Dear Washington Post, Our National Football Team Is Not “Cuddly”

Iceland qualifying for the 2018 World Cup has captured the world’s imagination and sports writers and international audiences have been quick to jump on the salty bandwagon.

But we can’t help but feel that our latest “ally” is being a bit condescending in its support. The Washington Post published a long review about the World Cup qualifiers with the headline “2018 World Cup field set: Iceland’s in, Italy’s out and compelling story lines abound”.

There the Post writes: “For those without natural rooting interests, there is a clear, cuddly choice for adoption.”

Cuddly? CUDDLY? We are not cuddly, we are hardcore.

Our forefathers survived regular famines, volcanic eruptions and disease. Somehow we’ve managed to survive on this barren rock in the middle of the North Atlantic for a thousand years. We are not going to the World Cup to get a participation medal, we are going there to defy the odds and conquer nations.

Washington wrong

They also mention our iconic celebration and they call it the “Volcano Clap”. As far as we know, this is a new nomenclature, as before it has been called the “Thunder Clap” or the “Viking Clap (all of these sound like mythical venereal diseases btw). Therefore, we can’t help but feel they are making up their own narrative.

So the Post, we appreciate your support, but we are not puppies, or Dustin from Stranger Things. We are terrible bankers who are unable to form a functioning government that don’t signal or know how to stand in line. And there is nothing cuddly about that.