Football
Associated Press 8y

Leicester tell Iceland: Forget about our Premier League win at Euro 2016

A member of Leicester City's backroom staff has told Iceland's national team ahead of their Euro 2016 quarterfinal against France on Sunday to "forget about us."

Leicester won the Premier League title last season against all the odds -- one of the most improbable triumphs in football history.

Meanwhile, Iceland, who have a population of just 330,000 -- like Leicester -- have made it to the last eight at Euro 2016 in their first major tournament.

"Don't start dreaming, because as soon as you do that, you are thinking about the consequences of the result," Leicester performance psychologist Ken Way told the Associated Press. "If you get carried away with, 'we could reach the semifinals, we could reach the final, we could be champions,' you take some of the power and focus away. They should forget Leicester."

Iceland are the smallest nation to ever contest a major tournament and advanced from their group above Portugal before then stunning England to reach the quarterfinals.

The next challenge is even tougher with a game against hosts France at the Stade de France coming up, with either Germany or Italy awaiting in the semifinals should they manage to progress.

Though Way is urging Iceland to put aside any comparisons with Leicester, he can see the parallels.

"You can see their Viking attitude," Way said. "[Leicester captain] Wes Morgan spoke last year about being a band of brothers who would die for one another on the pitch -- it is very definitely a team spirit like us."

That was evident when Iceland came from behind to beat England 2-1 in Nice on Monday.

England seemed fixated on the result and the magnitude of the consequences, whereas Iceland seemed devoid of such pressure.

"It looked like they [Iceland] were having fun, the whole team," Way said. "They had a much more kind of Leicester kind of view of things: let's go out and attack -- very much on the fight side of the human dimension."

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