{"id":694953,"date":"2026-05-26T13:45:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T13:45:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/694953\/"},"modified":"2026-05-26T13:45:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T13:45:16","slug":"no-place-for-football-review-battling-ice-and-snow-to-play-the-beautiful-game-in-greenland-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/694953\/","title":{"rendered":"No Place for Football review \u2013 battling ice and snow to play the beautiful game in Greenland | Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the football-industrial complex churns out ever more eyeball-aimed product, precision engineered to trigger either triumphalism or nostalgia (or both), there\u2019s occasionally room for stories like this about Greenland\u2019s eight team championship playoff: scrappy chronicles of big-hearted underachievers in obscure corners of the football universe. (One of them, about perennial losers American Samoa<\/a>, even got turned into a feature film directed by Taika Waititi<\/a>.) Could Greenland\u2019s strugglers and strivers end up as characters in a big-screen comedy? Stranger things have happened and, after the country\u2019s surprise arrival in the geopolitical spotlight<\/a>, this might yet be the best way for outsiders to get some understanding of the place.<\/p>\n

As it is, one of the main virtues of this film is to convey just how tough life is in the world\u2019s largest island (an \u201cautonomous territory\u201d, part of the kingdom of Denmark). We see the team captain, Patrick Frederiksen (a charismatic presence and one of the documentary\u2019s main characters), moodily hunting for seals, giant icebergs floating yards away from the edge of a football pitch, and the non-appearance of half the team for the week-long playoffs due to cancelled flights (travelling by boat takes longer, but is more reliable). The team in question is the slightly unmemorably named B-67, who hail from Greenland\u2019s capital Nuuk; they appear to have an Old Firm-ish sort of rivalry with Nagdlunguak, from the island\u2019s third largest town, Ilulissat. The shortness of the playing season, it is regularly pointed out, is one of the main factors hampering Greenland\u2019s football, as there are only a few short summer weeks where the place thaws enough for outdoor matches. The aforementioned travel issues mean, moreover, it\u2019s almost impossible to arrange games against anyone other than local sides.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

It\u2019s perhaps unsurprising, therefore, that the footballing powers-that-be appear reluctant to give official sanction to Greenland\u2019s national side; they were recently turned down by Fifa\u2019s North and Central Americas organisation Concacaf<\/a> and, despite their fellow autonomous territory the Faroe Islands already being members, are no longer eligible for Uefa after a change in the rules. There seems to be plenty of enthusiasm for the game<\/a> in Greenland, but possibly standards aren\u2019t all that; some of the football on show in the elite tournament has a distinct Sunday league vibe, even if Frederiksen and his team-mate S\u00f8ren Kreutzmann look pretty decent players. One thing that doesn\u2019t get a mention is climate change<\/a> (perversely, it might actually increase Greenland\u2019s chances if warmer weather means more outside football), while the country\u2019s slightly fractious relations with Denmark are hinted at only very obliquely. Overall, the film isn\u2019t pulling up any roots, and perhaps doesn\u2019t get the ending it wants; but it offers an interesting insight into the fringes of the global game.<\/p>\n

No Place For Football is on digital platforms from 29 May.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the football-industrial complex churns out ever more eyeball-aimed product, precision engineered to trigger either triumphalism or nostalgia…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":694954,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,75,337],"class_list":["post-694953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=694953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694953\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/694954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=694953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=694953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=694953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}