Last year, when Micronesia asked MASHAV, Israel's Foreign Ministry Center for International Cooperation, for help in building up its national soccer team, the request was greeted with some surprise. Although MASHAV is always ready to help countries with their specific needs, this request was different than any it had ever received.
For over 41 years Israeli experts have been going all over the world, sharing their experience, expertise and know-how in fields as diverse as agriculture, education, community development, urban and rural development, management, economic and financial planning, advancement of women and medicine and public health. Under the aegis of MASHAV, Israel has become a well-respected leader in the field of international cooperation and aid. It takes all requests seriously. This one was no exception.
Wheels were set in motion and Shimon Shenhar, Technical Director at the Wingate Institute of Sport, was asked to undertake a nine-week project that he now regards as one of the most exciting experiences of his life. Shenhar is practically a soccer legend in Israel, beginning with his 10-year stint as a brilliant player for the Maccabi teams in Israel's National Soccer league. A severe knee injury forced his retirement - from the field, but not from the game. At the age of 31 he became the youngest coach in the National League. For over 20 years now he has served as one of Israel's outstanding coaches and instructors. He also served for 12 years as the Sports Officer for the IDF (Israel Defense Forces).
To the uninitiated, soccer may be just a game. In reality, however, as Shenhar would dramatically and effectively prove, it is an important tool for helping a country forge a sense of national pride, one that also integrates the different sectors of society. Equally important, for the participants - and in Micronesia these were all teenagers - it is an excellent way of building character.
Initially, however, Shenhar had reservations. Interested in "professional achievement," he had doubts that this would be possible. Micronesia has an unenviable record of having lost every single game it ever played - and by margins practically unheard of in soccer history. Soon, however, MASHAV convinced him that this would be - as it became - an exciting challenge, a chance to make a valuable contribution to a new, small country, which has a total population of a mere 130,000 souls, and which had received its independence only in 1986 and admittance to the UN in 1991.
Micronesia, whose full name is the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), consists of four island nations in the Western Pacific - Pohnpe, Chuuk Islands, Korrea and the Yap Islands. Although the people are outwardly similar to the Melanesians and the Polynesians, recent research seems to suggest they are a distinct racial grouping.
From 1947 until 1986 Micronesia was administered by the United States as part of the US Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands. Since then, FSM has governed itself under a compact of free association with the United States, receiving in the process substantial aid and support from the United States.
Many of the teachers and doctors in Micronesia are Americans. "And the initiative for our project," reports Shenhar, "came from one of these doctors, Dr. David Rutstein, who has been stationed in Micronesia since 1986 by the United States Public Health Service." A Bahai by religion, Dr. Rutstein has visited Israel many times and knows how important soccer is here. "He understood," says Shenhar, "how soccer could serve as a unifying force for a young country still struggling to find its national identity. Without him, we couldn't have accomplished what we did. His commitment and especially his insistence on developing team spirit was invaluable."
As Shenhar would immediately discover, the whole concept of playing together and not as individuals was new to the Micronesians. There were other surprises. Although in the waterfront capital of Kolonia, there are some modern-style buildings, "including banks, a supermarket and some restaurants, most of the people live in straw huts and tend to sleep outdoors on the ground." Governor Vincent Figit, "who was extremely helpful and cooperative," stresses Shenhar, heads the National Assembly.
On the whole, much of the population still follows behavioral patterns long part of the country's culture. "Eating, for example," notes Shenhar, "is often a casual and informal affair. Bananas, papayas, mangos and coconuts grow in abundance. Eating is often just a matter of climbing up a tree and picking off one's meal." Fish is another staple. Shenhar admits that he has never been very fond of fish, "but coming to Micronesia where the fish is tastier and more succulent that any I've ever eaten, I not only learned to like and eat fish, but to eat it raw as the locals do."
Similarly unfamiliar was the lack of formal marriage contracts. Within these common-law relationships, women have no rights. Men can just walk away from their partners, taking their children with them.
"In general," says Shenhar, "the position and status of women seems to be low, with their worth measured by their ability to bear children. And this in spite of the fact that they appear to be doing much of the work in the society. Many of the men, however, don't seem to appreciate the value of work. Soccer helped instill a certain work ethic in our young players. And they were very young, most between the ages of 17 and 19 with a few under the age of 16, but not enough to make a team."
The players were also inexperienced. Some had been playing only a few months, others, however, for one to two years. More problematic than not knowing the rudiments of the game was the fact that they were not used to playing as a team. "I had to get into their heads that they were not just learning soccer, but rather a whole new way of behaving. Watching videos I had brought with me, they saw the importance of developing a sense of camaraderie and respect for each other and for me.
"Many components are involved in building up a team," explains Shenhar, "including technique, physical fitness and actual playing practice. Over and above all, there must be discipline which is the point at which I began. In the early days, when, for example, I would ask the players to come at five o'clock in the afternoon, often I'd find myself the only one present. I had to be strict and insist they come on time or inform me if they couldn't. Those who didn't do this were out. They had to learn to follow orders since I planned the training and exercises around a very tight schedule."
Shenhar soon began to see who were the better players, screening out those who were not interested or capable of following orders. In the process, he actually screened out his only two goalkeepers, dramatically demonstrating that he is a man of his word. "Word of what was going on began to get around," he recalls, "and people began to smell, as it were, a change in behavior. Teachers, for example, came to watch the disciplined way these teenagers were behaving. I was setting a personal example which many said they would try to follow in their classrooms."
Before coming to Micronesia in mid-June of last summer (1999), Shenhar had made a flying visit to Yap, the archipelago's smallest island, home to the country's football association and site of its capital, Kolonia. He was surprised to find that there was no proper stadium for home games and requested that one be built - and it was. Work began as soon as he arrived in the country, with 200 members of the community helping in its construction. The stadium, complete with all the trappings - from flags to stands selling T-shirts and other memorabilia - would become an important plank in developing the country's pride in its national team and in itself.
Shenhar also introduced the idea of uniforms, both for training exercises and for actual games, as well as for the ball boys, with the national symbol imprinted on the shirts. "Initially, no-one understood the significance of these uniforms, but I knew," says Shenhar, "how important they are, both for serving as a status symbol and as a way of giving the players the feeling that they are part of something bigger than themselves."
From the beginning there was strong support from the community for the team. Soccer became a focal point for enhancing its sense of national pride. To further intensify this sense of identification, Shenhar insisted that the national anthem be sung before every game.
After six weeks of training, Shenhar took his team to Guam for what was essentially a training camp experience, "a chance to give the players actual playing experience." In three friendly games, the Micronesians, competing abroad for the first time since training with Shenhar, did lose but by much smaller margins that before, such as
3-0 and 4-1 - and this against a team that less than a year before had trounced them by a whopping 15-0.
At these games, good preparation for future tournaments, there were two captains, one from Yap and one from outside the capital. In essence, this was a bridge-building activity since this was the first time that many of the players had had contact with those outside their own community.
Proof of how well Shenhar had succeeded came in August at the Micronesia Cup, the first international soccer game ever to be played in the Federated States and one which inaugurated the new stadium. Micronesia beat the Commonwealth of the Mariana Islands and then, in the finals, went on to beat the Crusaders, an international regional club team with players from the Fiji Islands, Tonga and the Philippines. The score of this last game, impressive and historic, 14-0, won Micronesia the cup!
As a by-product of his stay in Micronesia, Shenhar became an ambassador of goodwill there for Israel. Soon after he arrived, Shenhar was interviewed on local television. "I was only asked three questions about soccer, with the rest of the questions being about Israel, about hi-tech industries and, especially, about the holy sites. I had brought videos from Israel with me and these were shown over and over again on television. Since the population is largely Christian, the people were thrilled to realize that the holy places, such as Bethlehem, actually exist down on earth and are not just visions from heaven."
Reflecting on his nine weeks in Micronesia, Shenhar feels that more than just helping the country build its national soccer team was achieved, but that he also effected a change in behavior and attitudes. "When the players finally broke their horrific losing streak, they realized how much can be accomplished when working together cohesively within a disciplined framework."
Shimon Shenhar cannot fail to be proud of what was achieved in Micronesia. He left with a hope that another coach would, in the future, offer continuity and follow-up, so many of the gains would not be lost and there would be someone to coach the players on a regular basis and help them keep up their top performance. He would like to see an on-going program of courses for coaches and instructors, able to train new generations of players, to "carry on the torch" and preserve what now exists.