Where Football Explains the World Tackles

by Alex Bellos

  In fact, the entire population of Iceland is equivalent to only four full Wembley stadiums!

  How on earth do you get a team good enough to qualify for the World Cup from such a small pool of talent? Our mate Kristján Jónsson, a football writer based in Reykjavik, says it’s down to several reasons:

  Icelanders are descended from the Vikings and come from generations of fisherman and farmers. Growing up doing physical work in harsh weather conditions encourages a tough attitude to life.

  The Iceland players have all played alongside each other since they were young, so they know each other very well. That team spirit is a big advantage.

  Icelanders understand the value of teamwork. In a small community no one likes a show-off! “You can’t act like you’re better than anyone else,” says Kristján.

  The small size of the island means community is strong. Everyone knows each other. The team celebrate with the fans because they are fans too.

  THE ICE MEN COMETH … MEET THE TEAM

  Here is the inside scoop on the team that brought Iceland to the 2018 World Cup: it’s a story of kicks, cameras, teeth and tenacity.

  THE FREE KICK EXPERT

  Gylfi Sigurdsson is Iceland’s most famous player. He has played in the Premier League for Tottenham Hotspur, Swansea and Everton, and is known as one of the best free kick takers in the world. He has won Icelandic Player of the Year for six years in a row. Sigurdsson’s older brother Olafur helped improve his technique from the age of five, and his dad once rented a warehouse in the winter so the pair always had somewhere to play. Practice really does make perfect!

  THE FILM-MAKER

  Playing football in Iceland is only a part-time job, which means that some players need another job to earn money when they are not on the pitch. Goalkeeper Hannes Thor Halldorsson makes films: he made his first when he was twelve years old. Since then, he has directed Iceland’s music video for the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest (it was about an elf and Iceland finished twentieth) and a video for Iceland’s national airline, which starred his teammates – and himself! He also worked on a horror film that he described as a “supernatural ghost thriller that takes place in an isolated part of Iceland”. Spooky!

  THE DENTIST

  Heimir Hallgrimsson combined his role as Iceland national team coach at the 2018 World Cup with his other job as a professional dentist in his hometown of Heimaey. Seeing his patients allowed him to take his mind off football for a while. And calming his patients’ nerves before they go into his dentist chair helped him practise telling the players not to be nervous before games. “As a dentist, you have to treat a patient who might be scared,” he said. “Probably it’s the same with players, you speak to them in different ways too…” And if he loses his coaching job, he knows what he will do next. Open wide and say “Aaah!”

  THE FANS

  Heimir Hallgrimsson is unique in world football for another reason. Many teams call their fans the twelfth man, but the relationship between Iceland fans and their team is closer than most. When he was assistant coach, Hallgrimsson used to meet fans before matches to explain the line-up and tactics. “It’s something that makes us different and I really believe it has strengthened the connection between the supporters and the team,” Hallgrimsson explained. He did the same even when he was head coach. “I see going to the pub with the fans and then meeting the team at the stadium as my pre-match routine now.” Imagine Pep Guardiola or José Mourinho doing the same!

  THUNDERING SUCCESS

  This connection remains strong after matches, when Iceland players approach the fans and perform a ritual “Thunderclap”. The players raise their arms out wide and, starting slowly, do a single clap over their heads. As their hands connect, they shout, “Huuh!” The fans copy them. Gradually, the speed and volume of the clapping and chanting increases and rises to a thunderous crescendo. Give those fans a big hand!

  Some people thought the chant went back to ancient times when the inhabitants of Iceland were Vikings, but the truth is not quite so exciting. Twenty-two fans of one Icelandic club Stjarnan went to watch their team play Scottish side Motherwell in a 2014 European game. Motherwell fans performed a version of the Thunderclap that the Stjarnan fans took home with them. The Iceland team’s fans liked it so much that they adopted it with their own players. The volume of the clap and bond it helps create between fans and players is the envy of teams worldwide.

  ICE QUEENS

  Icelanders believe that women and men should be given the same opportunities in life. At Football School, we agree! Iceland recently came first in a survey ranking gender equality across the world. So it’s no surprise that Iceland’s women’s team is also incredibly successful. They reached the European championship quarter-finals in 1994 and 2013 and, in 2017, became the first team to beat Germany in a World Cup qualifying match for nineteen years.

  THE NAME GAME

  Icelanders don’t have family names. Instead men usually use the names of their fathers appended with -son, meaning son, and women use the names of their fathers, appended with -dóttir, meaning daughter. For example, Gylfi Sigurdsson is so called because he is the son of Sigurd. The all-time leading scorer for the Iceland women’s team, Margrét Lára Vidarsdóttir, is so called because she is the daughter of Vidar. Some people use their mother’s names, like former Icelandic forward Heidar Helguson, son of Helga. Alex and Ben’s Icelandic names would be Alex Davidsson (father’s name) and Ben Andreuson (mother’s name). What’s yours?

  ELF AND SAFETY

  The majority of people in Iceland believe that the country is also home to an invisible tribe of elves called Huldufólk, meaning the hidden people. Construction work on a road in Reykjavik was stopped when campaigners warned it would disrupt elves living in a 12-foot rock which believers call the Elf Chapel. ″You can’t live in this landscape and not believe in a force greater than you,″ said Adalheidur Gudmundsdottir, a Professor of Folklore at the University of Iceland.

  GEOGRAPHY QUIZ

  1. What does Iceland’s capital city Reykjavik translate to in the local language?

  a) Land of Puffins

  b) Home to Volcanoes

  c) Smoky Bay

  d) Bring extra socks

  2. Which of the following letters are not in the Icelandic alphabet?

  a) O, M, G

  b) C, Q, W

  c) G, O, L

  d) X, Y, Z

  3. Which of the following is the only one you can find in Iceland:

  a) Motorways

  b) McDonald’s restaurants

  c) Mosquitoes

  d) Ice cream

  4. What was special about Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, who served as Iceland’s President from 1980–96?

  a) Her previous job was coach of the Iceland women’s football team.

  b) She was the world’s first elected female president.

  c) She played in goal for Iceland while serving as president.

  d) She was a famous pop star.

  5. Iceland forward Eidur Gudjohnsen won two Premier League titles with Chelsea and the Champions League with Barcelona. Why was his Iceland debut, aged 17, a family occasion?

  a) His uncle was Iceland coach at the time.

  b) He came on as a substitute and replaced his dad.

  c) His brother was playing for the opposition.

  d) His grandfather was in goal.

  This lesson will be more exciting than watching paint dry.

  Actually, this lesson is going to be about watching paint dry!

  Paint is a colourful subject. It is a fascinating and important material, and the world depends on it. Look around you and you will see paint: in your room on the walls, the door, the ceiling and the window frames; outside on cars, signs, roads, buildings, planes, trains, ships and more.

  When you are watching a game of football, you are also watching paint: the bright white lines that mark the boundary of the pitch, the boxes and the centre circle.

  In this lesson, we will fin
d out about what goes into paint, why it is like cake (yes, you read that right) and how it is applied on the grass of a pitch.

  Let’s paint the town red! No, we mean the grass white!

  THE WHITE STUFF

  In football’s distant past, pitches were often marked out using … weedkiller!

  Weedkiller left ugly yellow lines of dead grass. Horrible! Grounds teams also used paint made from a white powder called lime, but lime sometimes burnt players’ skin.

  These nasty substances aren’t used any more. Pitches are now marked using brilliant white paint that allows the grass to live and players to avoid rashes. A-grazing!

  There have been many other advances in paint technology since the bad old grass-murdering and skin-burning days, but before we get there, put on your chefs’ hats and aprons, because we are going into the kitchen.

  GREAT CHEMISTRY

  The study of how substances interact with each other is called chemistry. But did you know that all baking is chemistry? When we bake a cake, the different ingredients we put in the mixing bowl interact with each other to eventually become cake.

  At Football School, we love eating cake. (Especially Ben!) We also love cake because it explains to us how paint works. Yes, paint is just like cake. We don’t mean that you can eat paint or stick candles in it. Warning! Please do not eat paint!

  But let’s look at how the chemistry of paint is just like the chemistry of cake. On your marks. Get Set. Bake!

  MAGIC SPONGE CAKE

  To make a cake you must assemble various ingredients, mix them together, and then bake the mix in the oven. When it comes out, the mix has turned into a solid cake. It tastes and smells delicious. Here’s Ben’s favourite recipe for cake:

  As the mixture turns into cake, each of the ingredients plays a role. The eggs, flour, butter and sugar make the sponge. The nuts, raisins and dates give the cake flavour. The carrot fills out the cake and gives it texture.

  The most important part of the cake is the sponge, since the sponge binds everything together. If there was no sponge, there would be no cake. Once the mixture is put in the oven, the heat causes chemical changes to take place and the gooey mess solidifies into the finished cake. Yum!

  PLAYED A BINDER

  Now let’s think about how paint works. Fresh paint comes in tins. You open the tin, dip a brush in it, brush the paint on a surface and then wait for it to dry. The process is the same as baking a cake, but this time the main ingredients are not food but chemicals we call binder, pigment and filler:

  The chemical ingredients do different things. The binder is a transparent substance that is only there to bind all the other ingredients together. (It’s like the sponge in the cake.)

  The pigment is the substance in the paint that provides the colour. (Just like the nuts and raisins add flavour.)

  The filler fills out the paint and may change the texture. (Just like the carrot.)

  Paint starts off as a liquid and undergoes a chemical change, ending up as a solid layer of colour. The process of paint drying is so similar to the process of cake baking that chemists consider “drying” a type of baking that happens at room temperature. Those crazy chemists!

  FANS’ FAVOURITE FANCIES

  ALL IN THE MIX

  By tweaking a cake’s ingredients, you can change its characteristics, for example, making it fluffier, denser or more moist. Likewise, by tweaking the three ingredients of paint, you can change its characteristics. Paint is used for many things and each of them has different requirements. Look at these examples:

  THIS LITTLE PIGMENT

  When you watch a football match, you may or may not be watching players who come from far away countries. But you will definitely be watching paint that does – most probably Australia, South Africa, Canada or Mozambique.

  This is because the white pigment used in white paint is the chemical titanium dioxide, which you get from ilmenite, a substance found in sand and rock. The biggest sources of ilmenite in the world are Australia, South Africa, Canada and Mozambique. Rock on!

  PITCH PERFECT

  When a film star gets ready for a photo shoot, they will get their hair and make-up done. The same thing happens when a professional football pitch gets ready for a game. But for hair, read grass, and for make-up, read paint. The idea in both cases is to look as attractive as possible.

  At about 8am on a match day, the grounds team will give the pitch a trim by mowing it. This takes a couple of hours. Then it’s time to prepare it for painting. The first step is to “string out” the pitch, meaning that pegs are placed at the ends of the lines that will be painted, and the string pulled taut along the lines. The string acts as a reference so that when the lines are painted, they go in a straight line.

  Small and amateur clubs tend to use painting machines that look like a golf trolley with three wheels. Paint pours onto the middle wheel, which marks the line on the grass as the wheel rolls along. Since the wheel rolls the grass stems flat, only one side of the stem is painted, so the line has to be repainted in the other direction too. Then the line is wheelie-good!

  Top clubs now use machines with spray paint: the paint is blown out of a tiny nozzle as a fine mist. This method does not flatten the stems and the paint gets on both sides in one spray, meaning that you only need to paint the line once. The paint mist also means that only a very thin layer of paint gets on the grass. In fact, it is possible to use only 1 litre of paint to mark up an entire pitch, although clubs will use around 10 litres so the white is as bright as possible.

  Once the pitch is painted – the whole process, including stringing out, takes about an hour and a half – it is left to dry. Spray paint dries in about 20 minutes, but wheeled-out paint needs longer. Once the paint is dry, the string is removed, so it doesn’t trip up the players when they come on the pitch. No one wants to be tackled by a piece of string! Once dry, the pitch is watered and left for a couple of hours before the players warm up.

  RAIN, RAIN GO AWAY

  The biggest enemy of pitch paint is the rain! If it’s bucketing down, you get problems. Paint applied on the wet grass will mix with the water and become thinner, so the white will be less bright. Watery paint won’t stick to the stems, so it will run off into the soil. Rain also means the paint doesn’t dry as quickly and, in some cases, it will rub off onto the players. One groundsman we spoke to said that once his lines didn’t dry in time and when the goalkeeper dived, he ended up with white shirt and white hair. “He aged forty years in ninety minutes!” he said. The grounds team are always checking the weather forecast and hoping match days are dry. They may even paint the lines the night before if it means dodging a shower.

  GOLD TRAFFORD

  Football clubs are always blaming bad results on referees. But top Chinese team Guangzhou R&F once blamed the paint. Guangzhou play in blue and their stadium used to be blue. But after a run of bad results, the club decided to repaint the entire stadium gold. And it seemed to work. When it was blue, they had only one home win in four months, but when the stadium was gold, they then won their next five games on the trot. Goooaaald!

  CHEMISTRY QUIZ

  1. What is the name of the substance that gives paint colour?

  a) Piglet

  b) Pigtail

  c) Pigeon

  d) Pigment

  2. What is the total length of the white lines that must be painted around the Wembley pitch, which is 105m long and 69m wide?

  a) 174m

  b) 243m

  c) 348m

  d) 420m

  3. What is a common filler for paint?

  a) Socks

  b) Chalk

  c) Cheese

  d) Carrot

  4. What paint nightmare happened during a game in 2016 between MLS rivals Montreal Impact and Toronto?

  a) The match was delayed by 30 minutes as the grounds team repainted the penalty box lines.

  b) It started to rain hard, wiping off the paint marks and leaving the linesmen unable to t
ell if a ball was in or out.

  c) The paint hadn’t dried in time and, by the end of the game, footprints could be seen all over the pitch.

  d) The club ran out of white paint halfway through painting, so the penalty boxes were painted in red.

  5. Titanium dioxide is a chemical used in white paint that is made up of atoms of titanium and which other substance?

  a) Hydrogen

  b) Oxygen

  c) Oxtail

  d) Oxlade-Chamberlain

  People are always changing their clothes.

  That’s to say, people are always changing their minds about clothes. Alex used to love wearing flip-flops, but now he always wears trainers. Ben used to love his stripy pyjamas, but now he prefers the ones with polka dots. Why do we change our minds about what we wear? Surely as long as our clothes keep us warm and are comfortable, it shouldn’t matter how they look.

  But we’ve all had a moment where we’ve wanted a piece of clothing that is new and different to what’s in our wardrobes. In this lesson, we’re going to learn about fashion and football kits. We’ll admire some classic shirt designs and snigger at some hideous ones.

  Looking good!