The Space Nation Community And The World Cup

How can a nation of 330.000 people have a national team at the World Cup? Not just a single player, but an entire football team? A team good enough to make a tie with Argentina!

It shouldn?t be possible. A team consisting of a film maker, a fisherman, a gas pump expeditor, and lead by a DENTIST! And not even Messi could get the ball through. In a penalty!

The secret is in the sauce my mother used to say! (Ok, not true. My mother?s cooking was crap, but you know the saying) And the secret to the Icelandic success lies not in the players, but the team. What glues them together? They are well organized. They are optimistic. They fear nothing. And most importantly, they believe that if it has never been done before, it?s their opportunity to become the first.

In the first game they played against the notorious Argentinian team. And Argentina got a penalty. Facing Messi, goalie Hannes Halldorsson, a trained film maker and part time footballer, had the difficult task of defending the goal against the man who is said to be the best footballer to have ever walked the face of Earth. A man who has never failed to score from a penalty at a big competition. He said to himself: ?Hannes, this is Messi. No one has stopped the ball from this man. So I guess I?ll have to be the first to do so.? And so he did. It was a tie.

Faith is important, and together with good training, preparation, and fantastic team work, it can get you amazingly far. Team work within the team isn?t the only factor at play here though. There is the mysterious twelfth man. Who?s he?

You might have heard him. He?s loud. He claps. And he says H?h! A very strong, loud and scary H?h. The twelfth is the name of the supporters that follow the team everywhere it goes and who lead the now infamous Viking clap of the Icelandic supporters. They are not just football hooligans that chase the team. That are an important part of it. Rumor has it that a couple of hours before each game, the coach of the Icelandic national team meets the twelfth at a bar and shares the upcoming game strategy with them. In full detail – and full confidentiality. And it has never ever leaked. And the reason is simple. They are part of the team. And they support it all the way. When you have a few thousand Icelanders in a stadium that could accommodate one third of the nation, against tens of thousands of the opponents supporters, you will probably still hear the Icelanders Viking scream drowning the noise of the rest. And that reassures the team on the field that they too can drown the much larger team they are facing. That they can overcome. That people have faith in them so they have faith in themselves.

The impossible is rarely achieved by a single person. No one really has superpowers. It isn?t until you have the right team behind you. It doesn?t matter if you are talking about the success of the greatest invention of your time, or a journey to the moon. Tesla was defeated by Edison, not because Edison had a better invention, but because Edison had the right team working with him that had the skills needed for marketing, fundraising and negotiating. Apollo 13 made it back not because of the three on board, but because of the tireless work of a dedicated support team in Houston. And we will build a colony on the Moon and explore the surface of Mars on foot the exact same way. By a strong team in the field, and an even stronger support team back at the base. An entire nation of supporters. The Space Nation.