World’s largest island banned from football’s biggest competition

"Greenland can never ever play an official international match now"

Despite being located much closer to the North American continent, Greenland is technically an autonomous part of Denmark. This makes it impossible to qualify for European competitions as UEFA only accept countries that are recognised by the United Nations.

As a result, Greenland currently only competes in non-FIFA affiliated tournaments. 

Earlier this month, the chairman of Greenland’s FA made an appeal to CONCACAF that was rejected at a meeting in Miami last month — leaving Greenland with no path to World Cup qualification. 

Now, their manager Morten Rutkjaer had spoken out at the decision, saying, "It is a shame for children and young people in Greenland that there is now nothing to play and dream about. We do not think it is fair that we are excluded from football.”

"I had at least expected that we would be told what we had to work on so that we could eventually become a member. But I am shocked that we are being rejected on 10 lines without any justification.”

Despite its huge size — the full country stretches across more than 2 million km², making it larger than the entire land mass of Western Europe — Greenland actually only has a population of 56,000 people since the majority of the nation is covered by ice.