‘Red and white dynamite’ Denmark women’s team named FIFPRO Fair Play Award winners
|Image: Angelica Ibarra Rodriguez
An ecstatic Denmark women’s football team were named FIFPRO Fair Play Award recipients for selflessly sharing their water with their Austrian opponents after their Homeless World Cup match on a hot, humid Seoul day.
Players had been handed bottles of water as they exited the pitch after the final whistle. As the first team to exit, the Danish players were all furnished with water bottles. The water had run out by the time the Austrian team followed them out.
At the impetus of one of their goalkeepers, the Danish team shared the water they’d just been given so all players could rehydrate. It was an especially considerate act given that both the Danish and Austrian teams were used to more temperate conditions than the sunny, steamy ones Seoul turned on for much of the week.
The Danish team’s motto broadly translates to ‘football, unity, everyone’. It’s inscribed on the team’s custom jerseys, which also contain cobblestones printed on the front and a street football pitch printed on the back. Printed inside the shirt, but emblematic of the heartfelt ethos the team demonstrated to win the FIFPRO Fair Play Award, is an image of four players who are different but similar and aligned through their football connection.
Homeless World Cup co-founder Mel Young was effusive in his praise of the Danish team, which he nicknamed ‘red and white dynamite’, as he presented them with their medals. The team commented that this was the most important award they could have won, as both players and coaches.
‘This was the one we wanted to win,’ they told the Homeless World Cup volunteers. It had been a challenging first few days for the Danish team—their opponents were skilled and the Danish team didn’t feel that things were gelling on the pitch as they’d hoped. This award, the team’s coaches explained, ‘was good for morale’.
Words: Fiona Crawford
Image: Angelica Ibarra Rodriguez