Tarup-Paarup

Tarup Park holds a thousand people, and on most matchdays it does not need to hold that many.

White shirts, red shorts, red socks. TPI spent most of its life in the lower reaches of the Danish system and reached the 2nd Division — the third tier — for 2018/19 and 2019/20. The first of those seasons ended in relegation back to the Danmarksserien.

What put the club in the national papers came in September 2018, and it had little to do with the league table. Five TPI players were called up to a Denmark squad at once, and a stand-in eleven — the vikarholdet — was assembled to cover them. Among the five was Anders Fønss, a forward who had come back to TPI in 2018 after time in the Superliga with Sønderjyske, and who worked in a warehouse to make the numbers add up while playing here. He came off the bench against Slovakia. The goalkeeper called up alongside him, Victor Vobbe Larsen, was selling newspapers for Fyens Stiftstidende at the time.

Some of them left afterwards for better-known sides around Funen. The club stayed amateur.

Its cup record is short: second-round exits in both of those seasons, 0-3 to Thisted FC and then 0-3 to FC Roskilde. Neither tie came home to Tarup Park, where the crowd is still counted in hundreds and the ground is also called Tarup Stadion by people who have been coming long enough not to have changed the habit.