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President, Northern Mariana Islands Football Association：Jerry Tan
Greetings from the Northern Mariana Islands,

As the EAFF’s youngest member, the Northern Mariana Islands Football Association (NMIFA) is committed to nurturing the growing football movement in our islands. Established in 2005, the NMIFA has steadily grown in numbers and has maintained a core organization made up of faithful and loyal members and players.
We are proud that our adult and children’s leagues have been invited to play alongside other EAFF members throughout the region, and this has only added to the excitement of this, our favorite sport.

I wish to thank the EAFF members and organizations for their valuable assistance in improving the level of football in the CNMI by sending knowledgeable and talented people to guide and assist us as we develop the sport in the islands.
The past year has seen numerous coaching seminars, player workshops, and organizational functions which have further enhanced our abilities to compete.

The NMIFA is still in its infancy, but our players are quickly emerging as credible challengers for the future.

We look forward to welcoming more members of the EAFF to join us on the beautiful island of Saipan in the very near future!

The Northern Mariana Islands, which are composed of 14 islands such as Saipan, Rota Island and Tinian is within the commonwealth of the USA. The most popular sport is baseball and the history of soccer is still young. The Northern Mariana Islands Football Association was established in 2005. Two years following that the national team was formed in 2007 and they were included in the East Asian Football Federation as a quasi-member. Then in September 2008 that status was upgraded to full member. Many of the national team players have full time jobs such as teachers and hotel staff but still manage to train 4 times per week and paln to improve in this way. Their Mariana Island neighbors, Guam, have a similar goal and they are obvious rivals. In February 2009 former Guam national team coach KAMBE Sugao was appointed in charge of both men’s and women’s teams and he is focused on a continuous program to improve the youth development. They hope that coach KAMBE’s can do something similar to his 6 years in charge when he took Guam from lowest FIFA ranked team in the world to champions of the East Asian Championship Qualifying tournament. The challenge for Northern Mariana Islands has just begun.

As of July 2009