Could Iceland do a Leicester at the Euros?
They come from a land of geysers and hedonists where you can’t play on grass for seven months of the year and are coached by a dentist... but have the same population as the home of the Premier League
ON the September night when Iceland guaranteed their place at Euro 2016, the country’s Prime Minister dashed to the dressing-room in order to deliver an urgent message.
‘He said he was so happy that he would allow every bar and restaurant in the country to stay open all night to celebrate,’ said Geir Thorsteinsson, president of Iceland’s FA, with a grin, when we meet in his office at the Laugardalsvollur national stadium.
‘So we went from here to have dinner downtown, the players with the board. The centre of Reykjavik was so full of supporters, all night, that in the end the police had to come along and ask everyone to go home!’
The PM in question, Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, is no longer, having stepped down in the wake of the Panama Papers scandal that engulfed him, his wife and an offshore company they had kept concealed. But for the rest of the occupants of this moonscape land of geysers, volcanoes and hedonists, straddling the North Atlantic and the Arctic Ocean, the party goes on.
By drawing 0-0 at home against Kazakhstan on that fateful evening last autumn, Iceland became the smallest nation ever to reach the finals of a major tournament.
And goodness, this country of 329,000 souls are enjoying it. More than 20,000 already have tickets for their Group F matches against Portugal, Hungary and Austria. That is more than six per cent of the population. If six per cent of England went to France, they would need 3.2million seats. Iceland’s hardcore Tolfan fan group (translation: ‘12’, as in 12th man), will be highly visible and visibly merry this summer.
The next smallest nation at Euro 2016 will be Northern Ireland, population 1.8m, or more than five times bigger than Iceland, which has the same number of people as Leicester.
Leicester, like Iceland, would never be expected to win anything major. Gylfi Sigurdsson, formerly of Tottenham, now with Swansea, is unquestionably Iceland’s best player and he smiles at the similarity. Leicester’s miracle Premier League title remains fresh and refreshing.
‘Going into the Euros after that, you see that anything is possible with the right team and the right attitude and the right spirit,’ says Sigurdsson, 26. ‘We have to be realistic because we’re in a tough group. All the groups are tough in the finals. But if we start the tournament well, then anything is possible.’
Dreams come true. Qualifying proved it. Against Holland, the Czech Republic, Turkey, Kazakhstan and Latvia, midfielder Sigurdsson was top scorer with six goals. Iceland won five of their first six games, including beating the Dutch home then away, 2-0 then 1-0, with Sigurdsson getting all three.
Holland had not lost a competitive match in Amsterdam since the 1928 Olympic football tournament before the Icelandic raiders took all three points. Sigurdsson (right) says that was the highlight of the campaign, rather than the nervy 0-0 that sealed qualification a few days later.
‘Beating the Dutch 1-0 over there, we realised we were so close now... that game was the turning point where we knew we were going to France,’ he says.
Since Iceland’s first failed qualifying campaign, for the 1958 World Cup, star performers have been few and far between.
Albert Gudmundsson was the first professional in the Forties. He played briefly for Arsenal and also Milan, and later became the FA (known as the KSI) president and an Icelandic presidential candidate. His statue stands outside the KSI headquarters today.
Sigi Sigurvinsson was the next ‘big’ player, a cult hero with Bayern Munich and Stuttgart in the Eighties. And then came Iceland’s all-time best, Eidur Gudjohnsen, back in the national team aged 37. Chelsea, Barcelona and Tottenham are all on his 15-team CV, along with his current employers, Molde of Norway. Sigurdsson, at 26, is a fine example of an even more modern Icelandic footballer. He is hard working but technically accomplished. He is grounded, and articulate. He left his country behind aged 16, to develop his craft at a foreign club – Reading in his case. And his career bridges the years before and after the KSI built Iceland’s first ‘Football House’, or full-size indoor pitch, inside a dome, in 2000. Iceland’s climate dictates that outdoor football on grass is possible only between May and October, at best. Sigurdsson remembers playing on gravel as a pre-teen. ‘I played on frozen pitches, on snow,’ he adds. ‘I had only a couple of years indoor before I went to England. But the facilities now are incredible and we’re still waiting to see the full benefit of the generation who had that.’
Iceland has seven full-size Football Houses now, with four smaller ones and more in the pipeline, as well as more than 100 outdoor allweather surfaces. Most but not all are in the Reykjavik region, where most of the people live. But every town and village along Iceland’s 828-mile Route One perimeter road around the island has at least one pitch and access to coaching.
The era of the year-round facilities, allied with a determined effort by the KSI to provide high-quality coaching, are two of the reasons behind Iceland’s current success. Geir Thorsteinsson, 51, a decent youth player who became a coach, referee, club secretary and KSI official before ascendancy to the presidency in 2007, takes up the story.
‘It’s been a long-term plan,’ he says. ‘We needed facilities to play in winter and coaching. We’ve built that up over 15 years. Within walking distance of every home there is now a sports club, and a pitch, and access to decent coaching.’
The numbers speak for themselves. Iceland has 22,000 registered players, a third of them
female. There are 800 UEFA-qualified coaches, or one for each 411 people. England’s ratio is one per 10,600 people.
Thorsteinsson says the fruit of the KSI’s investment is the current ‘golden generation’ of players, with the 23-man cream of the crop all now plying their trade in leagues outside Iceland.
Sigurdsson is the poster boy, and Aron Gunnarsson, of Cardiff, with almost 60 caps, another important, experienced midfielder, aged 27. Charlton winger Johann Gudmundsson, 25, will be familiar to many England fans, while Gudjohnsen’s fellow strikers comprise the prolific Nantes forward Kolbeinn Sigthorsson, 26, Jon Dadi Bodvarsson, of Kaiserslauten, 24, and Alfred Finnbogason, 27, of Augsburg.
Arguably the last piece of Iceland’s puzzle was put in place in late 2011, when Thorsteinsson persuaded the immensely experienced veteran Swedish coach, Lars Lagerback, now 67, to postpone his retirement and take one last job.
Lagerback led Sweden to World Cups in 2002 and 2006 among other tournaments, and coached Nigeria at the last World Cup. ‘It was really easy to take the [Iceland] job as an interesting challenge because I thought there was potential in the national team,’ he says.
When Lagerback arrived, he was assisted by a former player turned coach, Heimir Hallgrimsson, who also runs a dental practice on an island called Heimaey, located off Iceland’s south coast. After Iceland missed out on qualification for the 2014 World Cup, the KSI made Lagerback and Hallgrimsson co-managers, and with Lagerback confirming he will retire after Euro 2016, Hallgrimsson will take the reins by himself. At that stage, he will stop the dentistry to focus fulltime on the football.
Lagerback hopes to go out on a high. ‘I’m not a dreamer to be honest,’ he says. ‘I’m a realistic optimist. Of course I think we have a rather fair chance to go on from the group stage. It depends because it’s a tough schedule with only three days between and you have to travel. But if everybody is fit and we have the best players on board, then I think we have a fair chance to go on.’
He also hopes Iceland will be buoyed by the support of neutrals, cheering on the small team from the rocky land in the ocean.
‘It’s such a small country and we’re there for the first time. Iceland for the rest of Europe is maybe a little bit exotic. I’ve probably had more international [attention] these last six months than I had with Sweden.
‘But I can’t say I’m surprised. I think it’s understandable. Everybody loves an underdog.’