212 Degrees
The Marshall Islands Soccer Federation's new limited edition jersey is built to pay for something that's never happened: an international match on Marshallese soil.
There's a grass field in Majuro with nothing on it.
It sits inside an athletics track, and the grass is good. That's about all it has going for it right now.
"No goalposts, no corner flags, no line marking, no dugouts yet," Matt Webb said this week on SDH AM.
The game on the islands started on futsal courts, where the space was. Only in the last six months, Webb said, have the players gotten onto grass at all. Next summer, the federation wants to play the first international match in the country's history on that field.
Webb is the General Secretary of the Marshall Islands Soccer Federation. He joined Jon Nelson from Exeter, Devon, and he showed up wearing the reason he was on the show. This week, the federation released the 212, a limited edition home jersey with a specific job to do. It's meant to help pay for that match.
One More Degree
The number does two jobs.
FIFA currently recognizes 211 member associations. The Marshall Islands want to be the 212th. That's the obvious read, and it's right there on the shirt.
The second read is the one the federation keeps coming back to. Water is hot at 211 degrees Fahrenheit. At 212, it boils. The difference is one degree, and that degree doesn't show up all at once. It's the sum of everything that came before it.
That's how Webb talks about the whole project. Not one grand gesture. A lot of small ones, stacked on top of each other.
Only 212 of these shirts will exist. Each one is numbered, comes in a presentation box with a signed certificate, and includes a year in what the federation calls the 212 Club, a monthly roundtable with its leadership. Webb isn't promising a polished version of the story in those meetings. He called it "warts and all": what it's actually taken to build an international program from nothing, and a say in what gets built next. A general release version, without the numbering or the club membership, follows later this fall.
The shirt is the first from the federation's new partnership with WOVN, and Webb said it's been in the works for about 18 months. The design leans on traditional Marshallese tattooing, an art form that has marked status, courage, and identity across the islands for generations. Three of its motifs made the shirt. Pako, the shark's tooth, runs in zigzag lines. Bod, the turtle shell, shows up as hexagons. Elonwa comes from the driftwood that washes up along the shoreline.
The crest carries M̧ajeļ, the Marshallese name for the islands. Stitched into the collar is "Aelon Kein Ad." Our Islands.
The tattoo work was about making the shirt truer to the people it represents, and Webb was direct about why that mattered to him. He isn't Marshallese, and he doesn't pretend to be.
"I just see myself as a temporary kind of guardian," he said, "fortunate enough to be in this position, helping the Federation get to the next level."
What the Shirts Already Bought
This isn't the federation's first shirt, and the first ones are the reason any of this sounds possible.
The earlier replica kits have sold more than 1,500, Webb said, to buyers in around 40 countries and nearly every U.S. state.
"For us, merchandise is the primary kind of lever we can pull to help us achieve anything," he said.
That money paid for the first international matches in Marshall Islands history. They were played in August 2025 in Springdale, Arkansas, where the federation has built a second home among the Marshallese community in Northwest Arkansas.
The opener went the way first matches usually go. The U.S. Virgin Islands won 4 to 0.
The final day, against Turks and Caicos, started worse. The Marshall Islands were down two goals inside 24 minutes. Three minutes later, Aaron Anitok-Brokken played the ball to Josiah Blanton, and Blanton scored the first goal in the country's history. Anitok-Brokken added a penalty in the 72nd minute. The Marshall Islands lost 3 to 2.
That's not the part anyone remembers.
Blanton is from Roswell. In June 2016, he was on the U14 roster of Atlanta United's first academy class, a group of kids signing with a club that hadn't played a game yet. Nine years later, he scored the first goal for a country that had never scored one.
Those matches left something behind in Arkansas, too. Ticket sales raised nearly $4,000 for Springdale High School's soccer program.
The Cost of Existing
Webb put the price of the Arkansas tournament in the ballpark of $100,000.
The Marshall Islands aren't a FIFA member, so there's no development money from Zurich behind that number. It came from fundraisers, shirt sales, and whatever small sponsorships the federation could find.
"We're completely bootstrapped," Webb said. "So we're paying everything ourselves."
A home match will cost something similar. Some of the players live on the islands. A lot of them live across the United States. Getting everyone to the middle of the Pacific means flights, and Webb said flights are by far the biggest expense.
The rest is the kind of problem most federations never have to think about. Goals, for example. A shipping company has offered to carry equipment from ports in New Zealand and Australia, so if the federation can find goalposts or dugouts, there's a way to get them to the islands.
"Where there's a will, there's a way," Webb said.
The whole operation is volunteer led, about 40 people around the world, by Webb's count, fitting it around jobs and everyday life. Webb does his part from the southwest of England. He admitted that balance can be a challenge. He also said he'd bore anybody to death about the Marshall Islands, given the chance, and it was hard to tell which of those he meant more.
Grass for the First Time
The money matters because the demand is already there.
Webb said the kids are "absolutely loving the game," and schools keep asking the federation for coaches.
"There's not enough coaches to actually meet the demand of the kids on island," he said.
Some of the help has come from Kiribati. Coach Bitamatang Keakea has been working with players at Majuro Middle School, RES, and SDA School.
That relationship goes back to the federation's first tournament, a futsal event in Majuro in July 2024. Kiribati came, and it went about how you'd expect against a country that grows up with the game. Kiribati beat the Marshall Islands 6 to 2 in the final. Their striker, Bangao Bakabane, scored 18 goals in three days.
One of the Marshall Islands' two goals in that final came from Webb. So the General Secretary has an international goal. Most general secretaries can't say that.
Kiribati aren't FIFA members either, and that's what struck Webb when he saw them up close.
"This is a non-FIFA team, but their football culture is huge," he said.
He's now sharing what's worked for the Marshall Islands with Kiribati, mostly on the marketing and awareness side, the part of the job he knows best. He was quick to say they've come a long way without him.
Jon joked on air that Kiribati could be 213. Webb's version was less of a punchline. He wants the whole region growing "in unison."
Next Summer in Majuro
The target is late June or early July of 2027, Webb said, with both men's and women's matches. He said the opponents are lined up, though none have been announced. It would be the first international match ever played on Marshallese soil.
The federation started because Shem Livai's son wanted to play soccer in Majuro and there was nowhere for him to do it. Livai is still the federation's president. The futsal courts, Springdale, and the 212 all trace back to that.
Webb doesn't treat a home match as the finish line. FIFA membership is likely still a couple of years away at least, he said, and the federation's own roadmap points toward 2030. But a home match shows the people who make that call something a shirt can't. It shows the Marshall Islands can host international soccer in their own country.
Right now, it's a grass field inside a track. No goals. No flags. No lines.
At 211 degrees, it's a nice field.
At 212, it's a home ground.
SDH's Jon Nelson interviewed Matt Webb on SDH AM. Jon is a supporter of the Marshall Islands Soccer Federation and owns several of its shirts, including the one he wore on air.
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