According to the French Handball Federation, there were 602,218 licenced handball players in France in 2024. But the Faroe Islands, a country with a population of 54,000, managed to snatch a 28:27 win at the 2025 IHF Men’s Junior World Championship, a win which fueled a dash towards the quarter-finals for the Nordic country.

It is the third consecutive quarter-finals berth at the IHF Men’s World Championship in the younger age categories for the Faroe Islands, who stopped in this phase of the competition in 2023 at both the Junior and Youth events. 

And these performances beg the question: how can a country with such a small pool of players to choose from can provide such fantastic results time and time again?

“Handball is a national sport in the Faroe Islands,”  says Hjalti Mohr Jacobsen, the coach of the Faroe Islands men’s junior national team. 

It is as simple as that. Or is it not?

“It all comes from the arenas in the Faroe Islands. They are open all the time, so all the kids can play in the halls. We get a lot of hours of playing time. All the kids in the Faroe Islands get a lot of hours spent the arenas,” adds the Faroe Islands coach.

But from such a young age, the children know that this is probably not what they will be doing in the future. Of course, there are few who are so enthralled with the sport, they know they are going to start playing from a young age and then aim higher, for a career.

Yet for others, handball is just a game, just a way of building up some relationships and creating a camaraderie and a friendship, which should last all life.

“It's all fun. We have a lot of goals in the halls. The kids are just playing handball. We take care of each player. We can't afford to just pick some few. We have to get all the players we can and give them some good opportunities. And this is how these teams are born,” adds Mohr Jacobsen.

Over the past few years, the Faroe Islands have become the darlings of the handball fans around the world with some fantastic performances. First, the senior team won the first two editions of the IHF Men’s Emerging Nations Championship, in 2015 and 2017. And then, their junior and youth squads took everything by storm.

At the M20 EHF EURO 2022, the Faroe Islands junior team became the first Faroese side to beat Denmark in any team sport. Then, in 2023, they made the quarter-finals in both the IHF Men’s Junior and the IHF Men’s Youth World Championships.

2024 brought another premiere, as the senior side, with plenty of players picked from that junior squad, made its debut at the senior Men’s EHF EURO, with 5,000 Faroese fans making the trip to Berlin to watch and cheer for their side.

“We get all of the best players together, from maybe 14, 15 years old. They all come through the same system. They learn the same things. We have a lot of good coaches in the teams, in the clubs, in the Faroe Islands. We have a lot of good volunteers. Through the years, we've built up a good system, so all the young players come through this plan we built in Faroe,” says Mohr Jacobsen, who is also the assistant coach of the senior team.

“It started maybe only just 10 years ago. Some parents came together and made all the players from all over the country train together. Then we got the Handball Federation started building up from the beginning, maybe 10 years ago. Just a lot of good people making great decisions.”

It also helped that several of those parents had handball knowledge, such as the father of Oli Mittun, the current best scorer of the 2025 IHF Men’s Junior World Championship, with 47 goals, who is a coach.

“All over the country, we are a handball country. We managed to build up some incredible players, such as Oli, Elias Ellefsen á Skipagøtu or Hákun West Av Teigum, who are playing at such a high level, it is fantastic,” adds Faroe’s coach.

In just a decade, they came from zeroes to heroes, and the Faroe Islands proved that experience is crucial. Take, for example, their 32:41 loss against Denmark, in the last main round match at Poland 2025. Crucial players like Oli Mittun or Isak Vedelsboel did not play at all, with Mittun limited to converting three penalties.

That’s a pivot from the previous two competitions, when Mittun or Ellefsen á Skipagøtu featured prominently before the quarter-finals of the Junior and Youth World Championships, where the Faroe Islands were eliminated by Serbia and Egypt in dramatic fashion.

“Against Slovenia, in the quarter-finals, it will be a mentally tough game. Both of the teams, the under 21 and under 19, have been in the quarter-finals before, so this will be the third time. But we hope we can do it this time and make some more history,” adds Mohr Jacobsen.

Mohr Jacobsen himself was the coach of this generation at the 2023 IHF Men’s Youth World Championship and now his summers look as busy as ever. He says he lives the dream, albeit while spending his annual leave. In his day-to-day life, the coach is also the head of markets for a domestic bank in the Faroe Islands, but says that handball is more than a passion.

“When I started playing, it was a natural choice for me to become a coach. I've been with this team for four years now. I'm also an assistant coach on the national team. And I work full-time in a bank and I have a wife and three kids, all of whom are here, in Poland, with me,” says Mohr Jacobsen.

“I love handball, what can I do? It is my passion. This is my holiday. I use my holiday for being a coach for the Faroe Islands national team.”