Iceland unfazed by big stage debut v Portugal

“We’ve got good players who can score goals and create goals but I think our great strength is how good we are defensively and how hard we work for each other”, Sigurdsson said in a TV documentary about the Iceland team’s recent success.

They are scheduled to kick-off their opening group stage game against Iceland on Wednesday.

Portugal, ranked eighth in the world, will be firm favourites to qualify from a Group F containing three nations that have not been regulars at major tournaments.

Austria were unbeaten in the qualifying stages and easily won their group.

Italy finished atop their Euro qualifying group with a 7-3-0 record, and posted a pair of clean sheet wins over Scotland and Finland in pre-tournament friendlies, but has failed to beat a top-tier opponent since knocking off the Netherlands 2-0 in a friendly nearly two years ago.

In qualifying, the Portuguese were comfortable winners of Group I, which also contained Denmark, Serbia, Armenia, and Albania. We have a mix of young and older players. The former Manchester United man had a few injuries towards the end of the season and with his physical prowess on the decline, Ronaldo knows he can not pass up another opportunity to win a major title for his country.

Quaresma scored twice and set up two more goals in his national team’s 7-0 demolition of Estonia last week, Portugal’s final warm-up game for the tournament in France.

It will be the first time that the two nations have faced each other at a major worldwide tournament and the Portugal pair will take to the pitch knowing that the opposition coach has their number. In reality this Portugal side is not at all at par with their previous Euro squads, but definitely much better than World Cup 2014 team. But I think they will dominate possession.

Their home form in the qualifiers was outstanding, Iceland recording 2-1, 3-0 and 2-0 wins over the Czech Republic, Turkey and the Netherlands respectively.

Iceland’s coaches Lars Lagerback (2nd L) and Heimir Hallgrimsson (4th L) during training.

All-time leading scorer Eidur Gudjohnsen is also the part of the squad at 37-years-old, while Football League fans will also recognise Johann Berg Gudmundsson from Charlton Athletic.

Sigurdsson added: “We are very excited, we have waited for a long time for the European Championship to start.We are proud to be making history but our preparations have been largely identical to those we had in the qualifying campaign”. As the second best third-placed finishers in the nine qualifying groups, they went through to an additional play-off round. Portugal are by far the likeliest team to score first and Ronaldo is by far the likeliest to do so. Austria should be just that little bit too good for them in most areas, another of which is in the fitness stakes, with Austria having a side packed with Bundsliga-based players used to the fast pace of Germany’s top league.