Increasing the european Championship to 24 teams seemed like a typically bumbling attack by a governing body to meddle with football for meddling ’ south sake. The extend competition inspired typical reject from football purists, with its cumbersome mathematical convention and its abundance of small fry who could barely be expected to aspire to much. It is at this target that Cristiano Ronaldo entered the conversation. After Portugal drew their opening fastness against Iceland, infamy poured out of the mod crippled ’ s iconic superhero in the form of a pique hissy meet. “ I thought they ’ five hundred won the Euros the way they celebrated at the end, ” he tutted. “ It was incredible. When they don ’ metric ton try to play and just defend, defend, defend, this in my opinion shows a minor mentality and they are not going to do anything in this competition. ” Ronaldo may be a man of many gifts, but for assorted reasons this turned out not to be his finest piece of rhetoric. Iceland actually supplied the most memorable storyline of the tournament, and a dissipated miracle for any age. The magazine Reykjavik Grapevine put it best, in its own inimitable style. “ And now we smite them into bantam pieces of debris and destroy their goal with a ball set on fire by our volcanic thunder, ” it wrote at the begin of the adventure. lone a mild hyperbole.

iceland might have been the smallest nation to always appear at a major finals, and possibly the most improbable given a landscape inhospitable for football, but mentality-wise they demonstrated something huge. That opinion was not just for the charming month they spent in France last summer, either. It was in the bigger visualize, besides, a dedicated plan years in the lay down to provide youngsters with ample inviting spaces to play football, protected by the elements by high, bubble-structures, and with coaches educated to a high standard. The rewards in France captivated their state, and around one tenth of the population travelled to the Euro to see it with their own eyes. The back history, the years of progressing the game in a nation that did not even play a single game on eatage until the 1950s, gave very depth to Iceland ’ s Euro odyssey. It explains why the commentator Gudmundur Benediktsson went berserker and lost his voice and momentarily his beware as he gave a memorably high soundtrack to Iceland ’ second blockage time winner over Austria, which ensured they qualified to the hard stage unbeaten. then came England. Iceland vanadium England in the last 16 could not have had a more electrifying call to it for the underdogs. They described it as a little brother-big brother kind of scuffle, such has been the traditional affection for English football in Iceland. England had everything to lose on a quick even in Nice, and both teams knew it. Iceland conceded an early punishment, calmly converted, and for a while things developed more or less as expected. But Iceland ’ s indomitable spirit had been one of their hallmarks, and Ragnar Sigurdsson cracked in an equalizer from a well rehearsed long-throw act to change the mood. England ’ s growing anxiety flipped into meltdown as Kolbeinn Sigthorsson finished off a sweet pass affect. not one for the best of Joe Hart compilation, but Iceland cared small for that. On the touchline their co-managers, the fresh old man of scandinavian football, Lars Lagerback, and the ache, ambitious, part-time dentist Heimir Hallgrimsson embraced and laughed at the craziness of it all.

Come the final whistle, it was the sound cascading around the stadium that sticks in the mind. Mixed in with the disgusted grumble of England fans booing and jeer and sleep together and jeffing was this charming flannel make noise of euphoria. The sound of it was extraordinary – a whirl of joyous unbelief blend with raucous pride. It was the fathom of a modest nation spreading its wings. apart from that phone there are a couple of images that stand out. As Iceland ’ mho players bounded off to the corner of the stadium where the bulk of their fans were situated, they did not actually run. They were leaping. They looked like jumping beans. The other thing is one of the players grabs the corner flag and as if to summon some epic Thor-like powers, and hurls it into the crowd. then came the fleeting hush before the “ huh ” celebration, the communal handclap that would send shivers down the spine. by and by, when they tried to take it all in and take on display panel they were off to Paris to meet France in the quarter-finals, there was a sense that although the venture continued everybody felt that they had already been a contribution of something historic, deserving of wonder. Lagerback, not normally a man for excessive talk, described the win over England as a huge happiness. “ There are not many occasions you have these feelings, ” he said. Hallgrimsson enthused about the character of the players. “ If you have been around this team you see it ’ second fantastic how everybody has a part to play, everybody is friends, everybody is volition to work with each other. That ’ s a mentality you need for a belittled state to achieve things. You can ’ thyroxine do it with individuals. We are a family. There have been a batch of jokes about how little we are, how you can pick the team from shepherds. It has been foreign to read it and that is why it is kind of comforting. It ’ s just possibly funny story because we are so few. But when it comes to football it is 11 against 11. ” As fortune would have it, the 24-team Euro 2016 playing field turned out to be impressively level. All of the five debutants joining the party left with something to cherish far beyond merely being able to marvel at the sight of their flag on this stage as they listened to that David Guetta soundtrack five billion times. arsenic well as Iceland ’ s writing of a new modern football caption, Wales produced some leading performances to reach the semi-finals, with that momentous prevail over Belgium rivalling Iceland ’ south winnings over England as a tournament foreground.

Northern Ireland and Slovakia qualified for the knockouts, and Albania relished a first finals win and ended the group phase with the like number of points as the eventual winner Portugal. Iceland ’ s Euro finally came to an end against France but the memories are endless. Over to Benediktsson, and his stream of consciousness ode to the final whistle of Iceland 2-1 England : “ We ’ rhenium never going base ! just attend at this ! such things have never been seen ! I can ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate believe my own eyes ! This is … Never wake me up ! Never wake me up from this insane dream ! ” And if you can ’ t love something like that, possibly sport at its most unpredictable, emotionally charged perfume is not for you .