Iceland review - 2014, Page 47

ICELAND REVIEW 45
Baugavöllur football (soccer) field, in
Jökulsárhlíð, east iceland.
Here, the young and older prac-
tice the ‘beautiful game’ without thinking
about the fact that iceland is now number
47 on the July 2014 FiFa World ranking
list in football—up five places from the
June list and up 84 places since the Swede
lars lagerbäck took over as coach of the
icelandic men’s national football team two
years ago.
Denmark is the highest-ranking nordic
nation, number 26, three places higher than
Sweden. iceland is six places above norway,
and eight places above Finland.
as expected, the newly-crowned World
Cup winners, Germany, are on top of the
FiFa list, for the first time in 20 years.
argentina is number two and Holland is in
third place.
on the FiFa Women’s World ranking,
iceland is number 17, between Spain and
the Korean republic. only Finland is
ranked lower among the nordic nations.
From reykjavík it takes only a little more
than nine hours to drive north on route 1
to play a game at Baugavöllur ‘stadium.’ *
BauGavöllur
stadium
Iceland has jumped 84
spots on the FIFA World
Ranking list in two years.
By PÁll StefÁnSSon