sport news Their one pitch is in a PRISON, 94.5 per cent of adults are overweight and it ... trends now
'Call me back once you have sobered up,' was Dave Kitson's instant reaction when a good friend pitched this bonkers idea.
The challenge was to take charge of a tiny Micronesian island, Nauru, form a football team and lead them to their first ever international fixture.
The island has just shy of 13,000 inhabitants, one football pitch and an obesity crisis rivalled by no other nation in the world.
But now, with former Premier League star Kitson, they have their first ever manager, running operations from his home in Berkshire.
No, this is not a quirky Football Manager save, this is real life. 'It's a bit of a weird one,' says Kitson with a hint of understatement.
Dave Kitson (right) has been appointed as the manager of Nauru, a tiny Micronesian island as they set up an international football team
The tiny Pacific island has just 13,000 inhabitants and suffers from a serious obesity crisis
Where Nauru is situated in relation to Australia - the island forms part of Micronesia
'I've got a fascination with places off the beaten track, I always have, I wanted to be a travel writer when I was younger.
'I wanted to escape the little town I lived in and see the world, which I did through football. This is right up my street because I love football and travel more than anything in the world.
'I have always been a hound for finding obscure articles about these places.
'One of the places was North Korea - God knows what they'd think of me - and then I discovered a travel writer Gareth Johnson, who just kept cropping up in these off-grid places.
'He rang me up about a year ago telling me he was on Tuvalu and going to Nauru.
'He said, 'I want to start a football team and get them into a tournament - if I could pull this off would you come and manage the team?'.
'I said, 'Yeah, OK mate, whatever… call me back when you have sobered up!'.'
Johnson, who once led a crowdfunding project to buy an island in the Caribbean and create a micronation, is now CEO of the Nauru Football Federation alongside a touring company which puts on pub crawls around the island's four bars and a carvery.
The former Reading striker takes charge of a team founded last year who are yet to play a game
Kitson also played for Stoke in the Premier League and featured in all of England's top four divisions
He fired Reading to promotion in 2005/06 after a couple of prolific campaigns up front
But getting a football team together, especially on an island like this, is much easier said than done.
Part of the inspiration came from American Samoa's journey, which was made into a film starring Michael Fassbender called Next Goal Wins, directed by Maori Taika Waititi.
The film, and the award-winning 2013 documentary by the same name, charts
