Patrick Frederiksen stares out the window of the airport in Kangerlussuaq, a small settlement in western Greenland that is also the territory’s primary commercial-aviation hub. The airport itself would pass for a nondescript building in any office park. Nonetheless, Frederiksen speaks about grand ambitions for his country, and his friends that make up Greenland’s national soccer team.
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This week, the group has made headlines, due to their federation’s application to join CONCACAF, the regional governing body overseeing soccer in North America, Central America and the Caribbean. In theory (if not likely in practice), membership could eventually put Greenland in line to play in official competitions against the likes of regional powers the United States, Mexico, Costa Rica, Canada, and others.
For now, though, the Football Association of Greenland (or KAK, an acronym of that in the native language) is just happy to have a game to play at all – they’re off to Turkey for a friendly this weekend against Turkmenistan.
“It’s not that often we get to play against other nations,” Frederiksen, a defender, says. “You can feel when you’re watching us in the stadium that we can give everything. We play with our heart.”
And they’ll travel a long way to do it.
After a shaky 45-minute flight north from Greenland’s capital Nuuk to the Kangerlussuaq Airport, one of two in the country able to handle large aircraft, Frederiksen and 14 other domestic-based players – all amateurs – will be in the air nearly five hours to Copenhagen in Denmark. There, the team’s three lone professionals, who all play in the country, will join them. The team will then fly south three more hours to Turkey.
The game in Antalya against Turkmenistan, the 143rd-ranked team in the world according to FIFA, will be Greenland’s first match against a senior national team since 2013, when it lost 1-0 to Bermuda. Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark, usually plays against clubs from across Scandinavia, but even those games happen infrequently. Perhaps their most notable fixture in recent history was a 1-0 loss to Kosovo’s under-21s side in 2022.
The application to CONCACAF is key to an effort to bring their soccer out of these very obscure corners of the international game. KAK chairman Kenneth Kleist calls the federation’s plans part of a soccer “revolution” in Greenland.
“We want to show people that we are alive, we are a country that does not just build igloos,” he says. “We have planes. I’m not going to say we have a lot of money, but we have money. We are ready to build football and build what is necessary.”
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Greenland is not part of FIFA, soccer’s global governing body. As such, it is not eligible to compete in the World Cup. The KAK is forbidden from joining their parent country’s confederation, Europe’s UEFA, due to a statute baring associations from non-independent regions (The Danish-controlled Faroe Islands got grandfathered in, having joined UEFA in 1990 before that statute was put in place).
Greenland’s relation to Denmark means its chances of joining FIFA are slim to none. Yet Greenland is geographically part of North America, with Nuuk being closer to Canada than to their closest European neighbors, Iceland.
That’s why Greenland wants to join the likes of the U.S., Mexico, Canada, and other small, often-island island nations that Kleist argues have more in common with them than you’d think. In the Caribbean, Bonaire, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Saint Martin and Sint Maarten are members of CONCACAF but not of FIFA. All are overseas territories of European countries, too. So why, Kleist asks, should Greenland be any different?
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Greenland applies for CONCACAF membership
“Some of the members of CONCACAF are not a country,” Kleist says. “Aruba and Bermuda are British overseas territories, for example. It’s similar to the relationship we have with Denmark. If we can’t be a member of CONCACAF, we have to think, ‘Why?’.”
Those questions are part of what led Kleist to follow the necessary protocols and send a letter, plus an application for Greenland, to CONCACAF’s headquarters in Miami, Florida. He says he also asked the Danish Football Union (DBU) to take their letter to the recent FIFA congress in Bangkok, Thailand to deliver it to CONCACAF representatives on their behalf.
Crucially, Kleist says KAK has the full backing of the DBU in their hopes to become part of CONCACAF.
“We need to be sure (CONCACAF) received the application from us,” Kleist says.
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For now, though, they have every reason to not be sure.
“We’ve written to members of the board. But nobody answers,” Kleist says.
A CONCACAF spokesperson told The Athletic that CONCACAF would not comment on specific cases and points to its general regulations on these types of matters.
“We hope that we can start a formal dialogue with CONCACAF soon,” Kleist says. “It’s clear that CONCACAF needs to go through internal procedures before meeting with us. But I think we’re ready.”
Soccer in Greenland is different. It has to be, owing to short, high-northern-latitude summers with temperatures that reach 50F (10C) at their peak. The game is popular in the country, but an indoor version (futsal) is often the form it takes.
Kleist says approximately 10 percent of the 56,000 citizens are registered participants in local soccer clubs, while there are just 18 outdoor pitches in the entirety of a country three times the size of Texas.
“(Soccer) is the biggest sport in Greenland by far,” Kleist says. “The interest in joining CONCACAF is exploding. Because now we have done it and there is a lot of talk in the cities about what we’ve done. People are asking, ‘Can we believe it, what the next step could be?’.”
At the culmination of Greenland’s short summers, six club teams gather in one small town for a five-day tournament to crown a national champions. With the country’s few cities being isolated by rock, ice and water, teams can only travel in by boat or plane.
This August, the tournament will be held on a single pitch in Qeqertarsuaq, a town with less than 1,000 inhabitants on an island north of most others in Greenland. Surely to the delight of soccer purists worldwide, the federation is planning to bring more teams into the fold and adopt a promotion and relegation system with two divisions.
Only amateurs play in the domestic championship. They train three times a week, after finishing their day jobs, outdoors at Nuuk Stadium, where the average temperature even on summer nights is just a few degrees above freezing.
These amateur players make up the majority of the national team.
Frederiksen, for example, works in an orphanage. He says he is losing income to take the week off work to play in this match against Turkmenistan.
In fact, outside of the men’s national-team manager, Morten Rutkjær, nearly every person that makes up the Football Association of Greenland is a volunteer, Kleist says.
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So why the sudden drive to level up in international soccer?
For Kleist and Frederiksen, it’s the chance to fill compatriots with national pride. Frederiksen believes that with more competitive games against established nations in CONCACAF, future generations in the country will have something to aspire to. He believes social change could come with the national team serving as role models, citing Greenland’s issues with alcoholism, which was called the territory’s “most important public health challenge” in a recent study.
“It would help Greenland society in so many ways… kids need to see something and say, ‘I want to be part of that’,” he says. “If we have the opportunity to travel more and play more matches, kids will say, ‘That’s something I want to do’. They will change their lifestyle.”
Travel, though, comes with costs.
And with Greenland being as remote as it is, those costs figure to be significant. Toronto in Canada would be the closest usual home venue of a CONCACAF nation at just over 1,700 miles (2,800km) away from Nuuk, with most Central American and Caribbean countries at least 3,400 miles distant.
Is Greenland, with a population that could not even fill Mexico’s 87,000-capacity Estadio Azteca and a largely-volunteer federation, prepared to face those costs?
“The finances are, of course, something we have to talk about,” says Kleist, who added that the majority of the national team’s funding comes from the Greenlandic Sports Federation, an arm of the government. “It’s going to be a little bit difficult to finance, but I’m positive we can because the interest is so big.”
Kleist says it would be “very difficult” for Greenland to even consider moving forward with their plan without the support of Denmark and Iceland, with the latter being important due to having the most experience hosting international soccer in a somewhat-similar geographic position. These established federations regularly share best practices.
For the players, their dream of joining CONCACAF is built on getting more opportunities to show the world what they’re capable of — Jesper Gronkjaer, now 46, who went on to play for clubs including Chelsea and Atletico Madrid and win 80 caps for the Danish national team, was born in Nuuk. Kleist believes Greenland becoming part of CONCACAF could help turn amateurs into professionals with increased exposure and, hopefully, sponsorship revenue.
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“Things could take a dramatic step forward,” Kleist says. “There’s going to be a lot of money in Greenlandic football, that’s for sure. Because more people will want to be a part of it.”
Even if CONCACAF does accept its application, Greenland’s potential home remains up in the air.
Kleist admits that Nuuk Stadium, the country’s largest venue, isn’t up to snuff. The stadium sits just 2,000 – many of whom have to simply throw blankets down on the rock surrounding the pitch – and because of the harrowingly long winters, having natural grass to play on is not an option.
But, Kleist says, as his consistently monotone voice peaks for a lone moment: “We have the possibility to play (matches) in Iceland.”
“That’s a big step for sure. That’s pretty much why we think we can play,” Kleist says.
This one game against Turkmenistan won’t directly impact Greenland’s quest to join CONCACAF, but it is still seen as a crucial stepping stone on a longer journey.
“It’s very difficult for us to play against a nation, because we’re not a part of FIFA,” Kleist says. “If you get the chance to play against a team like Turkmenistan, you have to say, ‘Yes’.”
Kleist says Rutkjær has contacts in Turkey and helped him arrange the match, which is not technically an official friendly owing to Greenland’s non-FIFA status. Kleist himself was cagey about discussing the match when first approached about it, until he learned that it had been publicized on a Turkmenistan-based website.
A week after leaving Greenland en route to Turkey, players like Frederiksen will return to their day jobs. When they will play another national-team match is unknown.
“We are amateurs. But we’d like to be part of the football world,” Kleist says. “It’s the biggest dream in Greenland sports, to be recognized as a football nation.”
GO DEEPER
The national team from a country half the size of a football pitch
(Top photo courtesy KAK)
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Joshua Kloke is a staff writer who has covered the Maple Leafs and Canadian soccer for The Athletic since 2016. Previously, he was a freelance writer for various publications, including Sports Illustrated. Follow Joshua on Twitter @joshuakloke
