One of the most remarkable surpirses in World Cup qualifiers is Faroe Islands: this achipielago, an autonomous territory from Denmark, have now won three matches in a row, including stunning Czech Republic on Sunday, 2-1.
Faroe Islands is ranked 136 in FIFA rankings, while Czechia is 39. But football is extremely popular there (they have 7,000 registered players, on a full population of less than 55,000) with a ten team Faroe Islands Premier League, despite the few hours of sunlight they received due to their proximity to the Arctic Circle.
The nordic achipielago have never qualified for World Cup, in fact, has never won more than two games in the qualifying rounds before, with their biggest achievement being defeating Greece 1-0 in 2014. This time, they’ve won four, lost three, never for more than one goal, and are third in the table in Group L with 12 points, just one less than Czechia. The leader is Croatia with 16 points and a game at hand.
Given that only the leader qualifies for World Cup, and the second goes to European play-offs, Faroe Islands still has chances to qualify for World Cup (it would be the smallest country by far to qualify for World Cup) but chances are slim: Faroe Islands would need to win Croatia and, perhaps even more unlikely, Czechia would need to lose against Gibraltar in November.
Yannik Photography