THE KLAKSVIK MIRACLE

Alone in the middle of the North Atlantic, the Faroe Islands were once the continent's whipping boys - now one club in the archipelago have reached a first European group stage, thanks to an unlikely bunch of part-timers...

- Paul Watson

The Faroe Islands is not an ideal setting for playing football. The archipelago of 18 rocky islands in the North Atlantic Ocean can see 300 days of rain per year, and 13C is considered a baking hot summer’s day. The 50,000 inhabitants are comfortably outnumbered by its 80,000 sheep.

But none of this has stopped the Faroese adopting football as their national love. Statistically, they are one of the most football-obsessed populations on Earth. Roughly 10 per cent of people in the Faroe Islands play regularly, with a similar percentage attending a game every single week.

Conditions for much of the football season are so tough that there’s a rule unique to the area, allowing players to hold the ball still for a team-mate before they take a set-piece on windy days. Unlike in Iceland, 430 miles to the north west, there are no full-sized indoor pitches in the Faroes, so players have to be ready to brave the elements all year round.

For a certain generation of supporters, the Faroe Islands – still a part of the Kingdom of Denmark, but autonomous enough to be allowed to join FIFA in 1988 – conjures up images of bobble hat-wearing goalkeeper Jens Martin Knudsen regularly and sheepishly (pun very much intended) picking the ball out of his net. Knudsen retired from international football in May 2006, the Faroes beginning Euro 2008 qualifying with a 6-0 home loss to Georgia, the first of 12 defeats out of 12.

“Daft little ground, silly game, f**k off,” was Richard Keys’ disparaging verdict in 2007 when Scotland won in the Faroes amid that campaign, so pointless did he consider their involvement in qualification – believing his words weren’t being recorded during a shift on Sky Sports. That year, they were ranked 198th in the world out of 199: the Central African Republic languished below them.