Our prediction for this Nations League match:
Iceland kickstart their UEFA Nations League campaign with a home game against Montenegro. Iceland did well to beat star-studded England in a June friendly, but Netherlands proved to be a big catch for them at De Kuip. A man to watch in the home team will be talented midfielder Hakon Haraldsson, who has established himself as one of the best Lille players. Gent attacker Andri Gudjohnsen made the cut as well.
The visitors, on the other hand, suffered a 3-1 loss to Georgia in their last warm-up game. Atletico Madrid defender Stefan Savic and Stevan Jovetic are the most notable players in the away team. Anyhow, we are tempted to put our money on Iceland as Montenegro are not regarded as good travellers. When the two national teams met in a friendly back in 2021 Montenegro defeated Iceland 2-1, meaning that the hosts are hungry for revenge.
Highlighted Team (Iceland):
Iceland had little to no success during the first 60 years of entering the FIFA competitions, failing to qualify to a single major tournament in that period, but the team then went on to make tremendous progress at the start of the 21st century.
The Nordic side narrowly missed out on a place at the 2014 World Cup, losing in the play-off to Croatia, but they then enjoyed a thoroughly impressive qualifying campaign to reach the Euro 2016, taking 20 points from 10 matches to leave Turkey and Netherlands trailing in their wake.
As a result, the generation featuring players like Gylfi Sigurdsson, Aron Gunnarsson, Kolbeinn Sigthorsson and Emil Hallfredsson will go down as one of the most successful in the national team history and it could be quite some time before another team repeat their success. Even if he was only used as a bit-part player during the Euro 2016 qualifiers, Eidur Gudjohnsen has got to be mentioned as the first Icelandic footballer to have played for top European sides.