Sampdoria midfielder Morten Thorsby discusses his passion for climate and environmental issues and reveals that some of his colleagues call him Greta Thunberg.
The 25-year-old is one of the regular starters at Marassi, where he has collected 28 appearances across all competitions this season. The Norway international is also a well-known environmental activist and has explained his passion and work in an interview with Expresso.pt.
“I’m a normal guy who plays football and also an environmental activist,” he said.
“I’m lucky to be able to play football in a professional way, that’s my job and luckily, I work on something I love. At the same time, I have a huge passion for the fight for climate and environmental issues.
“It started when I was 15 or 16, around 2011,” he recalled. “I started reading and gathering information about what was happening and realizing that we had a huge problem between us, but nobody was doing anything to solve it.
“My involvement with climate issues started there because I started to want to do something when I understood that the topic was not enough debated or that nothing truly relevant was being done. So I started raising my voice. At the same time, my football career took off, I went to the Netherlands and gained notoriety. It’s like my football career and my connection to environmental activism go hand in hand, it’s been a joint journey.
“You have to be able to bring players and fans — the roots of football — to the cause,” the midfielder added.
“Starting from there, this will create pressure on Federations and on the bodies that send them to take action. But I believe it is necessary to start pressing from below in this movement. If you have a football club and the fans have a strong environmental awareness and activism, they will force the club to do something, or they will not allow the club to do certain things, and the same is true for the players.
“If a lot of footballers start saying the same thing, something will happen, it’s the snowball effect that we have to start creating.”
He puts so much effort into activism for the environment that some of his teammates and opponents call him ‘Greta Thunberg.’
“Some colleagues call me that, it’s true,” the 25-year-old admitted.
“It’s not a problem for me, but I wouldn’t compare myself to Greta. She has been doing very important work, almost as a face of the movement, but she speaks a lot to people who are already sensitized and informed about the climate crisis.
“I think we have to get everybody on board, we have to do what Greta says, but simplify the message and extend it to more people. But Greta has done an amazing job. It’s okay to be called like that,” he concluded, laughing.