The world has a crush on Iceland. And they know it. On a sunny morning in Spartak, on the outer edges of Moscow, Heimir Hallgrímsson, Iceland’s coach, beams after learning that his side have become the second most loved team in Colombia. When Iceland play Argentina on Saturday, it will be fingers crossed all over Bogota - and probably all of the big cities in South America. Everyone loves the underdog.
“We feel it,” Hallgrímsson acknowledges. “And not just from Colombia but from all over the world. It shows the reason why football is such a popular game in the world. And . . . you can’t but love Iceland. We haven’t attacked anyone or went to war with anyone. We only had the cod war but nobody was hurt in that. It is a pretty little nation and pretty people in general. You can’t but love us.”
All of this is delivered with a dash of mischief. Ever since Iceland thundered through France during Euro 2016, all beards and blondeness and Viking chic exoticism, they have become the exemplar for all small football countries. Small in numbers, gigantic in spirit. Hu!
That 2-1 win to knock England out in the second round transcended the tournament, provoking sights and sounds that were the high point of the summer. Now, having qualified for this World Cup as group winners over Croatia with seven wins, Hallgrímsson regards Saturday's debut appearance against Argentina as the most important game in Iceland's football history. But as a squad, they are becoming slightly weary about the idea that their exploits in France were somehow bound up in Scandinavian sorcery.
“First, I don’t agree that it was a miracle. I think the team has been very stable for the last four years. We are 20th in the Fifa list and won important games; won our group. We deserve to be here. So we do not see it as miracle that we are here. With regard to Lionel Messi, I don’t have any magic formula. Everyone has tried everything against him and he always manages to score. He is one of the best players in the world. We will do it as we do everything, together. It would be unfair to give one player the role of marking Messi. That would not be fair.”
Perhaps not a miracle, but Iceland’s rise is a wildly improbable story based on grounded methodology and bold improvisation. How can a country with just 334,000 hope to field teams against the superpowers of the world? Simply by knuckling down. Hallgrímsson, like his predecessor Lars Lagerbäck, has made a virtue of Iceland’s size.
The vision and organisation of the Icelandic football association has become a well-documented study and the common virtues of hard work and togetherness is wedded to an avant-garde relationship with the supporters. “You can probably see in their eyes that it means a bit more to them,” Hallgrímsson says.
Around 25,000 Icelanders made it to France; it is thought that only 5,000 will be in Moscow for this historic game. Many more wanted to travel but getting tickets had proven difficult. Aaron Gunnarsson, the Cardiff midfielder and figurehead of the team, remembers that in the early days, not many people would go to see them play in Reykjavik.
The squad made conscious efforts to engage the fans and would call into the local pubs on the day of games to meet the supporters beforehand. It had become a tradition they were loathe to break once they made it to a major tournament.
“It is just one thing we do different,” says Hallgrímsson. “It is because of the population that there is this trust between the team and the fans. I know for other nations it seems strange and it couldn’t happen. We give them ownership of the team. But this game with Argentina is too early, I won’t go to the pub tomorrow.”
To imagine what this weekend will be like in Iceland, just reference Ireland in the summer of 1990. For decades, the world seldom paid heed to Iceland’s achievements. Halldór Laxness won the Nobel prize for literature in 1955; the country toasted several Miss World wins in the 1980s. But it was largely left to its own devices until it became engulfed in the global financial tsunami, a crisis which theoretically left every single Icelandic citizen $330,000 in debt and prompted a ferocious public response and demand for accountability.
Iceland’s football revolution has followed a moment of stark introspection and the heroics of the football team has brought about renewed understanding of what it means to be from Iceland. In an illuminating interview with the Reykjavik Grapevine published this week, Gunnarsson elaborated on that.
“Generation after generation, we’ve had to stick together to survive in hard conditions, darkness, wind and freezing cold,” he said, inadvertently describing the west of Ireland life experience of every winter and many’s a summer.
Michael Lewis, in his portrait of the country in its days of monetary firestorm, wrote that the difference between Iceland and other Scandinavians is that they have “a feral streak, like a horse pretending to be broken.” That untamed element has been drawn out through the self-conscious ferociousness of the Iceland fan base - the patented “Hu” chant that went viral in France and the idea of the Viking spirit running through the veins of the current players.
“There has been a bit of controversy about what Viking spirit is because, to be fair, the actual Vikings weren’t really honest and trustworthy men, were they?,” Gunnarsson said thoughtfully in the same interview. “They were a bunch of thugs who did things none of us should be proud of.”
The football team, though, are the unabashed pride of the nation. You can imagine the capital and when they score tomorrow: volcanoes like never before.
“Hopefully we can sustain what we are doing,” says Hallgrímsson. “Our goal is to progress from the group. And if we do that we have left behind two really good teams. And we shouldn’t fear anyone we face after this. But we know Iceland can have the best game of their lives and lose against Argentina.”
Or they could do the impossible. Again.
