(MENAFN- Khaleej Times) Aron Gunnarsson, every inch the bearded Viking, ran shirtless toward the Iceland fans and led them in their victory chants.
Beating England at the European Championship was more than just Iceland''s greatest sporting success. Monday was a moment of national triumph in a country where the team''s improbable progress from the group stage had already outshone coverage of Saturday''s presidential election. The Scandinavian nation of just 330,000 people, by the far the smallest country to qualify for a European Championship, inflicted a shattering 2-1 defeating on England - the country that has been the model for Icelandic football for decades. Defender Ragnar Sigurdsson, who scored Iceland''s first goal and made an outstanding last-ditch tackle to deny Jamie Vardy a potential equaliser, said he had "dreamt ... a long time ago" of playing England. But he sounded a little disappointed with what he''d found. "We didn''t feel that they created any chances," he said. "(Harry) Kane had a header opportunity and headed straight to the goalkeeper, there''s a lot that we were just heading away and long shots from distance." Iceland''s rock-solid 4-4-2 formation was a ghost from the past of England coach Roy Hodgson, who along with Bob Houghton introduced it to Sweden when they coached there in the 1970s and 1980s. One of their disciples was Lars Lagerback, now Iceland''s co-coach. "I learned a lot from them, they changed the training methods and the coaching education in the long run in Sweden and I was really, really benefiting from that," Lagerback said.
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