England vs Iceland: Gylfi Sigurdsson ready for dream clash with England

Berg Gudmundsson, Gylfi Sigurdsson, Aron Gunnarsson and Hannes Thor Halldorsson celebrate after Iceland qualify for the knockout stages
KENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images
Simon Peach27 June 2016

Gylfi Sigurdsson is living out his childhood dreams and cannot wait for Iceland's historic clash with England.

Monday pits the tiny Nordic island of just 330,000 inhabitants against the country that gave birth to football with a place in the Euro 2016 quarter-finals up for grabs.

England approach the match as overwhelming favourites but Iceland have regularly shocked the continent's establishment and finished above Portugal in Group F.

Sigurdsson still smiles when recalling the last-gasp win against Austria and hopes for more fond memories in Nice on Monday.

"Physically I feel really good," the Swansea midfielder said following Wednesday's hard-fought match. "We had a few days to recover, which was really important.

"It was a fantastic game. I've dreamt about this since I was a kid, to play against England and to do it in the final 16.

"I think all the lads will be ready to play tomorrow. We're full of excitement, the game is near and hopefully we will do well tomorrow."

"We're looking forward to a very exciting game, one that I hope we will enjoy."

It will be a momentous occasion at the Stade de Nice, where just 10 per cent of the crowd are expected to be cheering on Iceland.

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Sigurdsson criticised Uefa for the ticket distribution system that prevented more fans attending the game on the French Riviera.

"It's fantastic," he said. "We would of course loved to have more tickets for the Icelandic people.

"Uefa have to find another solution how they distribute the tickets for the knockout games.

"It would have been nice to have 10,000-15,000 people here. But that's just the way it is.

"I am sure the people at the game will be loud and hopefully we can make them proud."

Uefa responded to that criticism about a lack of tickets in a statement later on Sunday.

"During the ticket sales period before the tournament started, a fixed allocation of 4,000 tickets was made available to each association for every potential knockout round match," a spokesperson said.

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"These tickets have been taken by supporters of the national associations through so-called conditional tickets, i.e. follow-my-team or specific knockout round match tickets (e.g. if this team qualifies for the round of 16, or quarter-final, etc.).

"Tickets which have not been used by an association for one of their knockout round matches will be made available to general public via EURO2016.com on a first-come first-served basis once the fixtures are confirmed."

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