'We could see they were frightened’: recalling Iceland’s win over England

27-Jun-2020 09:56:47 | Guardian

In a new book about the Icelandic football miracle, the right-back Birkir Mar Sævarsson talks about facing Portugal and England at Euro 2016

Birkir Mar Sævarsson was a member of the Iceland squad who qualified for the country’s first major tournament, Euro 2016. Four years on from the victory over England in Nice, he talks about the experience of playing in the tournament.

I didn’t feel nerves. There’s always a butterfly in the stomach but I was just looking forward to it. We were making history, so what’s the point in being nervous? You have to remember that it’s football. It’s the thing we love, and we were going to do it against the best teams in Europe, in a tournament, for the first time in Iceland’s history. That’s something to enjoy, not get nervous about.