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Iceland makes history with Euros spot
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When Lars Lagerback took over as Iceland coach in 2010, he set big targets for a tiny nation that had never qualified for a major football tournament.
鈥淟ars told me that the team was strong enough to qualify for the (2014) World Cup,鈥 said Heimir Hallgrimsson, who shares duties with Lagerback. 鈥淚 thought he was crazy.鈥
That proved just beyond Iceland 鈥 it lost to Croatia in a tight playoff 鈥 but the European Championship will do just fine as a second prize.
With a population of approximately 320,000, Iceland became the smallest European country to reach a major event by qualifying for Euro 2016 on Sunday with two games to spare.
鈥淲hen I started playing football,鈥 Iceland coach Aron Gunnarsson said. 鈥淚 never even dreamed this could happen.鈥
And Iceland has qualified in style, losing just one of its eight group games so far and conceding only three goals. There have been home and away wins over Holland, which was third at last year鈥檚 World Cup.
It didn鈥檛 really matter that qualification was sealed with a 0-0 draw at home to Kazakhstan on Sunday. It completed arguably the greatest achievement in Icelandic sport.
For the experienced Lagerback, it was just part of the job. He took his native Sweden to five straight major tournaments as head coach, and was also in charge of Nigeria at the 2010 World Cup. Guiding Iceland to a European Championship tops the lot, although he doesn鈥檛 want to be regarded as some sort of hero.
鈥淧eople like (Nelson) Mandela and Martin Luther King are heroes 鈥 I鈥檓 just a football coach,鈥 Lagerback said.
However, Lagerback鈥檚 impact mustn鈥檛 be downplayed. When he became coach, Iceland was ranked No. 134. Now the team is No. 23 and on the rise.
The playoff loss to Croatia in 2013 gave Iceland the kind of big-match experience that has proved significant in the current qualifying campaign.
With the expansion of the European Championship to 24 countries, it was inevitable that some unheralded nations would be competing in France next year.
Iceland fits that bracket perfectly. Previously, the smallest nation to reach a European Championship finals was Slovenia, whose population was estimated at about 2 million when it reached Euro 2000.
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