“How deep could this Icelandic talent pool possibly be?”

Iceland won Ireland 1:0 in a friendly football match between the two nations in Dublin yesterday, and by that ended Ireland’s three-year winning streak in their home town.

Both teams came into this game with not half the manpower they are used to. Many star players were absent, particularly in Iceland’s team. The situation was so dire that many Icelanders were rather pessimistic before the game.

Somehow the Icelandic National Team managed to draw upon the force and determination which got them so far in the EURO 2016. They won the game, much to the surprise of many Irishmen.

Free trip do Dublin for the first to raise their hand?

“But still, looking at the Icelandic absences, you wondered how this nation of 300,000 had even filled out the squad: did the coach Heimir Hallgrimsson stand outside the Parliament building in Reykjavik and announce: “OK, the first 22 of you to put your hands up get a free trip to Dublin”? How deep could this Icelandic talent pool possibly be?”

Ken Early wrote this for in The Irish Times after the game.

“Iceland used to be regarded as the kind of country you would end up playing in a friendly when nobody half-decent was interested in playing you, one of those teams that had a teacher and a couple of fishermen, essentially a northern Oman.”

Euro 2016 changed that forever, of course, as Iceland knocked out England on their legendary run to the quarter-finals. Everybody respects them now.

We should have remembered the lesson of Iceland’s Euro campaign, which is that the depth of your talent pool counts for less than what you do with it. It was obvious from the start that Iceland’s patched-together team had a much clearer idea of what they were trying to do than Ireland’s patched-together team.”