Strike Media
A new documentary shines a light on a unique league whose players might lack quality, but more than make up for it with their passion
By Terry Staunton
No Place For Football could be described as a typical underdog sporting documentary, were not for the fact that everyone on screen is an underdog, battling rough terrain and inclement weather in the name of the sport they adore. The Greenland season only lasts a few weeks in the summer, the only time of the year when the ground has thawed enough for players to avoid serious injury.
Most footballers on rungs considerably lower than the top flight have heroes, high-profile figures whose success and visibility they dream of one day emulating. For a young, unassuming midfielder playing for the humble B-67 side, it’s a curiously different idol, and he’s thrilled to bits when his team-mates point out the moustache he’s recently grown makes him look like Ted Lasso.
Everything’s a little different here, in a country with a surface area of 2.17 million square kilometres, where just eight clubs compete in the national league, each fixture a daunting logistical challenge. B-67, based in Greenland’s capital Nuuk, are the big noise, league champions a record 17 times, but they operate on a budget that makes a shoestring look like a fancy leather belt.
None of the players earn a salary from the game, and routinely work overtime at their day jobs to help pay for the marathon journeys to the next match via prop planes or fishing vessels, yet the hardships inherent with living in such an inhospitable land never dim the smiles on their faces. You can’t help but be inspired by their determination, optimism and passion for the simple pleasures of kicking a ball, even when the most lauded among them possess skills on Sunday league level.
That lack of quality has seen Greenland’s bid to join Concacaf rejected, having already been told that being an overseas territory of Denmark doesn’t make them eligible for UEFA. They remain the Cinderellas of the world game, the misfit outsiders no one with any ruling clout is prepared to take seriously.
Having said that, directors Brandon Scott Smith and Derek Sullivan Smith haven’t filmed an impassioned protest, nor a sob story. Instead, they shine a light on an unassuming bunch of young men making the most of what opportunities they have, content and enthusiastic about the modicum of homegrown fame and recognition they have.
There is a genuine hunger to B-67’s rivalry with Nagdlunguak, based in the country’s third largest city, Ilulissat – a needle that might be described as Greenland’s own version of an Old Firm derby. In preparation for the two clubs’ next skirmish, inspirational speeches are given, tactics are pored over and past mistakes dissected.
As luck would have it, the film-makers have their cameras running for one of the most high-tension Greenland seasons in recent times, where there are big stakes for comparatively small reward. What could, in any other year, have amounted to little more than an affectionate look at plucky minnows going through the motions is heightened by edge-of-the-seat events involving play-offs and penalty shootouts.
This year’s World Cup was the biggest ever, but for all the thrills and controversies it beamed into billions of homes, it ultimately delivered what was expected of it. Meanwhile, Greenland’s ragbag bunch of averagely capable amateurs go about their business, and more through chance than design give viewers something out of left-field that’s arguably just as compelling.
It’s evident that football means the world to these men, some of whom make huge sacrifices for the honour of lacing up a pair of boots. Hollywood might even be tempted to make a heart-swelling drama about their lot, such is the ease with which their tales would transfer to an Ordinary Joe template, but No Place For Football is a film about much more than football.
This is a well-structured, gorgeously photographed vision of a country which it’s fair to say not many people have thought about much, certainly not before Donald Trump’s audacious plan to buy the place. It’s a hard-knock life for just about all of Greenland’s population of 57,000, but it also seems to be an existence that fosters a contemplative calm, an unspoken resilience embedded in the DNA that’s hard not to admire.
No Place For Football is available to rent from streaming platforms
This article first appeared in WSC 468, October 2026. Subscribers get free access to the complete WSC digital archive
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Tags: Greenland