The Icelandic commentary on #ISL‘s winning goal is incredible ?pic.twitter.com/4VWPIj5wCw
— Telegraph Football (@TeleFootball) June 22, 2016
We’re right in the middle of the Euro 2016, the tournament to decide the best national team in all of Europe. This is, after the World Cup, the biggest international tournament in soccer. Sure, it’s huge because it crowns the top team on the top footballing continent on Earth, but it’s also huge because even the most normal moments mean everything for the smaller countries who aren’t used to being on this stage.
Take, for instance, Iceland. Euro 2016 is the first major tournament for which Iceland has ever qualified. No past European Championships, no World Cups, nothing. So Iceland made this a huge deal: approximately 7.5 percent of the country’s population traveled to France to watch their national team play.
On Wednesday, Iceland made history again when it made it out of the group stage of the tournament and advanced to the knockout round. They came in second in their group after a 2-1 win over Austria thanks to this goal in injury time by Arnór Ingvi Traustason. It’s nothing wild – goals scored on the counter attack are hardly unusual – but this meant everything to Iceland, which is part of what makes tournaments like this so cool.
If you need any proof that this was a really, really big deal, just listen to the announcer on the call completely lose his mind. That gets thrown around a lot for announcers, but this dude takes it to a new level. He’s not even saying words, he’s just screaming as loud as he can because he is so full of joy and the only way to get that out is to scream so loud that he risks straining his vocal chords. His voice keeps cracking while Iceland’s players and fans are jumping around like crazy, mostly because they all know that they just witnessed history.
