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The yearly Danish futsal tournament is a social event for Danish companies and Danes living in Singapore. Even though it is a family oriented event with focus coziness the teams are not just playing for the fun of it.
On the rainy morning of Saturday the 4th of October around 300 people gathered at the caged, artificially grassed futsal fields that are located under the Thomson Flyover to fight for the trophy and come home as winners of the yearly Danish futsal tournament. The major difference between futsal and football is the size of the field you play on, futsal is basically football on a smaller and often indoor field.
The event is not all about the football though. A lot of the players were brought their children and spouses. An entire futsal field was reserved for small children. The larger kids were practicing on the fields in between games and following their fathers’ matches when the fields were occupied.
Even though the young boys were mostly bragging about their dads, a lot of the teams had women playing as well. According to one of the organizers Michael Jorgensen, there were actually two teams entirely made up of women last year, but this year the women seems to have been distributed more equally among the teams.
Selling pork nails for a good cause
Not only the teams, but also the food at the event was Danish. The Danish Seamen’s Church was serving traditional hot dogs and the Danish style hot dogs were popular with both nostalgic Danes and curious Singaporeans. The Church managed to sell out, even though they brought ingredients for 600 hot dogs.
There is an entire subculture of slang around the traditional Danish hotdog stands, while it might be easy to guess what a pork nail in an open coffin is. It is not unusual to overhear people ordering more obscure things like a ‘dead Indian in a canoe with war paint and water lilies’, which is a hot dog with a red sausage, mustard, ketchup, remoulade and slices of pickled cucumber.
The tournament is an important fundraising event for the Danish Seamen’s Church in Singapore, with its yearly contribution of around 15.000 SGD. The church’s priest Kirsten Eistrup strongly appreciate the effort of the two main organizers of the event Michael Jorgensen and Martin Just, who are not usually involved in the church’s work.
Around noon the rain stopped. Even though this was a very cozy and laid back event, a few of the 16 teams had their eyes on the prize – a blatant trophy in purple and gold – and fought hard, only just avoiding serious injuries, to get it. In the end BBC Chartering beat Dynamic Oil in the final and could celebrate the victory with cold Carlsberg.
