Showing posts with label Iceland. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Iceland. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Iceland Keeps Winning, and Newly Famous Icelandic Announcer Might Not Survive The Excitement


England v Iceland 1-2 | "Hodgson Is a Fraud!" | Roy Hodgson Resigns
Iceland"s supporters are pictured ahead of the Euro 2016 group F football match between Iceland and Hungary at the Stade Velodrome in Marseille on June 18, 2016.

Photo by BORIS HORVAT/AFP/Getty Images

In what"s being hailed as a huge upset, tiny Iceland defeateda talented but chronically underperformingEnglish side to advance to the quarterfinals of the 2016 European Championship. And the excitement might be too much for Icelandic announcer Gummi Ben.

This impassioned squealing, according to Twitter user Gissur Simonarson CN,translates to:

This is done! This is done! We are never going home! Did you see that?! Did you see that?! Amazing! I cant believe it! This is a dream. Never wake me up from this amazing dream!Live the way you want England. Iceland is going to play France on Sunday. France Iceland! You can go home! You can go out of Europe! You can go wherever the h**l you want! England 1, Iceland 2 is the closing score here in Nice! And the fairytale continues!

While the odds, at 13/2, weren"t as steep as the the odds Peru faced (15/2) in its upset over Brazil in the Copa America Centenario earlier this month, English melodramacombined with some very real numerical disadvantages for Icelandearned this win comparisons to Leicester City"s shocking Championship run in the Premier League, in which they overcame 5,000-to-1 odds to win the title.The global media covered Leicester"s surreal rise with the appropriate rhapsody, and deemed the teams championship win the greatest underdog story of all time. So how does Iceland"s win stack up?

Injured Belgian international, Manchester City star, and soccer analyst Vincent Kompany called the win bigger than Leicester.

That"s a point that"s up for debate, but here are a few facts that support Iceland"s case.

Besides Tahiti, who qualified for the 2013 Confederation"s Cup, Iceland is the smallest country ever to qualify for a major soccer tournament, as Eric Betts wrote in Slate. Iceland"s manager, Heimir Hallgrimsson, still occasionally works as a dentistat his practice. Most importantly, not only does the population of the entire country of Iceland roughly equal that of Leicester City, but Iceland cant buy players from other countries to represent them as club teams can. They only have so many men to choose from. But, boy, did those men perform.

Englands Wayne Rooney converted a penalty shot just four minutes into the game to give the favorites the lead, but less than two minutes later, Ragnar Sigurdsson slid a shot past England keeper Joe Hart to equalize. Fifteen minutes later, Kolbeinn Sigthorsson rocketed a shot to the lower right hand corner that Hart got a piece of before it trickled across the line. You can watch the goals here:

Source: http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_spot/2016/06/27/iceland_just_beat_england_to_advance_to_the_quarterfinals_of_the_european.html

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Monday, June 27, 2016

Icelandic Announcer After England Loss: "You Can Leave Europe! You Can Go Wherever The h**l You Want!"


England vs Iceland 1-2 All Goals & Extended Highlights HD

NICE, France (CBSNewYork/AP) Icelands soccer announcer has gone viral again.

After losing his mind when Iceland scored a last-second goal against Austria to move on from the group stage, Gudmundur Benediktsson stepped up his game after Iceland stunned England 2-1 to move on to the European Championships quarterfinals.

You can leave Europe! You can go wherever the h**l you want! he said about England, referencing the United Kingdom voting to leave the European Union.

Obviously, Benediktsson became a hit on social media after the call.

As for England, the defeat meant more humiliation on the big stage and surely another inquest into why a team of supposedly talented players failed again.

David Cameron stepped down as British Prime Minister after the result of last weeks referendum that unsettled the country and the whole of Europe. England coach Roy Hodgson did the same after overseeing yet another humiliating campaign in a major tournament.

Now is the time for someone else to oversee the progress of this young, hungry and extremely talented group of players, Hodgson said. They have been fantastic.

For English player and current BBC Sports analyst Gary Lineker called it the worst defeat in our history.

England beaten by a country with more volcanoes than professional footballers. Well played Iceland, Lineker tweeted.

The English have still never won a knockout-stage game abroad in the European Championship in eight attempts and havent won a match beyond the group stage of a major tournament since 2006.

This defeat will probably go down as Englands biggest humiliation since losing 1-0 to the United States in 1950 World Cup.

Iceland will face France in the quarterfinals on Sunday.

(TM and Copyright 2016 CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS RADIO and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2016 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

Source: http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2016/06/27/iceland-announcer-england/

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Tuesday, June 14, 2016

Pirates top polls once again in Iceland


Iceland Shock Portugal!

Birgitta Jnsdttirr, captain of Iceland"s Pirate Party Iceland Monitor/ Eggert Jhannesson

The Pirate Party in Iceland is back at the top of the polls as the largest political party in Iceland.

A new poll conducted by the Social Science Research Institute of the University of Iceland shows that the Pirate Party has a following of 29.9 % going up by 1.6 % since the last poll. The second largest party in Iceland is the Independence Party with 22.7 % which means that it has gone down by 5.5 percent since May.

The party which runs on a platform of direct democracy, freedom of information and civil and political rights has been topping opinion polls for over a year, but went down recently to second place to the centre-right Independence Party.

The next elections in Iceland will take place this autumn following political uproar over the connections of PM Sigmundur Dav Gunnlaugsson to the Panama Papers. Gunnlaugsson stepped down and has been replaced by a new Prime Minister, Sigurur Ingi Jhannsson.

Source: http://icelandmonitor.mbl.is/news/politics_and_society/2016/06/14/pirates_top_polls_once_again_in_iceland/

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