Lets take some notes 

"It doesn't matter how small you are if you all stick together"

So fuck off Lowy

A country which has a smaller population than Canberra has its own professional football league AND qualifies for the World Cup. Canberra can't even have one team though because we're too small :)

Helps when everyone is unified behind one dream. not spread across 5 different sports 

#Unique

Take note New Zealand?.

Something that video overlooks is that at the same time that those pitches were being built, the government instituted a program that iirc was intended for kids to "get high on life" (stupid slogan I know). They did it at a time when alcohol and substance use was very high amongst teenagers and used sports as a replacement for substance use. Every kid participates in sport after school pretty much every day. They gave parents a vouchers for each kid to pay for extra curricular activities (sports and arts), brought in a 9pm curfew for kids and had parenting programs at schools. Kids who play football are training 4-5 nights a week after school.

Obviously the specific football factors in the video contributed (especially trained coaches) but you can't discount the fact that it happened within a larger context where sport is seen as nearly as integral a part of childhood as school. 

It's probably because they've all got 6 toes. When the DNA pool is so tight, if you find one good player you're likely to find a dozen close by. 
Don't worry about Canberra, Tasmania is the go.

Iceland at one stage, and maybe still does, had by far the highest number of chess grand masters per head of population. 

Great system. Was just thinking the other day that they should do something similar here. All junior sport should be tied to the school system and become mandatory - doesn't matter what sport the kids play so long as its something.

Yeah, I think it's a great idea and there's about 20 years of research to back it up, but instituting it in larger areas has it's problems. Iceland is essentially a city, and not a very big one, so bringing in a program with law changes to go with it is a pretty easy task, since the communities are homogeneous in their needs. In a country our size it would need to be tailored to the different needs, resources, sizes and interests of 1000s of communities. Not to mention our population would be less accepting of what they would see as being told how to raise their kids.

It would also take a large investment for something that we can't say will work here. Politicians would rather spend the same amount of money on anti-drug ads and policing because it's an easier sell to say "kids are using drugs, so we'll spend money telling them not to and lock them up if they do" then saying "kids are using drugs, so we'll....get them to play sport?". The fact that the science backs it up doesn't really leave an impression on most people.

It's weird, we call ourselves a sporting nation but I just can't see this getting off the ground with the general public.

Would love to see some a league clubs go after some Iceland players.

If getting off the gear gets Iceland to the world cup then doing it here would see us win the thing so many times it'd be renamed the Australia Cup

It cant happen in Australia. We have a much bigger population, we have more open space and a lot more resources to throw at football than Iceland. Plus we have too many sports which take away participants from football even though we are the biggest participating sport in the country. To all those who say it can't be done, I say take your head out of the sand. Can't be done......................yeah right. 

#special

I can't tell where you're being sarcastic and where you stop being sarcastic. 

It is straight up crazy that they have players who actually play in the EPL, Bundesliga, Seria A, Ligue 1, Russian Premier League, Turkish Super Lig, Eredevise and Belguims top flight. They have more players in Europes top 5 than we do and would probably dominate a combined squad between both teams. To beat Turkey away who have a population of 80 million 3 - 0 and football as a first sport is beyond crazy. They have maybe 30 players to choose from I think we could learn a lot from them in terms of managing with a smaller talent pool and operating more like a club side. 

My opinion for awhile has been that Australian Football needs to stop looking at itself as a sport in a country of 24.5million and more of a country of 5-8million (Norway, Denmark, Austria, Switzerland - yes I understand denser population over less area)

Stop using the argument of a crowded sporting market and focus on the population that are interested in football.

This.

-PB

For mine, the investment in coaching is the massive take out from Iceland. Comparatively (in governmental terms) it's cheap and is something that governments would get behind. Just slot it in as a free PD course for PE teachers as well as anyone who is associated with a club. At the moment I think it's around 4-5000 to get your equivalent to a UEFA B in Australia, but if you do it bulk and engage with the various education departments for free venues that could be reduced to the point where it's essentially negligible for governments to provide this for free and provides them with a feel-good announcable. Larger numbers would also mean it'd be easier to provide courses that weren't so inconvenient (like weekend or after work courses for those who can't get a full week off).

When you start the program you then make it a requirement for all NPL senior coaching staff to have their B, next year u20s and so on until the academy systems are completely covered. You'd also have random pockets of kids being taught better skills by particularly engaged PE teachers here and there.

It's fucking doable.

Irony or What?

Could be a positive to try and reduce ice troubles in Australia, however recent studies show sport doesn't have the same positive impact on alcohol and marijuana use. The alcohol aspect I get as most clubs and parents associate sport with drinking ... so this is a bit of a cultural thing where we believe alcohol is "ok" (irrespective of the health and social costs of it).

I know our local council provides funds for low income families to put their kids through sports (I am pretty sure KidSports is a WA wide program, perhaps sponsored by Lotterywest if memory serves me right).

I think tying sports with schools is a good idea too. Most schools have plenty of open space that is under utilised outside of school hours (inc. school holidays). In a time when our cities are consolidating and green space is becoming a premium there is a greater need for school ovals / playgrounds to become public use areas (outside of school hours).

*Semi-professional

Meanwhile in Australia:
- Our juniors pay over 2k a year to play
- Our coaches need to pay out of their own pocket to get qualified
- We no longer have a single full time youth development program (AIS RIP)
- Young players can't get a run in Senior football games for one of our nine national club teams

True, but I thought Ice Hockey was ice lands first sport of choice. So the argument isn't entirely true. 

The football fraternity have to get better at backing each other rather than continuously infighting. We're our own biggest enemy.

Did you just assume they're into ice hockey because the country is called Iceland lol? Anyway,  no. They consider handball their national sport, but football is by far the most popular. 

No way. Iceland only has a 4 team ice hockey league. 1 in 500 play ice hockey there - 1 in 800 coach football.

Doesn't matter what your population is, in the end of the day there is only 11 players on the Pitch. 

Uruguay has a population of under 3.7 million and they have WON 2 world cups. That is less then the population of Victoria. 

We have destroyed football between the FFA and players association both lining there pockets we have forgot about the importance of football and that is playing and developing the game. 
No AIS development 
No Academy system  
Over-paid national team players and coaches
No Promotion and Relegation 
No vision 

Full credit to Iceland they had a difficult group Croatia, Turkey and Ukraine are all solid national team just goes to show Europe deserve more spots or the qualifying system needs to be globe  because how teams like Saudi Arabia can go to the world cup but teams like Holland miss out.

Salary caps.

Iceland womens just beat Germany in Germany  2-3 in WCQ. Paper says they had 14 straight losses and hadnt scored against them in 30 yrs.