Tiny Iceland continues to live the dream

Any neutrals looking for a team to get behind at the World Cup shouldn’t look any further than Iceland, a feel-good story of international football that just keeps on giving.

With about 330,000 inhabitants, the Nordic country is comfortably the smallest to ever qualify for the tournament. Two years ago, Iceland reached the European Championship for the first time, too, and got to the quarter-finals — famously eliminating England along the way.

The Icelandic fairy tale is made more charming by its vociferous and passionate fans, who made the “thunderclap” war chant the soundtrack of that summer in France in 2016.

Adding to the legend is the team’s coach, Heimar Hallgrimsson, who combines managing the national team with running a dental surgery clinic in a small town in Iceland.

The hard-working, selfless group of mostly unheralded players are simply living out their dream in front of the watching world. And giving the Icelanders more global attention is the identity of their first opponent in Group D: Lionel Messi’s Argentina.

Here’s a closer look at the Iceland team:

Coach

Hallgrimsson was the assistant of head coach Lars Lagerback at Euro 2016, and was promoted ahead of the World Cup qualifying campaign when Lagerback stood down. A modest and well-respected coach in Iceland, Hallgrimsson has managed to keep motivational levels high within the squad after the Euros. He has also stuck to his own unique approach — before every Iceland home game, Hallgrimsson meets up with a supporters’ group in a Reykjavik bar and discloses the team’s starting line-up and tactics.

Goalkeepers

Hannes Halldorsson is the undisputed No. 1 — and has an interesting back story. He was once a movie director who was behind the music video for his nation’s 2012 Eurovision Song Contest entry. The career behind the camera is on hold until his life as a soccer player is over.

Defenders

The defence is held together by the centre-back pairing of Ragnar Sigurdsson and Kari Arnason. They are close on the field and off it, having spent the summer of 2015 travelling around Thailand together. At 35, Arnason is one of the veterans of the Iceland team, spending some of his career in English soccer’s lower league and now finding himself in Scotland with Aberdeen.

Midfielders

Bearded captain Aron Gunnarsson is the heartbeat of the team in central midfield. A tough tackler and fearsome-looking figure, he keeps his passing simple and lets the more creative players in the team — Gylfi Sigurdsson and Johann Berg Gudmundsson, for example — do their thing. Gunnarsson also leads Iceland’s fans in the thunderclap. Gudmundsson, a wide midfielder, is growing in stature after an impressive season with Burnley in the English Premier League.

Forwards

Gylfi Sigurdsson is the star of Iceland’s team and has long been used as a midfield playmaker by his country. During qualifying, he was occasionally deployed as a deep-lying forward in a 4-2-3-1, allowing Iceland to bulk up the midfield, and could be used there at the World Cup. That’s provided he is fit to play — Sigurdsson has been out with a knee injury since early March and has yet to return, which is a major worry for his country.

He has also struggled to make an impact at Everton this season after a $58 million move from Swansea last summer. Kolbeinn Sigthorsson was the starting striker at Euro 2016 but has barely played since because of a knee injury. Jon Dadi Bodvarsson should get the nod for the World Cup as a result.

Group games

Iceland will be based in Krasnodar and play against Argentina on June 16, Nigeria on June 22 and Croatia on June 26.