his screed at Davos<\/a>. There are few international arenas in which Greenland can powerfully, visually show that for the demeaning fallacy it is. Olsen and his squad have the collective goal of recognition and self-assertion but no one is here to make vocal political statements. Their stories are powerfully human.<\/p>\nGreenland\u2019s players turn to face their national flag before playing. Photograph: Zeljko Vidinovic\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery time we travel it brings positive attention to Greenland,\u201d says Frederiksen, who also captains the 11-a-side team. \u201cWe get more and more respect with each game, and people remember us. It gives us energy and strength to keep going. It\u2019s confirmation that we are doing something great.\u201d<\/p>\n
Frederiksen, an imposing and technically adept 31-year-old, works full time at an orphanage in Greenland\u2019s capital, Nuuk. He is one of many squad members who work with youngsters; it is shown, to the untrained eye, by the care in their interactions. Rass Ikila Abelsen, who is 22 and idolised Frederiksen as a teenager, is training to be a teacher and will complete his course in two years.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe young players I work with look up to me,\u201d he says. \u201cWe always talk about football and futsal, and they ask me how they can become a member of the national team.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ikila Abelsen has, like his teammates, become a standard bearer and is fulfilling the dream of a childhood spent in Tasiilaq, a town of 1,800 residents on Greenland\u2019s east coast. Getting to Nuuk requires a helicopter ride before changing on to an aeroplane. In winter, he and his friends would fashion goalposts from snow and play outside in temperatures as low as -20C (-4F). Sometimes he misses the fact that, with the internet connection unreliable, outdoor activity outdid phones or gaming.<\/p>\n
Plenty of the 17-strong travelling party can tell similar tales. Their No 10, Aiko Nielsen, recently published a book about his rural upbringing. But the journey to Croatia has brought more prosaic challenges. Their luggage did not join them on the third and last of their flights here from Zagreb to Pula. It eventually turned up on Wednesday evening; the day\u2019s training had taken place in whatever clothes they had to hand. Nobody is too fazed. \u201cWe are spontaneous, flexible people and we take that into the game,\u201d Frederiksen says. \u201cWe have to be, because in Greenland the weather is in charge.\u201d<\/p>\n
Greenland\u2019s Patrick Frederiksen, in light blue, goes on the attack against Romania. \u2018We show our emotions,\u2019 he says. \u2018We let it all out.\u2019
Photograph: Zeljko Vidinovic\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
The Romania match is viewed as a chance to set a marker. Greenland lost the sides\u2019 previous meeting, in 2023, but keeping up with opponents who include a handful of professionals would further establish them as part of the furniture. Maybe other countries, reluctant to make the trip to Nuuk, will at least understand they would be well matched with a team barred from the official rankings. Futsal Week offers something beyond stern competition: the Greenland Football Association\u2019s general secretary, Aqissiaq Ludvigsen, is in town and the networking opportunities are inescapable. Scotland\u2019s presence piques the interest: perhaps Greenland could co-organise a tournament involving some of the home nations.<\/p>\n
The anthem over, Greenland rip into Romania. Is there pent-up aggression, fury, however anyone might define it, to let out from the stress of recent weeks? That must remain supposition. Besides, there has been a long enough buildup given their last international game was at a tournament in Brazil, which represented a notable breakthrough, 10 months ago. This return to the arena has been some time in coming.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are fighters, it\u2019s in our DNA,\u201d Frederiksen says. \u201cWe yell, we show our emotions, we don\u2019t hide them. If we\u2019re disappointed, sad, happy, we show our energy. We let it all out every time, you can see it and feel it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whatever is driving Greenland, it puts them 3-1 up by half-time. Players such as the rangy Angutivik Gundel-Collin, who recently came close to joining an Italian club, look deft, daring, dogged. The keeper, Aqqalooraq Ejvind Lund, is inspired and Romania are visibly rocked. \u201cI hadn\u2019t dreamed of a first half like we produced,\u201d Olsen says. \u201cI thought: \u2018OK, they\u2019re finally performing at the level we know they can.\u2019\u201d The bench erupts with each goal.<\/p>\n
It savours a stunning fourth, flicked in after the best move of the game, and Greenland seem on for one of the best results in their history. Anybody logging into a stream from Zurich or Nyon might be suitably enthused. But they collapse in the latter stages, Romania\u2019s 8-4 win owing much to futsal\u2019s brutal penalty rules.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomething happened that was hard to explain,\u201d Olsen says. The emotions afterwards are, indeed, raw. Greenland were brilliant for two-thirds of the match and there is desolation they did not see it through.<\/p>\n
Greenland spent years aiming to join Uefa but, as an autonomous territory of Denmark, found the way blocked when European football\u2019s governing body forbade the acceptance of non-independent regions in 2013. Last year they had been optimistic of being admitted by Concacaf, the confederation for North, Central America and the Caribbean, only to be shocked when their application was unanimously rejected in June. It came after Trump had made his fixation with Greenland public and felt like a stomach punch.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe thought that maybe it was time, maybe the dream was finally coming true,\u201d Frederiksen says. \u201cSo it was really disappointing, but it\u2019s just turned on a feeling inside us that we want to give even more when we travel. We were never going to start pointing fingers. We just said: \u2018We need to work harder and come up with better plans, developing football and futsal in Greenland so we reach the point where someone has to accept us.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Efforts to achieve that continue inside football\u2019s corridors of power. In the meantime every win helps. The quietly spoken Olsen, who has led the futsal team for more than a decade while running a graphic design company in Nuuk, lets his players choose their course. They will play Malta in a clash of quarter\u2011final losers on Friday and, as usual, the squad prepares by splitting into three groups.<\/p>\n
Rene Olsen, the coach, gathers his players. \u2018This is what we work for,\u2019 he says after their win against Malta. Photograph: Zeljko Vidinovic\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
These \u201cchains\u201d are broadly aligned with the players\u2019 origins: north, south or Nuuk. Each will work on implementing a specific element of the gameplan Olsen has devised. \u201cWe want to nurse this group mentality,\u201d Olsen says. \u201cWe try to educate them and then they can decide what action is best.\u201d<\/p>\n
They choose well. Within half a minute of kick-off against Malta they have scored twice through Nielsen, who flew in on Thursday afternoon after a holiday in Thailand. Nielsen is arguably the best player in Greenland\u2019s 11-a-side league; he shrugs off any jet lag to score four times in a 6-2 win and the mood afterwards is elated. \u201cThis is what we work for,\u201d Olsen smiles. On Sunday they will play Switzerland for fifth place.<\/p>\n
The very dreams Trump has threatened to take away will stay alive. \u201cMy biggest wish is to play a home game in Nuuk against another country, in front of our own fans, all of Greenland together with us,\u201d Ikila Abelsen says.<\/p>\n
For Frederiksen, the potential of weeks such as this is limitless. \u201cWhenever we get the chance to play, it\u2019s all or nothing,\u201d he says. \u201cIt means so much to us to change people\u2019s perspectives.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Greenland\u2019s futsal players string out in a line before angling their bodies to the left, facing the flag…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":255075,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-255074","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255074\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}