In sports, it’s never over till it’s over. Unless you’re Micronesia.
The tiny Western Pacific nation’s soccer team squared off against Vanuatu on Tuesday in an Olympic qualifying game and had a pretty rough go of it. How rough, you ask? They lost 46-0.
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Micronesia coach Stan Foster admitted after the game his players were woefully inexperienced, and that many of them had never left their villages before, much less the country.
“It was boys against men,” Foster said, via The Guardian. “It’s just so hard at this early stage — this is kindergarten for us.”
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So if Micronesia was so undermanned, why did Vanuatu send out its varsity squad? Because it had to.
Micronesia already had lost 30-0 to Tahiti and 38-0 to Fiji (that’s 114 goals allowed in three games, for those scoring at home), and a goal differential tiebreaker meant Vanuatu had to beat Micronesia at least 30-0 to keep its hopes of qualifying alive.
Vanuatu certainly got the job done, but ironically, it still wasn’t enough.
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Shoulda won by 50.
