The History Of Football In Greenland (And Why They Can't Join FIFA)

Greenland has been playing football for over a century. The sport arrived with Danish settlers in the early 1900s and took root in a country where summers are short, and the pitches are few. It was never easy to build a football culture in a territory roughly the size of Western Europe, with a population of around 56,000 people and no grass pitches to speak of. But they managed it anyway.

The Greenland Football Association was founded in 1971 and has governed the domestic game ever since, running a national league competition with clubs from across the country’s scattered coastal towns. The sport holds a firm place in public life there, and the national team has been active for decades. Yet Greenland remains outside FIFA, outside UEFA, and therefore unable to enter any major tournament, including World Cup qualifying.

For those who follow the sport closely enough to seek out stories beyond the mainstream, perhaps through a platform like Virgin Bet, Greenland’s exclusion is one of football’s more striking anomalies. For a country that takes its football seriously, that exclusion runs deep.

The grass problem

FIFA’s membership criteria require that a nation has at least one regulation grass pitch. Greenland has none. The territory sits largely above the Arctic Circle, and the permafrost that dominates the landscape makes it impossible to lay and maintain a natural grass surface. Clubs play on artificial pitches, which have improved considerably over the years, but FIFA’s rules have not kept pace with that reality.

It is a blunt piece of bureaucracy applied to a country that had no say in its own geography. Greenland has applied for FIFA membership on more than one occasion and been refused each time on these grounds. The most recent attempt came in 2016, when the application was again rejected. The verdict was the same as before.

The political complication

There is a second obstacle, and it is harder to resolve than the pitch issue. Greenland is an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, and FIFA typically requires its members to be sovereign states or widely recognised autonomous regions. Greenland has significant self-governance, including control over domestic affairs, but Denmark retains responsibility for foreign policy and defence. That relationship has historically complicated FIFA’s assessment of whether Greenland meets the political criteria for membership.

The comparison with the Faroe Islands is one that comes up often. The Faroes, also part of the Kingdom of Denmark, gained FIFA membership in 1988 and UEFA membership in 1990. They have competed in World Cup and European Championship qualifying ever since, producing famous results along the way, including a 1-0 win over Austria in their very first competitive match. Greenland’s administrators have pointed to that precedent repeatedly. FIFA has so far treated the two cases differently.

Life outside FIFA

Without access to FIFA and UEFA competition, Greenland’s national team has found other ways to play. The country is a member of CONIFA, the Confederation of Independent Football Associations, which organises international football for nations and regions outside the FIFA structure, including Northern Cyprus, Sardinia, Tuvalu, and Cornwall. Greenland have competed in multiple CONIFA World Football Cups and reached the final of the 2019 edition, losing to Karpatalya on penalties.

At club level, Greenlandic sides occasionally enter the Danish cup competition, which gives players some exposure to opponents from a higher standard of football. Several Greenlandic players have also moved to Denmark to pursue careers in the professional game, with a small number reaching the topflight of Danish football over the years.

Where things stand now

Greenland’s political landscape is shifting. The push for full independence from Denmark has gained momentum in recent years, and if the territory were to become a sovereign state, that would remove one of the barriers to FIFA membership. The pitch question would still remain, though FIFA has shown some flexibility in other areas of its regulations in recent years, and a formal application from an independent Greenland would arrive in a different context entirely.

For now, Greenland’s footballers continue to play in circumstances that no FIFA member nation would recognise, on artificial surfaces in towns that can only be reached by plane or boat, against opponents they see a handful of times a year.