In an interview with the Telegraph, Gylfi Sigurdsson, an attacking midfielder for the Iceland national team, said that people had always been telling him that Iceland was unable to qualify for such a major football tournament as the World Cup, however, the Euro 2016 made many rethink the scale of the potential threat emanating from Iceland's football team.
READ MORE: FIFA Twitter Account Shamed for Mixing Up Diego Costa With Brazil Star Douglas
"Teams are looking at the Icelandic team completely different, compared to how they did five or ten years ago. It has been changing over the last few years. Teams know we can beat anyone. Their players know that. They know we are a good team and hard to beat. It is different with the pressure, completely different in a way. Us making it to the Euros and World Cup is fantastic and everything else is kind of a bonus. We just use that and have the same approach in the World Cup as we did in the Euros," Sigurdsson noted, as quoted by the Telegraph.
The player also revealed the secret of the World Cup's smallest nation's success in his opinion.
“The core of the group has been playing together for 10-12 years, some of us since the U17s, so a lot of us are like best friends. It is a bit different from other national teams," Sigurdsson pointed out.
On June 16, Iceland will will take on two-time champions Argentina with its squad's legendary forward Lionel Messi. Iceland have been drawn in Group D along with Argentina, Croatia and Nigeria.
The 2018 FIFA World Cup kicked off on Thursday and will continue through July 15, with a total of 64 matches set to be played at 12 stadiums across 11 Russian cities.
