Foroyar Forever

With my 40th article in Football Weekends this month on Pistoiese, it brought to mind the notion that my very first article, published in September 2016 in the 6th edition of the magazine (we forgive the tiny wee editorial error in the original headline), has never been put on my blog. Football Weekends is now on its 56th printed edition, with the next one featuring my proudest tale on the troubled region of Lombardia, and another story about Como. You can order the magazine from www,footballweekends.com and have it sent to any UK address at no extra cost if you can’t find it in a WH Smith shop, or don’t want to go shopping just now. Our story here takes us to the Faroe Islands, and while I have managed to eek out tales of Bolzano, Verona and Sassuolo for future magazines, the next action I will see is up there, so a new Faroese tale (my 4th will be imminently written after my September trip) will include the rare sighting of football on grass in Hvalba!

Meantime, let me take you back to 2007.

“The Faroe Islands will for football fans of a certain vintage bring immediately to mind a fisherman’s hat atop of jubilant goalkeepers head amid wild celebrations on a football field. That was the infamous headgear of Jens Martin Knudsen, who together with the rest of his proud team mates had just beaten Austria 1-0 in their first ever competitive International football match. Technically a home game for the Faroese, but played in Landskrona, Sweden in September 1990 due to UEFA/FIFA requirements for a grass pitch. Torkil Neilsen’s 62nd minute strike hadn’t just beaten their more illustrious opponents, it wrote an opening paragraph in the history of Foroyar (Faroe Islands) football that was the stuff of legends, and made that team instant heroes, with particular fame afforded to the keeper of NSI Runavik, Jens Martin thanks to his fishing hat. The coach eventually banned him from wearing it as he perceived it as lacking professionalism. 

It took a long time for the National team to live up to that giddy opener, but a stunning home and away brace of wins over Greece, managed at the time by Claudia Ranieri in 2014 certainly rank higher in terms of the islands best results to date.

Grass is something the Faroes Islands has in abundance, even on rooftops, but it is just not the kind suitable for football. Back in the late ‘80’s when they were trying to be accepted into International competition one of the main issues was not having a suitable grass pitch. Indeed in order to move games back to the islands and comply with regulations, they literally had to blast the top off a hill above Toftir, a small village well away from the capital, on the football hotbed island of Eysturoy. This drastic measure was needed to create a sufficiently flat area to build a stadium suitable to host International games. Flat ground is at a premium here, which results in the most incredibly stunning locations for the domestic leagues stadiums around the islands, with Fuglafjordur, Leirvik and Nordgota being prime examples.

Times have now moved on, the easing of the rules regarding play on artificial surfaces has seen the Faroese predominantly rip up the few grass pitches they had, and replace them with FIFA standard 4G pitches for those European and International games. Given this has been the surface of choice for the domestic league for decades, the correlation between their ability to play on these surfaces and improved performances against allegedly better opposition can’t be underestimated . One solitary grass pitch remains at the tiny little village of Hvalba in the north of Suduroy, home to 2 Deild side Royn. The days of Toftir hosting International games seem over as the capital Torshavn now has the main stadium at the increasingly impressive Torsvollur.

It was a governmental project to provide the local communities with an artificial playing field in the majority of larger villages in the ‘70’s that gave this football mad nation the launchpad it needed to progress. The idea was to give the youth in particular somewhere to play outdoors and give them a sporting outlook and enthusiasm, thereby curbing any tendency to lurch toward drink etc. It changed the nature of the game on the islands forever. The majority of the bigger clubs have 4 men’s teams, as well as having women’s sides as part of the operation now too. Indeed, no matter what time of day you arrive in a Faroese village, it will be a rare occasion if you don’t see some kids playing on the artificial surface dreaming of emulating the lads who represent the area in the Faroese league.

The lack of flatland is apparent even before the plane touches down. You get plenty of time to admire “Middle Earth” as the landscapes will constantly bring to mind. Depending on the wind direction, you will either fly in over Torshavn area, arriving east to west with the airport above Sorvagur in the far west. The more spectacular arrival route sees the plane circle round the sheer cliff island of Mykines just off the west coast until it reaches an altitude where it can continue the short distance over the sea towards the cliffs and the airport. Vagar airport has one of the shortest runways in the world, and it certainly isn’t flat, more bevelled, however it is stunningly positioned. The runway was crafted by the British army in the Second World War, and depending on winds or low clouds, a comfortable landing requires exquisite artistry by the pilots, and the local Atlantic Airways pilots are well versed in all sorts of adverse weather. Low hanging clouds are one of the more regular issues they have to deal with.

Once landed, the freshness of the air will not only amaze you for days, it will knock you out at night. These are after all the “happiest” group of islands in the world as canvassed by a travel magazine. They might be mostly independent of Denmark, but that much coined Hygge (Danish for fun) is alive and well here too. My first of now five treks to Foroyar (all being well September 2020 will deliver a 6th) was on International duty back in 2007. Italy, then World Champions were coming to town, and a matter of days later Scotland were visiting. So with man’s best friend, my longstanding chum of 30 years plus now, Stefano from Ancona, this was a rare opportunity to see both our home nation’s in such a short period anywhere in the world, let alone the Faroe Islands.

We met at Stansted to fly to Vagar, these were days before Atlantic Airways added Edinburgh to its roster. However, having flown south to go north, you can imagine my bemusement when we touched down in Aberdeen. It was even more galling on the way back, but hey, this was a unique occasion for us both, although the bizarre goings on at Aberdeen airport, would almost suggest they hadn’t been expecting the flight, as we had to file through an office rather than normal passport controls, even though the majority were in transit and heading onwards to Stansted. This was days after the Scotland game and a few stragglers of the Tartan Army were on board complete with their awful stale booze breath from one last hoorah in the bars of Torshavn the night before. These sleepy lads alighted in Aberdeen.

 I mean no disrespect to my own country Scotland, but Italy was the big ticket draw. The appearance of the World Cup winners had set Torshavn abuzz. The small visiting fan base may have largely been conspicuous by its absence (unlike the Scots) until 20 or so congregated for the match in the Torsvollur Stadium, but earlier in the day the Italian Institute had been hard at work, especially in the Torshavn shopping centre, where the concourse was awash with cultural exchanges of music and dance, complete with a fine spread of Italian culinary delights and wines to taste. The Scottish cultural exchange a few days later? I will leave that to your imagination, but it was a mighty fine sight seeing a Shetland fishing boat coming into port with the Scottish flag flying proudly to the sound of bagpipes. Sadly, that was about as good as it got, and the continued tired cheeky chappy routine in kilts does nothing but make me cringe these days.

The match day versus Italia started with that regular hanging mist thing, with the surrounding mountains encircling the capital totally lost. Indeed, with Italian squads hotel, a lavish accommodation perched high above the town, it was completely enshrouded all day. From the comfort of the hotel I am sure the players must have wondered if there would be a game that night. Down in the town the mist was less, and we set off on a field reconnaissance mission to get the ley of the land to the stadium for the game, a classic expedition for the ardent fan. It did come with a more pressing edge, as we didn’t have tickets for the Scotland game (Stefano had acquired “biglietti” for the Italy game from the FIFC in Roma ahead of leaving), which were duly acquired from the man stand office at Torsvollur, eventually!

Despite the comparatively diminutive size of Torshavn, at 14,000 it is the smallest capital in the world, the Torsvollur stadium is located down in a bowl, cleverly hidden from view, especially on a misty day. It initially proved elusive to us, and we found ourselves nudging towards the edge of town headed in the direction of what transpired to be the Skansi Arena, home of AB Argir. It was obvious we had taken a wrong turn as there was no way that this little one stand ground was going to be hosting Italia!

AB, HB, IF, KI, MB and TB might just read like a random selection of letters on a Scrabble board, and B36, B68 and B71 coordinates for a game of Battleships, but all of these are the shorthand names of a number of the clubs on the islands. TB from Tvoroyri on the southern most island Suduroy are the oldest team, founded in 1892, with KI from the second biggest “town” Klaksvik (population 5,000) on Bordoy starting up in 1904 as the second oldest. It begs the question, who did TB play for the first 12 years?! HB or Havnar are the most successful club in the modern era, together with fellow capital club B36, these two are the ones to topple if you fancy a crack at the league title, and NSI from Runavik were giving them a run for their money in the Formuladeildin of 2016 (invariably NSI blew it, as they do!).

In order to try to remain competitive in recent years some clubs have merged, and have taken on more conventional names. SI and SIF merged to form 07 Vestur on Vagar island, but the most successful merger saw GI Gota who were regulars in Europe, merged with LIF Leirvik, a sleep hollow club who were just happy representing the stunning village on the far side of the lengthy tunnel from Nordgota, where the new club now play as Vikingur. They have gone on to claim a complete of recent titles as well as making Faroese club history by being the first club from the islands to reach the Third Round in European competition having accounted for Tromso from Norway before going out to Croatian side Rijeka.

Torshavn might be a small place, but it has all the amenities a visitor of any discerning income can use, with a wide and varied selection of restaurants, as well as some cracking cozy wee bars. The locals were out in force that early June Saturday night. An hour ahead of the kick off all the beer tents outside the Torsvollur were full and in fine voice. The weather had improved, but periodic drizzle would become an altogether more wetting affair in a stadium with little or no cover then. (The upgrade of the National Stadium is still ongoing, with the final part, a spanking new main stand under construction now, albeit Covid hampered, like much of the world). 

The twenty or so away fans were a veritable hotchpotch, with some rogues amongst them. A Swedish girl, and most incredibly a Uruguayan, aside from me (although I was a Foroyar sympathiser). The Uruguayan was a friend of the Torshavn Italian restaurant owner, and he’d flown all the way up the Atlantic from Montevideo especially for the game. Chatting away with him, it transpired that we had both been amongst the visiting Bolso fans (Club Nacional) who dodged local masonry being lobbed in our direction in the scariest exit from a football stadium at Velez Sarsfield after a 1-1 draw across the River Plate in Buenos Aires. It is a remarkably small world, and now we were enjoying a cracking game in Torshavn. 

The game was a classic example of why the money men of world football should not get away with ever marginalising the smaller nations. The passion was vivid, and every time Foroyar crossed the halfway line the excitement would ramp up a notch. Without unduly breaking sweat, Italy had trotted into a 2-0 lead, but as the weather deteriorated, so did the visitors’ desire to actually be there. The Faroese lads started to lose their respect and gradually they became more than just nuisance value. When the home side’s goal came, it was one of the best moments I have ever enjoyed in my extensive world football travels. It arrived just three minutes from the end of the game, but oh boy Gianluigi Buffon was all of a sudden a busy man, as an equaliser seemed distinctly plausible. One last near squeak, and the refs whistle brought the proceedings to a close, but a 1,2 home loss was met with rapturous applause by the home fans, whose pride and sheer joy at having run Italy so close was the highlight of the night for me. The small band of tifosi were all invited back to the Italian restaurant after the game, but the rain in the last ten minutes had been so heavy, Stefano and I sloped off to the hotel for a shower and to warm up, after all we were on the 7am boat to Suduroy the next morning.

At the quayside the next day, as we waited to board the ferry, the crew broke out into applause. Just in front of us was Oli Johannesen the Faroese captain, and a one club man, TB legend, even if his team were in the second tier at the time. We saw him later that day in Tvoroyri, his home town, and everywhere he went he was greeted with smiles and handshakes. It captured it all in a nutshell.