Dubai: After knocking England out in the Last 16, Iceland are now daring to dream about beating Euro 2016 hosts France in the quarter-finals, according to their media manager Omar Smarason, speaking to Gulf News from Paris.
“We’ve always said we can beat anyone, and we stand by that,” said Smarason, whose side beat the likes of Holland, the Czech Republic and Turkey to finish second in their qualifying pool, before 1-1 draws with Portugal and Hungary, and a 2-1 win over Austria in their group.
“There was no official target set ahead of the competition, but we said that we would start by getting out of the group. Then we would just wait to see what happens.
“In any case, our main objective was to make the nation proud, and we have done that. Now it’s just a question of whether we can prolong this adventure. The nation is football mad, people are going nuts back home,” he added.
Sigurjon Ingolfsson, a Dubai-based Icelandic expatriate who travelled to St. Etienne for the Portugal game, said he was delighted with his side’s dream run. “We are quite pessimistic, we are not truly dreaming about going any further yet, but the hope is there,” he said, ahead of their quarter-final with France in Paris on Sunday.
“I didn’t expect us to beat England but I expected us to give them a game and be tough to break down. I’m more surprised by the way England didn’t trouble us in the second half. We’ve had harder games in the group stage. I’m in a state of happy disbelief.
“The English Premier League is the most followed league in Iceland and everyone has an English team as our local league is weak. So, it was a huge event to even meet England in the competition, let alone actually beat them.
“England were bad on the night but had been reasonable in the tournament. I believe it was a combination of them going behind and foreseeing the headlines the next day, as much as it was us actually playing quite well.”
The fire safety engineer, however, reckons there may be more to come from his nation.
“There’s been fair warning to these bigger sides, we’ve been playing well for a while now,” he insisted.
“We qualified to the Euros largely thanks to the fact that the tournament grew from 16 to 24 teams and we know that, but based on what we’ve achieved so far there’s no reason why we can’t now qualify for the 2018 World Cup, especially as we were so close to qualifying for 2014 – missing out in a play-off.”
Ingolfsson, 29, who has been based in Dubai for three years, added: “I don’t know any other Icelanders in the UAE, but when I went to France there were thousands of us. Almost every Icelander will make it over to France for at least one game during the tournament. To be all together in one place like this is a weird and new experience for us because even in Iceland where it is so sparsely populated we are used to being on our own. So it’s quite unusual.”
