Reykjavík Grapevine - 31.07.2015, Blaðsíða 24

Reykjavík Grapevine - 31.07.2015, Blaðsíða 24
The International Midfielder For the Iceland national women’s team, the dream of playing in the European Championships is already a reality. Fanndís Friðriksdóttir is a current member of the squad, cur- rently ranked 20th in the world, which in 2009 became the first Ice- landic football team to progress from the qualifying stage into the finals of an international tournament. “We almost made it through the playoffs for the World Cup,” says Fanndís. “We were really close! But we got to the finals of the European Championship in the last two tour- naments. In 2013 we got pretty far— the quarter finals. And we’ll compete again this September.” Fanndís has been playing since she was six years old, originally for her home team in the West- man Islands. After moving to Haf- narfjörður aged 14, she started play- ing for Breiðablik, and things went from there. “I never really planned to play professionally,” she says, “it just kind of came to me. There was an agent from Norway who contacted me, and the national team coach at the time also told me it would be possible. I’d love to do it full time here in Ice- land, but there’s not really enough money, so I’m in school as well—a lot of players go abroad to play full time.” Fanndís made her full interna- tional debut in 2009, and has taken part in both of the team’s forays into the UEFA European Championships. She puts the recent increased atten- tion on the women’s game down to a wider cultural shift. “Women are getting more atten- tion in every way,” she says. “Bigger jobs, and everything like that. And now people are realising that wom- en’s football is a good sport to watch. You could see that with the Women’s World Cup that just ended now. A lot of reporters covered it, a lot of people watched it—people could see that the standard is high, it’s good football. It’s not only about the men!” The Wom- en’s Team Captain The captain of the Icelandic women’s team is Sara Björk Gunnarsdóttir, who has been playing in the national side since she was 16 years old. Now a professional player for FC Rosengård in Sweden, Sara became the captain in 2014, and has scored 16 goals for the national team alongside her 57 club goals. “Women’s football has been de- veloping and getting better every single year,” says Sara. “We have more good teams and more solid leagues all over in women’s football. The quality is getting better and bet- ter all the time. It’s a really positive time.” The recent Women’s World Cup was something of a breakthrough for women’s football, on several fronts. The games caught the pub- lic imagination, appeared as global trending Twitter topics, and got unprecedented media attention—in the USA, the final was Fox’s most- watched football match ever, with an estimated 25.4 million viewers. It’s a big improvement, and a step towards the approximate billion people who watched the men’s final in 2014. “It’s nothing new to us women players that people focus on the men’s game, so we’re kind of over that!” says Sara. “But as women’s football continually improves, the big tournaments are getting more and more popular. With the Euros, the World Cup and the Champions League… the women’s game today is getting more attention than ever.” And with both the men’s and women’s national teams far outstrip- ping the expectations for a nation of 320,000, Sara thinks there’s more to come from both. “Our nation is very impressive in sports, given its size,” she says. “It’s amazing what Lars Lagerbäck has done with the men’s team. It’s good for the whole country. And the women’s team have already been to the Euros twice. I think it’s fascinating how far Iceland has come as a sporting nation, and how far we can go.” 24 The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 11 — 2015 “Women’s football is continually improv- ing, so the big tourna- ments are getting more popular. The women’s game today is getting more atten- tion than ever.”
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