The Eritrean who wants Greenland in FIFA

Isolated from the top of the world and ignored by the echelons of FIFA, Greenland (58,766 inhabitants) faces the challenges of its rugged orography and its weather to practice football. Thank you often Premier English, matches can only be played from the beginning of June to August.

A few days ago the final stage of the league was played, which was concentrated in one week with two groups of four teams called in Explained (at 6º C), on the west coast of the island, 1 hour and 20 minutes by plane from the capital, Nuuk, and 350 km from the Arctic Circle. The champion is proclaimed Nagdlunguaq-48 by beating the punishments B-67 and retain the title he won in 2019 after two years without a championship due to the pandemic.

Cut out alcohol and tobacco

For Tekle Ghebrelul (love, Eritrea1/1/69 – many refugees have no record of their day of birth and are assigned January 1), reach GreenlandThis is a revelation. When he was young he was orphaned, he was enrolled in the combatant militia in war of Independence (1961-1991) who Eritrea kept in Ethiopia. escaped from Sudan where he wandered through a refugee camp until U.N He sent her at the age of 14 to Denmark. There he started a new life: he studied to become a teacher and married a Danish woman. Football was part of his life from a young age and he undertook the journey to Greenland that should take a few days. He stayed on the island with the idea of ​​helping it develop and giving back to Danish society all that it had given him.

A very difficult soccer structure was found. Starting with the facilities and ending with the behavior of many footballers. In 2009 he took the reins of B-67 (Boldklubben in 1967) of Nuuk and led the most successful club Greenland to win three championships. In 2013 he took over as national coach and applied the same methods he applied at the club: a balanced diet, no alcohol or tobacco, training schedules and a feeling of belonging to a club. He also combined this with the position of futsal coach, a very widespread sport thanks to the possibility of playing indoors. In Ghebrelul commanding, Greenland he won the silver medal at the 2017 Island Games.

victims of racism

But still not enough Key experience an unpleasant episode during his stay on the island: while he was coach of B-67a rival player posted in 2017 on social networks a photo of Ghebrelul accompanied by monkey and banana emoticons. Key he had enough and asked to meet with the football federation. He left the room fired: the official version is that he shook a child who insulted and belittled a linesman. None of that came up in the minutes of the game in question. Several players have threatened to walk away if he is not reinstated Key.

Trainer in Sweden

Tried to show up for the match Ataqatigiir Inuit in 2018 to enter parliament and influence, from the political sphere, laws against racism. Although he got 12 votes, he did not enter. Fed up, in 2019 he went to Sweden to train a men’s and women’s futsal team. The Greenlandic authorities saw that they were missing a valuable asset for football development and called him up. He was offered a position as an assistant in the national futsal team, which he gladly accepted and where he still holds the position, while he continued to live in Sweden and pressured all possible levels of the federative and pulled the strings to get the FIFA confess to Greenland as a choice.

Try Concacaf

With 16 artificial grass pitches, the quality of jumping at the facilities has been remarkable over the years. They still don’t have a field with stands (an important condition to enter FIFA) and they don’t charge tickets to watch matches like in handball (Ghebrelul joke that puts a price on the stones next to the field). Previously, the yard was dirt and, apart from many damages, the boots, which cost around 190 euros, barely lasted the three months of competition. It should be added that travel between cities is carried out by sea or air and the amateur character of footballers does not provide much happiness in the travel pocket.

Greenland is an autonomous territory within Denmark and cannot be a member of either UEFA nor of FIFA. Because of this rejection, they made a request to be part of Concacaf (North America, Central America and the Caribbean). Right now, in September they have a friendly match Kosovoalthough this implies a large cost, as the games played in 2015 in Island Gameswhich cost the Greenlandic federation more than 20,000 euros to replace 18 players.

The dream of Key is to get the highest European and world football establishments to recognize Greenland as a full member such as Faroe Islands either Gibraltar, which was able to be so before the current regulations were implemented. He continues to fight for his recognition on the island discovered by Erik the Red and he named it Greenland (‘green land’) to encourage their countrymen to occupy it.

Today, the only green that stands out are the playgrounds where the hopes of the few young people are placed.