Faroe Islands U19

Tórsvøllur sits in Tórshavn with room for just over 6,000, and it is here, rather than at any ground of their own, that the Faroe Islands under-19s play whenever the fixture list brings them home — a national side has no stadium to call its own, so the same pitch that hosts the senior team also carries the age group through its qualifiers.

The side took its first steps on 24 October 2001, away in Križevci against Scotland, and lost 1-2. That defeat set the pattern more than any breakthrough did: a spot in the elite qualifying round of the UEFA European Under-19 Championship remains the furthest the team has gone, and no final has followed.

What the age group has produced instead is a conveyor line of players who went on to be seen well beyond the islands. Gunnar Nielsen came through the ranks here before goalkeeping for Blackburn Rovers and Manchester City, and Jóan Símun Edmundsson followed a similar path out, via Arminia Bielefeld, to Newcastle United. For a football nation this small, the under-19s function less as a competition unto themselves and more as the last stop before a player's name starts appearing in foreign leagues.

The team answers to the Faroe Islands Football Association, and, like the senior side it feeds, plays under the banner of Landsliðið — there is no separate nickname for the younger group. It is a small footballing world: same association, same shirt, same ground in Tórshavn.