Between 1998 and 2010, tens of thousands of people participated in the competitions organized by the Scandinavian futsal movement IFS, a movement that spanned seven major Scandinavian cities. In 2002 – just one month after the last major city in Norway, Oslo, had been “conquered” by IFS, with Stockholm and Copenhagen next in line – the local newspaper Bergens Tidende published an excellent report on this mentality of conquest.
Under the headline “First they take the floor (“parketten”), then they take Berlin,” the IFS campaigns of the preceding year and more were described. As the leader and founder of the movement, I had the pleasure of providing the article’s climax with this closing comment: “To quote Karen Carpenter: It has only just begun.”
Interestingly, 24 years later, that is exactly what I am saying again. It is the very same thing.
(Image: IFS portrait from 2004. Painting by PP, 2026)