What we can learn from little Iceland

You don’t necessarily need a big population to succeed on the world stage.

OPINION: How do they do it? Iceland, population 330,000, have become the smallest country in the world to ever qualify for the World Cup.

This is not a total surprise. The Vikings made it to the European Championships in 2016, finishing ahead of the Netherlands (17 million people) and Turkey (80 million).

At the finals in France they beat Austria (9 million) and England (53 million). In qualifying for next year’s World Cup in Russia, Iceland finished ahead of football mad Croatia (4.2 million), Ukraine (45 million) and Turkey again.

Clearly population is no problem for Iceland. So what’s the secret? Has Scotland manager Gordon Strachan hit on something when he explained that Scotland are struggling on the world football stage because of genetics?

‘‘Genetically we are behind,’’ Strachan said. ‘‘In the last campaign we were the second smallest squad behind Spain.’’

Strachan appeared to shoot his own argument in the foot by mentioning Spain. They’re a nation of shorties, (Spanish men’s average height of 1.73m is just below Scotland’s 1.75m) yet with a World Cup and two Euro Championships in the last 10 years they don’t do too badly do they?

The key difference is that Spain have a population of 47 million to Scotland’s five. This gives Spain a much greater chance of finding 11 tall blokes if they wanted to (which, for football, playing their style, they don’t), 11 fast blokes (which they do), or just 11 fantastic footballers.

So back to Iceland. With an average height of 1.80m, Icelanders are among the tallest people in the world. With their history of plundering and conquering, have their strongest survived to breed a nation of super warriors, who, now that they’ve got serious about football, are ready to be unleashed on the world?

Looks like it, and New Zealand can do it too. Growing up in our country right now are toddlers who will in 20 years be some of the world’s best athletes.

The problem for football is, they’ll choose to play rugby or rugby league. At the risk of repeating myself, how good would the All Whites be if they had, just to name a few, the Barrett brothers, Vaea Fifita, Damian McKenzie, Nehe Milner-Skudder, Aaron Cruden, the Savea brothers, Israel Dagg and Ben Smith, provided they’d all been raised playing soccer?

If New Zealand Football can tap into that sort of talent, the sky’s the limit.

Speaking of limits, let’s hope NZF raises them when sEtting ticket prices for the All Whites/ Peru World Cup play off in a month.

Twelve years ago, Australia played Uruguay in Sydney to decide who’d go the World Cup in Germany. 80,000 fans were in the stadium.

Soccer Australia knows a good fundraiser when it sees one, and charged $200 a ticket. Google the penalty shootout from that game if you’re wondering if fans got their money’s worth.

That’s a $16 million windfall for football in Oz, and even after you’ve paid for the first class flights, five star accommodation and unlimited food and wine for the Fifa fat cats in attendance, there were still a few dollars left over to do plenty of good for the sport.

So if Aussie fans are fine with paying big bucks for a big game, why is NZF afraid to charge accordingly? What were the ticket prices for the Bahrain and Mexico play-off matches eight and four years ago respectively? $30? $40? It was an insult to the All Whites.

‘‘Ooh, we don’t want to price it beyond the average Kiwi,’’ was the explanation, forgetting that the average Kiwi is happy to shell out $200 to see the All Blacks, or $300 to see Bruce Springstein.

Isn’t the All Whites playing Peru for a spot in the World Cup finals as big a sports event as you can get?

Spectators expect to pay for that. $100. $200. 35,000 fans. Do the sums. Whatever happens on the field, it would be a big step forward for New Zealand football.