The way things are going, Greenland might not have to become an international football team to be involved in the global game. They might be World Cup co-hosts in 2026.
President Donald Trump’s attempts to make the biggest island in the world part of the United States have been, regrettably, rather more high profile than the country’s application to join Concacaf, but the timing has been interesting.
It has brought a little more attention to Greenland’s aim to become a separate, defined football nation, at least. But they are just one of many states, territories, countries and dependencies that are trying to gain legitimacy through football, from them way up in the north, to tiny islands in the Pacific.
It is pretty easy, relatively speaking, to start a football club. It happens all the time at grassroots level. Phoenix clubs will emerge from the ashes of older institutions that fall on hard times. Expansion teams are being added to the NWSL all the time, and MLS has grown by an average of a team a season since 2005.
International football though — that is trickier. Proper, official, FIFA-approved international football, at least. Surely, you might think, all the actual countries in the world who want to play football, already do.
Not so. The world map is an ever-evolving thing. Old states break up, new ones form, independence from historical overseers is sought. There are plenty of potential new countries that want to join the international football family.
All of which poses the question: how do you become an international football team?
Greenland have been trying since well before Trump’s proposed land grab, making noises about becoming a recognised team since the 1990s. As a territory of Denmark, logic would suggest the confederation they would look towards is UEFA, but as even the most amateur cartographers will tell you, there is a geography issue there. Playing UEFA countries would involve a lot of long — and very expensive — journeys, probably all to get battered in every game they played.
In any case, the door to Europe was probably closed. These things can be flexible, but under UEFA’s statutes as they are currently written, they almost certainly would not be admitted as they are not enough of an independent state.
So instead, Greenland turned their attentions to the more proximate and manageable Concacaf, whose 41 members are, generally speaking, a little closer and of a slightly lower average quality, meaning it will be easier to compete. And, perhaps crucially, Concacaf’s criteria for who they allow in is not as stringent as UEFA’s. They can take some inspiration from somewhere like Curacao, the small island in the Caribbean Sea just north of Venezuela: technically part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, which famously is in Europe, but they are part of Concacaf, broadly for geographical reasons.
While there have been noises for years, the process of Greenland becoming a recognised footballing nation began in earnest in 2020. That was when Morten Rutkjaer, former manager of B93 in his native Denmark, was appointed as their head coach.
“When I started I was totally alone,” Rutkjaer tells The Athletic. “There was a board of six people who said, ‘Yes, here are the keys’. I said on the first day that it was very important for the players to have something to look forward to, a reason for them to train. I said the big thing is to be part of Concacaf so the team could be part of World Cup qualification.”
Discussions continued with Concacaf until May 2024, when their application was formally submitted. There was an in-person meeting in February, and another is scheduled for April. “When they said they wanted to talk with us, it was like being world champions,” says Rutkjaer. Nothing has been decided yet, but there have been positive noises. “It’s small steps — but it’s big steps for Greenland.”
Rutkjaer says he has no opinion on whatever Trump has planned, but you do wonder whether it is a coincidence that since the president upped his rhetoric, Concacaf have been a little more proactive in their discussions with Greenland.
“I expect we will be the 42nd member of Concacaf,” says Rutkjaer. “Right now, I’m very positive for Greenlandic football.”
So you want to be an international football team?
Great! Admire your chutzpah. Settle in for what could be an excruciatingly long and opaque process, plus a load of admin.
You might assume there is some sort of global, defined criteria that a state simply has to fulfil in order to join their local confederation, and then FIFA. Alas, that is not the case.
Each continental association has its own list of requirements to become full members. The Oceania Football Confederation’s (OFC) list, for example, includes the obvious stuff like having actual senior international teams, both men and women, and a national league. You need at least one stadium at which you can play your home games, plus at least two suitable training venues. You have to have an international airport with ‘at least one direct flight to another OFC member association’. There are things on there that you would rather hope are obvious: having a bank account, for example, and an annual budget.
You also have to have some sort of organisational structure: the OFC list details that you must have people filling a set number of jobs within your national association, specifically a general secretary/CEO, a technical director, a development officer for women’s and youth football and, perhaps most crucially for the nuts and bolts of the application process, an office administrator. You also need a declared staff structure and an organisational chart, plus a business plan. It’s at this stage you might wonder if you’re applying for a small business loan, rather than to become an international football team.
The OFC list is reasonably basic, and the judgement on whether a state fulfils the criteria to a satisfactory manner is determined by inspections. It’s not a given that members of a continental confederation will automatically join FIFA, but if you do want to get amongst the big dogs, there is a whole new round of admin to complete. The FIFA statutes specify that the application ‘shall be made in quintuplicate (five copies) and must contain reports and documentation’ related to a list of 21 points of reference.
These include basic stuff like a ‘declaration pledging to respect the Laws of the Game at all times’, but also asks for information on the number of men’s and women’s teams and players currently active in your country, as well as ‘documents detailing the applicant’s standing as a sports organisation under the law of the country’, plus assurances that the leaders of your organisation were democratically elected. You also need to provide information about accommodation in your country, right down to the number of available hotel rooms, for when the football world descends on your land.
On a more fundamental level, you also need to demonstrate that you are a country, which is not as easy as, say, me buying an island somewhere, calling it Nickonesia and then expecting to join FIFA. But the definition of what constitutes a country for football purposes is slightly vague: the FIFA statutes state that ‘any association which is responsible for organising and supervising football in all of its forms in its country may become a member association’. But the statutes do not really provide any specific definitions of what they deem a country… other than specifying that ‘each of the four British associations shall be recognised as a separate member association’.
Ultimately this can all depend on where you are in the world. Article five of UEFA’s statutes says membership is limited to those ‘recognised as an independent state by the majority of members of the United Nations’, which has been a little elastic in the past (see: Gibraltar, who got in on a sort of technicality in 2016 after taking UEFA to the Court Of Arbitration for Sport), but is now rather more hardline. It is tricky to see any new UEFA members in the near future.
Gibraltar have endured some heavy defeats since their introduction to international football, including this 7-0 loss to the Republic of Ireland in 2014 (Sportsfile/Corbis/Sportsfile via Getty Images)
But there are more members of FIFA (211) than members of the UN (193), so in other parts of the world, things are rather more flexible. Take a number of British Overseas Territories, like Bermuda or Montserrat: not independent nations, but part of Concacaf and FIFA. There’s Guam, a U.S. island territory in the Pacific, but a proud Asian Football Confederation member. Also Macau, a ‘special administrative region of China’ for normal diplomatic purposes, but in football they’re a separate team and nation.
UEFA’s newest country was officially welcomed into the club in 2016, but boy was it a struggle.
The history of Kosovo is too long, complex and nuanced to fully explain here. But after the break-up of the former Yugoslavia in 1991, through to the end of the war in 1999 and Kosovo declaring independence in 2008, they made a number of attempts to underline their autonomy via football.
They first applied to join UEFA in 1992, which was an immediate no-go amid the uncertainty of a post-Yugoslavia world. Nevertheless, the national team was established in 1993 and played unofficial friendlies against whoever they could. They tried again after the war in 2000, and again in 2008, but were knocked back both times, ostensibly because they were not recognised as an independent state by enough of the world, but largely because of pressure from a number of nations, led by Serbia, who still regard Kosovo as part of their own country and do not recognise its independence.
The battle to win recognition was long, arduous and involved an element of creativity. For example, in 2012 Fadil Vokrri, the then president of the Kosovo Football Federation, and his general secretary Eroll Salihu (the latter has been the driving force behind Kosovar football for decades) drew up a petition asking UEFA to approve their application to join, and snuck into the hotels where the Swiss and Albanian national teams were staying. Most Kosovars are ethnically Albanian, and the Swiss team featured a number of players, like Xherdan Shaqiri and Granit Xhaka, with Kosovar roots, so they signed the petition readily, along with most of the Albanian squad.
“We did not want to be second-class citizens. In football we could show who we are,” Salihu told Ronny Blaschke for his book Power Players: Football In Propaganda, War And Revolution.
They broke through a little more in 2014 when they were permitted to play unofficial friendlies, the first of which came against Haiti. And then, finally, in May 2016, their case was put before UEFA at their general congress in Budapest: they required a simple majority of votes in their favour to gain entry, which they managed — but only just. Of the 54 member nations, 28 voted in their favour, 24 against and two votes were considered invalid. Serbia led the opposition, and pledged to have the decision reversed, but to date they have not succeeded. Kosovo were admitted to FIFA 10 days later.
Kosov line up for their second friendly, against Turkey, in 2014 (NurPhoto/Corbis via Getty Images)
“It was a moment of happiness, because something that we were dreaming of for 25 years had finally happened,” says Bajram Shala, who at the time was helping Kosovo with PR and communications, and went on to become the national team’s operations manager.
“But at the same time, it was a moment of anger, because it showed that when a superpower like UEFA decides it wants to open the doors, it finds a way. It could have done the same in 2008: nothing changed.
“There was a change in political perception. In 2016 Kosovo was a reality that nobody could put an obstacle to. Before, we were independent and we were recognised by over 100 countries around the world, including superpowers, but the situation was more fragile, so it wasn’t as easy to find a way in. The doors of UEFA and FIFA were hermetically sealed to our federation.
“However, after this change of perception, it led to a process of Kosovo getting membership to the IOC (International Olympic Committee) and other sports federations. UEFA decided it was time to be more flexible.”
Their first competitive game was against Finland, in a World Cup qualifier on September 5, 2016. They sprung a surprise, drawing 1-1, but the result was secondary, as Shala explains.
“Listening to our anthem being played, our crest, our colours being presented on the world stage of football…you cannot describe that.”
It’s been nearly a decade now, and Kosovo have not just made up the numbers. They have participated in four major tournament qualifying campaigns, losing in the play-offs to reach Euro 2020. They won promotion from League D to League C in the Nations League and are, at the time of writing, involved in the play-offs to get up to League B.
“When we got the green light to compete, not just in international football but club competition too, it was a way to show that we are part of Europe in all ways,” says Shala.
Kiribati is one of the most remote countries in the world. It is a collection of 33 atolls and islands spread across about 1.3million square miles of the Pacific Ocean, a bit over 2,000 miles south of Hawaii. According to the last census, about 110,000 people lived in Kiribati (pronounced ‘Ki-ri-bash’), scattered across 23 of those islands.
Kiribati is located in the Pacific Ocean (Tim Graham/Getty Images)
They have a football team. In theory, at least. The thing is, they have not actually played an international fixture since 2011. They were due to play in the 2023 Pacific Games, but it clashed with their intra-island competition known as Te Runga, so everyone played in that instead.
The main issue is not willingness, it is cost. Kiribati is so remote and spread out that travelling pretty much anywhere is prohibitively expensive as well as logistically difficult, as is persuading anyone else to get themselves over for a game.
But partly thanks to a bunch of intrepid outsiders and their own undeniable passion for the game, they are trying to fix all this by not only getting some games under their belt, but fully joining the OFC and, eventually, FIFA.
They are currently associate members of the OFC, which is a start, but it is like being a partial member of a golf club: they might let you in occasionally but you will never get a decent tee time. Being an associate member affords you access to some resources (like courses for your referees, for example) and a little funding.
But, a bit like Kiribati itself, that money is a drop in the ocean. They get about $30,000 (£23,000) a year from the OFC, which will not really get you much further than some bits of kit and balls. But with OFC and eventually FIFA membership, you can really start bringing in the money to beef up your infrastructure: once you are a full FIFA member, you can apply for up to $8m in funding, which again in the broader scheme of things is not a colossal amount, but for such a tiny nation it will do.
“It’s a big topic here,” Eriati Reebo, president of the Kiribati Football Association, tells The Athletic down a rickety phone line. “The people say, why, why, why — why are we not yet a member of the OFC?
“I’m working now on the management, and to work on our constitution so that it will be in line with everything that is possible for for us to join the OFC and FIFA.”
An English tour guide called Gareth Johnson, who runs a company called Young Pioneer Tours which specialises in taking people to remote parts of the world, has become involved, primarily helping with some PR and fundraising, the latter largely through selling Kiribati national team shirts.
🇰🇮 Kiribati has unveiled a set of new national football shirts.
The Micronesian island country is an Associate member of Oceania Football Confederation.
Kiribati hasn’t played an 11-a-side match since 2011 but played a futsal tournament in the Marshall Islands last year.
For… pic.twitter.com/SO6PJ1TKwR
— The Sweeper (@SweeperPod) January 13, 2025
Reebo says the money raised from that is going towards paying coaches, and helping to get their facilities in order for when their application is properly considered.
There is no time limit on that and Reebo says he has no idea when they might ultimately be admitted, but safe to say they are further down the line than some.
Nauru is the third smallest country in the world, with a population of about 10,000. It is an island in the Pacific, no more than about eight square miles in size. It is also one of the two sovereign nations of the world, along with the Marshall Islands, to have never played an official international football match.
In fact, not only does Nauru not have a football team, football does not really exist in any real form on the island, certainly not in any organised fashion. There are not really any football pitches, as we would recognise them. There is technically a Nauru Football Association, but it is, to say the least, not especially active. It is also the second most obese country in the world: figures from the Global Obesity Observatory say that 69.65 per cent of the island’s inhabitants are obese, with only American Samoa’s 70.29 per cent above it.
At one time, thanks to plentiful natural stocks of phosphates, it was among the richest countries in the world per capita. But those stocks were mined with some gusto, and large portions of the island were essentially ruined.
In recent years, Nauru’s most notable feature has been its use as a processing centre for immigrants to Australia. That centre opened in 2001, was closed in 2007, reopened in 2012 and in 2013 there was a riot in which four people were hospitalised. Visitors from Medecins Sans Frontieres and Human Rights Watch described the centre as a place of “indefinite despair”.
Not a particularly promising starting point for an international football team, then.
There have been occasional games played over the years, but nothing really for a couple of decades. In 2020 a website claiming to be for a new Nauru Soccer League appeared online, which turned out to be a hoax, but it inspired Johnson: if a fake website can generate that sort of interest, then what might the real thing do?
“There are enough people there that we could get a team together,” says Johnson. “But the initial thing we want to do, because we’re realistic, is futsal. There are a number of reasons for that: there are basketball courts on the island, so we just need futsal goals. It’s easier to find players for six-a-side. And it’s a building block: our overall goal one day is OFC or FIFA membership, but that’s not a short-term goal.”
Johnson has involved the former Reading and Stoke striker Dave Kitson as a sort of ambassador, and an English, Cambodia-based coach called Charlie Pomroy as the theoretical team’s head coach.
Building a football culture from not very much seems like a daunting prospect, but Pomroy does not seem too intimidated.
“For me, it isn’t daunting,” he says. “I just see it as a fun project. My biggest skill or attribute as a coach is I help kids fall in love with the game. People see how passionate I am about the game: it’s not just kicking a ball into a goal. I’ve consistently seen the benefits of what this game can do to a community, a single person, a team, a nation. That’s electric. I believe I can bring that to this project.“
So what would represent success? “That little boy in me, the kid who played Football Manager all the time would say… winning a World Cup qualifying game,” says Pomroy. “If we did that in 10 years’ time, that would be amazing. Realistically: just the programme still running in 10 years would be a success. That’s kind of where we are.”
There are plenty of others. The Marshall Islands are on the path towards applying for OFC membership. Jersey have tried, unsuccessfully, to join UEFA. And then there are cases like Guadeloupe, who are members of Concacaf but are not sufficiently independent from France to join FIFA.
Becoming an official international football team is not just about playing football.
“I think I will cry a little bit,” says Rutkjaer, when asked how he would feel if/when Greenland are admitted and play their first game. “The biggest dream for us will be to play an international match in Greenland. It’s not only about being a member, it’s about the many things that will change. I’m a very emotional person, but it’s for the Greenlandic people.”
Football, as one of the greatest cultural forces the world has seen, lends a nation visibility, acceptance and credibility, which is before you get to the economic advantages. Especially for nations that might otherwise have been forgotten, globally. And it brings national pride. Not just that, but national pride channelled in a positive way. Just ask the people who have experienced it.
“Kosovo is a country where nationalism is high,” says Shala. “The way of showing this nationalism in a positive way to Europe, to the world, is not easy. We were very isolated. But sport is one of the ways. We can show the world how proud we are of our newly-structured country, of our flag, of everything.
“Membership of UEFA and FIFA was pivotal, because for 25 years we were fighting to keep football alive here. People were getting tired. It was a very complicated situation. When we got the green light to compete, not just in international football but club competition too, it was a way to show that we are part of Europe in all ways — we can compete with them, we can host them here, we can show them our country, we can show them our proudness of being Kosovar. We can show them we belong.”
(Top photo: James Brooks/AFP via Getty Images)
