things haven't quite gotten off to the start that they would have hoped for.
Tuesday's game against Vanuatu ended up being a record defeat for the new footballing nation, who managed to ship 46 goals without reply in a record breaking loss. That was the third of their record breaking losses in a row, as they also slumped to a 30-0 defeat against Tahiti and a 38-0 loss to Fiji.
Vanuata were 24 goals up at half-time, but didn't ease up as they added another 22 after the break, with Jean Kaltack bagging 16, which is the rarely-seen quintuple hat-trick with added bonus goal.
Speaking after the match, Micronesia manager Stan Foster resorted to an age-old cliche to explain the loss saying "it was boys against men" out there, and that "it’s just so hard at this early stage – this is kindergarten for us". However, he did add some context saying that "most of these [players] have never been out of their villages let alone on to another island. I took them to Guam the other day [and it was] the first time they've been on an elevator or an escalator. It’s been a huge step-up for these guys and they’ve just been overawed really."
With a goal difference of -114, their pacific Games group is likely to be decided on goal difference, which will also dictate who qualifies for the Olympics in Rio, so the other teams will be looking to put similar scores past them if they can.
Tough times to be a Micronesia fan...
Via The Irish Times
