It probably wasn’t the introduction Richard Orlowski was expecting. Not long installed as the new manager of Belize’s national team, he took a squad of players assembled from local teams like Police United to duke it out with their Central American neighbors for the regional title. The countries that make up the sliver of Concacaf territory between Mexico and the top of South America is not exactly a haven of world beaters. But for many on the isthmus soccer is religion, and Costa Rica has lately given the region a respected focal point. If there is a Central American soccer pecking order, Belize is usually at or near the bottom.

“I saw the match Belize played against Panama, and honestly, if I am the coach of Belize, excuse me and forgive me for saying this, but I am going from the hotel to my house.”

Stinging words from a seemingly unlikely source: the Nicaragua head coach Henry Duarte. They followed a surprise result for Orlowski and his Jaguars side as they opened their 2017 Copa Centroamericana campaign with a backs-against-the-wall 0-0 tie against hosts Panama. It was an effective performance but not one for the purists. Duarte wasn’t impressed: Welcome to Central America.

Orlowski chooses to brush the incident aside when asked about Duarte’s words. He deflects, somewhat lyrically. “Henry Duarte has made an excellent job over two years,” says the man who calls the Poconos in Pennsylvania home. In Duarte, Orlowski was confronted with someone who had a similarly gargantuan task when he took over Nicaragua late in 2014 as he has in Belize. “This team has improved so much, and even though Henry beat me three times, still he is my friend – this is the beauty of football and friendship.” Orlowski is reflecting on the 3-1 defeat Nicaragua inflicted on his Jaguars side later in the tournament. The tension might have been instructive: Belize and Nicaragua are usually locked in a battle not to end up with the Central American wooden spoon. After their clash, Nicaragua had all but ensured this time it wouldn’t be theirs to take home.

“We did not have much time to get ready for the cup,” Orlowski muses, “to work a little harder – hard work never goes unrewarded – on tactics and field discipline. What I was told, though, the team looked better than before.”

Orlowski is an obscure figure in an obscure corner of the international soccer orbit. At 59, he’s a relative latecomer to the managerial churn in peripheral nations where many coaches dare not tread.

He first emerged from virtual anonymity in 2013 as part of a Polish-American duo at the head of the Nepal national team. The Polish-born New Yorker Jack Stefanowski, who Orlowski once coached, had been appointed head coach. Stefanowski, then 37 and once in interim charge of the Puerto Rican national team, took along the more senior Orlowski, also born in Poland, as his assistant.

It was a dramatic departure from the more sedate ranks of US youth soccer to which Orlowski was accustomed, and the pair had some quick success. Nepal, too, exists on the fringes of international soccer, seldom seen on a premier stage. No matter. Under Stefanowski and Orlowski, Nepal recorded a 2-1 victory over India in the South Asian Football Federation championship, a result that had been 28 years in the making, Orlowski recalls fondly. They topped their group in the tournament before eventually bowing out to Afghanistan in the semi-finals. That led to a steep climb up the Fifa rankings, Orlowski says. And though the Stefanowski-Orlowski tandem peaked with the India result, Orlowski maintains the work they carried out should go down as a success.

For Orlowski, the Fifa rankings were to be central to what came next. Before long, he was headed off on his own. Early in 2015, he was appointed the head coach on the tiny Caribbean island of Anguilla. It was an even more daunting task than Nepal. There, the playing pool is tiny. A British overseas territory perched on the outward edge of the Caribbean, Anguilla is a blip on the map with a population of just 15,000. When Orlowski took control, the national team was ranked second worst in the world. Competitive games are rare and in short order he was confronted with a two-legged 2018 World Cup qualifier in the depths of Concacaf’s first round. Lose it, and there was a fair chance they’d officially become the world’s worst side. Who were they up against? Nicaragua and that man Duarte, about to face his first task atop Los Pinoleros. Nicaragua are lowly but giants set against Anguilla. Duarte’s men duly dispatched the islanders with an 8-0 aggregate scoreline. Anguilla hit rock bottom of the Fifa rankings.

Soon, Orlowski grew tired of a set-up he saw as working against the island’s players. “After over one month of preparation for the World Cup qualifier, we played two friendly games with the British Virgin Islands and one with Saint Martin,” he relates. “We won all three games and the Anguilla players were so motivated. They knew we had momentum, and every practice they worked harder and waited for the Fifa ranking.” The point, says Orlowski, was that Anguilla might move up from bottom. But once the latest rankings emerged, he explains, Anguilla had not received any points. While Saint Martin are not Fifa members, the British Virgin Islands are included in the Fifa list. “The motivation and commitment to football was gone and later players found nobody who was responsible for forgetting to send the request to Fifa.” After eight months, Orlowski gave up and left.

A little over a year later, he was in Belize. There commenced the latest spartan undertaking in an unorthodox journey.

Orlowski is no stranger to difficult beginnings. His very arrival in the US owed much to circumstances back in his homeland. In 1984, he fled Poland for Austria to escape his then communist homeland. Later, he gained refugee status in the US and began to carve out a life in New York before moving to Pennsylvania 17 years ago. As a professional player in Poland, he lists the obscure Gofabet Gorzkowice, Piotrcovia Piotrkow Tryb and Grunwald Poznan as former clubs. In the US, he played for Polish-American outfits and also had a spell on the Cayman Islands, he says.

In Belize, Orlowski’s remit also includes the youth national teams from under-15 up. In that vein, he drafted in a swath of younger players for the Copa Centroamericana in January. His ambitions for the job amount to a massive challenge. He wants to get kids into the national set-up at a much younger age. He wants to see more friendly matches against higher-level opposition. He wants to stiffen lax rules on attendance at national team practice. The problem is he finds himself in another largely amateur environment. Key will be getting local club coaches on board, he notes. Juan Arango, a commentator at the Central American tournament who saw Orlowski and his troops up close, tells the Guardian any amount of progress will depend on the level of backing he gets from the Football Federation of Belize. “What is it they want? And what is it that they’re looking for?” he says. “I’m still not sure that Belize knows what they’re looking for when it comes to a football program.”

Orlowski’s jostles with Central America’s finest sharpened the focus. “As the tournament progressed we saw much improvement with ball possession and our ability to create chances and score goals,” Orlowski says. “We need to improve on our finishing as well as our ability to defend. I would also like to improve our players’ ability to move off the ball and ability to find open spaces, improve technical and tactical aspects. While this is a repairable issue, it is not a short term fix.”

Alas, there is a ceiling. Belize finished last again, the tie with Panama their only point of the round-robin tournament. In lyrical form once more, Orlowski has a message for the country’s soccer fans: “Do not blame players for disappointing you, blame yourself for expecting too much. Win, loss or tie, Belize till I die.”

As for Orlowski himself, he can only hope he moves the needle enough to take another tentative step out of the shadows. “I am not the coach that makes presidents of clubs or federations keep my phone number on the top of their list,” he says. “I am not going to be working in England or Germany but you will hear about me.”