Lars responds to Ronaldo; two-thirds of the country watched the game, and we drink some delicious Ronaldo tears – these are amongst the UEFA Euro stories making Icelandic headlines today.
As the world watched Iceland’s crushing 1-1 defeat against Portugal yesterday, perhaps no one was more tuned in than Icelanders themselves, at least proportionately speaking. RÚV reports that 67% of the country watched last evening’s game – nothing to sneeze at, even if that is about 200,000 people.
Social media is also on fire right now over remarks made by the famously humble and gracious Cristiano Ronaldo, who said that Iceland’s emphasis on “defense, defense, defense” reflected a “small mentality”. Perhaps an understandable frustration, given just how many times Icelandic defense denied him, over and over. Iceland’s manager, Lars Lagerbäck, has reportedly responded with some advice of his own for Ronaldo:
“A team and its players who assume they will beat their opponents, but don’t, blame their opponents,” he told reporters. “If the Portuguese team intends to beat the Icelandic one, then they need to play better than they did yesterday. It’s that simple.”
Whether Ronaldo has taken these words to heart is unknown, but we took it upon ourselves to issue a response of our own:
A nice drink of cool, refreshing #RonaldoTears. RT to win this Reykjavík Grapevine t-shirt. #ISL #Euro2016 #PorIsl pic.twitter.com/BATrp3P9AO
— Reykjavík Grapevine (@rvkgrapevine) June 15, 2016
In non-Rolando news, Vísir reports that home water use throughout the game showed a fairly interesting pattern. Household water use dropped to a fraction of what it normally is at the start of the game, spiked back up at halftime, and then dropped even more sharply when Iceland shot their winning goal.
To learn more about the Icelandic team’s road to glory, check out John Rogers’ feature article, Football On The Edge Of The World.
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