Tahiti soccer team wins crowd but not game

Soccer matches in Tahiti rarely draw crowds larger than a few hundred. And even then most of those fans are players waiting for the next match.

So the South Pacific island nation took a huge step up in class when it played Nigeria on Monday in the Confederations Cup in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, before a live crowd of more than 20,000 -- and a worldwide television audience in the millions.

And the Tahitians, ranked 138th in the world by FIFA, the global governing body for soccer, acquitted themselves well against No. 31 Nigeria despite losing, 6-1.

“We’ve shown the world there’s some real quality in Tahiti,” Marama Vahirua, the only professional on the team, told reporters. “Just our presence here is a victory, and it was fantastic to be adopted by the Brazilian public.”

While Nigeria, the African champion, has qualified for four of the last five World Cups and has a roster dotted with players from English Premier League and Bundesliga teams, Tahiti’s team is made up of a truck driver, delivery boys, physical education teachers, accountants and nine players who are unemployed.

“And we also have a player, he wakes up every day at 4:30 in the morning and climbs mountains all day longer,” Coach Eddy Etaeta told Reuters. “He is a mountain climber but he will climb anything. He climbs coconut trees. He climbs all kinds of things and then he comes to training.”

Jonathan Tehau scored Tahiti’s lone goal on a header early in the second half, after which his teammates gave their “rowing boat” celebration -- in which the players get down on their knees and make a rowing motion -- earning the biggest cheers of the match for either team.

Tahiti actually scored two other goals in the game -- but both of those were for Nigeria. In the fifth minute a shot by Uwa Echiejlie ricocheted off three Tahitian players on its way past goalkeeper Xavier Samin, who gave up another goal when he made a save, then dropped the ball at the feet of Nigeria’s Nnamdi Oduamadi, who turned the gift into the first of three goals he scored on the day.

And Tehau, who scored on the header, then gave the goal back in the 69th minute when his sliding touch of a Nigerian shot deflected it into his own net.

“The last 15 minutes were really difficult for us physically because we’ve never experienced such a tough game before,” Etaeta said. “I’d like to pay tribute to my players; they were fantastic.”

Next up for Tahiti? World champion Spain, the world’s top-ranked team.

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