‘What on earth have I signed up for?’ wondered Gustav.

COVID-19 had left the 18-year-old mind-numbingly bored and out of shape. He could no longer go to school, waiter at a restaurant, or play 11-a-side. Then his buddy Carlos threw him an invite that rocked his world.

It was to do some beach soccer training. Gustav hit Google and spent the next 10 minutes watching the Martins twins thrill on Nazare Beach, Rodrigo pummel home bicycle kicks on the Copacabana and, to his personal pleasure, goalkeepers actively play-make and unleash shots on scenic sands. ‘This looks a lot of fun,’ he thought. The Dane’s mindset nevertheless shifted when he got to training.

“It was freaking freezing,” he recalled. “Even in these neoprene socks I was thinking, ‘What the hell am I doing here?’” Madsen was additionally alarmed at seeing someone running around barefoot in sub-zero temperatures like some Viking madman.

His doubts immediately dissipated once the action got under way. Gustav Madsen and beach soccer, indeed, was love at first sight. Astonishingly, in merely three-and-a-half years, the Copenhagener has established himself as one of the best players of his position on the planet, and in February became the first goalkeeper to seize the prestigious Rising Star award at the Beach Soccer Stars Gala.Gustav required a few days off from studying for a bachelor’s degree in economics and working in a pension firm to go to and collect it in Dubai, and 15 minutes away from the latter to tell FIFA about his meteoric explosion on to the scene. With any luck, he’ll be begging his boss for a couple of weeks off, and missing a few matches for an 11-a-side team in the Danish sixth flight, in May 2025.

Madsen wants to be a far climatic cry away from the “wind, rain and snow” of the Baltic Sea coastline. He is desperate to be playing on the powder-soft white sand by the crystal-clear turquoise waters of the Seychelles, representing Denmark in the FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup™.