Iceland weren’t given much of a chance in this year’s European Championships.
The Scandinavians are the smallest country involved in Euro 2016, or indeed in any edition of the continental competition, with a population of just over 330,000.
But that’s comparable to the population of Leicester, where another minor footballing miracle occurred barely a month ago.
And the Icelanders got off to a fantastic start, holding Portugal to a 1-1 draw and keeping a misfiring Cristiano Ronaldo off the scoresheet.
But ‘smallest population of a Euros participant’ wasn’t the only record broken by Iceland, as those stats geniuses at Opta noticed.
11- At EURO 1964, Denmark fielded 10 players with a name ending with -sen v USSR. Iceland now has the record with 11 -son's. Recórdsson.
— OptaCan (@OptaCan) June 14, 2016
That starting XI, in full, was as follows:
- Hannes Halldórsson
- Birkir Sævarsson
- Ragnar Sigurdsson
- Kári Árnason
- Ari Skúlason
- Johann Gudmundsson
- Aron Gunnarsson
- Gylfi Sigurdsson
- Birkir Bjarnason
- Kolbeinn Sigþórsson
- Jón Dadi Böðvarsson
And if that wasn’t enough, joint-coaches Lars Lagerbäck (don’t panic about the name – he’s Swedish) & Heimir Hallgrímsson brought Alfred Finnbogason and Elmar Bjarnason off the bench.
Incredibly, 22 of the 23 squad members have surnames ending in -son. The only outlier? Eidur Gudjohnsen.
That record, along with the highly-impressive draw in Saint-Etienne, ensured this very dodgy sight-gag wasn’t the only thing we were talking about after the game.
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