Football on the Faroe Islands by Vitali Vitaliev

For me, the World Cup largely lost its attraction the moment I found out that the world's most admirable football squad did not make it into the finals and was not going to be represented in South Africa. I am speaking about the national team of the Faroe Islands - a self- governing Danish dependency with a population of 49,000.

Football-Crazy Country

Forget about Brazil and Spain. As I discovered during my visit to this barren volcanic archipelago in the North Atlantic some time ago, the far-away Faroes, with 400 men's and 25 women's football teams, are by far the most football-crazy country on the planet. Which other nation can boast a men's soccer team for every 50 males, and a women's one for every 1,000 females, of its population?

A sand or an artificial turf football pitch (grass is a rare commodity in the Faroes, and is mostly reserved for the country's 80,000 sheep) can be found in every village, no matter how small. To build such a space in the rocky, mountainous Faroes, where the only natural patch of flat surface is used as the national airport (with the world's shortest runway!) is not an easy task and takes a lot of engineering. In many cases, nearby mountains had to be excavated by the determined villagers.

Day of Fame

The biggest day of fame in the history of Faroe Island football, if not in the whole of the country's history, was September 12, 1990, when the Faroese team of amateurs defeated Austria 1-0 in their first European Championship qualifying game. This victory, which was later called one of the biggest shocks in international soccer, was achieved on a neutral field in Landskrona, Sweden, although officially it was supposed to be the Faroes' home game: the other three members of the qualifying group refused point-blank to play there, despite the fact that the first real grass pitch was specially created for the tournament in the village of Toftir (it cost the country one more mountain). The excuses varied from difficulties of travel to the capricious weather with changeable winds, which, allegedly, made the players kick the ball in one direction and run in another.

The reverberations of the 63-minute victorious shot were heard throughout the world. For the Austrians, it must have been the biggest national humiliation since the Anschluss. `Resign, Waldheim!' yelled the headlines of all Faroese newspapers. It was hard to imagine that one of the world's best professional football teams could be defeated by a bunch of amateurs from a cliff in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Eventually, it was not Kurt Waldheim, but Josef Hickersberger, the Austrian manager, who had to resign (Waldheim had to resign later, when he was diagnosed with Waldheimer's decease - a curious geriatric condition which makes one forget about one's own Nazi past).

In the Faroes, the national holiday was declared. Five thousand Faroese - more than 10 per cent of the population - came to meet their heroes at the airport. `Now it's the turn of the Danes,' the triumphant Pat Gudlaugsson, a local shop-owner and the team's part- time manager, told the cheering crowds, having in mind his team's next qualifying game with Denmark. But miracles do not happen twice (otherwise they wouldn't be called miracles): the Faroes were beaten by Denmark and didn't make it into the finals.

A National Symbol

Once was certainly more than enough for the game's two protagonists: young forestry engineer Torkil Nielsen, who scored the winning goal, and lorry driver and a part-time goal-keeper, Jens Martin Knudsen, who prevented the Austrians from scoring a good dozen of theirs. Overnight, they became the country's most popular figures, and Knudsen's bobble hat, worn during the match, was elevated into a national symbol.

This pom-pom cap of Knudsen's had a history of its own. It was knitted by his granny at the suggestion of a doctor to protect the head of the 14-year-old tyro goalkeeper Jens Martin from being kicked by other junior soccer players, who often confused it with a football during games. From then on, Knudsen was never seen without it (I mean his cap) on a football field. `Once, early on, I forgot to wear it and had a bad match,' he once said in an interview.

A couple of months after the victorious game with Austria, two visiting Norwegians stole the pom-pom mascot from Knudsen's unlocked house (they don't lock their houses in the Faroes!) and tried to smuggle it out of the country. Luckily, the thieves were apprehended at the airport, and the cap was returned to its legitimate owner. This was the third recorded robbery in the whole of the nation's history.

I doubt whether the Faroese will ever win the World Cup. But they can console themselves with a thought that in another alternative (yet, unlike the VIVA Cup, imaginary) world championship of the most famous caps- the World Cap? - Jens Martin Knudsen's celebrated headgear would have definitely been among the favourites.