Heimir Hallgrimsson still takes appointments in his capacity as a medical specialist, such as an awkward root-canal job or a tricky filling.
He is a dentist by qualification and a skilled one.
But the crown he is most interested in polishing these days is the one that belongs to international football’s unofficial champions of bucking the odds.
Hallgrimsson’s other job is as manager of Iceland, a position he shared with the Swede Lars Lagerback until last July, when they both guided Iceland to the quarter-finals of the European championship in France.
The big moment, in Nice, was the 2-1 victory that knocked England out of the tournament.
Portugal, who went on to lift the trophy, had been held to a draw in the group phase, and a fancied Austria beaten.
Even then Hallgrimsson, 50, was insistent.
“I was always reminding the players that the Euros was not the destination, but part of the continual journey to success,” he said.
He took sole charge ahead of the 2018 World Cup qualifying campaign in which Iceland, second in their group, host leaders Croatia on Sunday.
“They are all motivated to build on what they achieved in France,” Hallgrimsson said.
Almost a year on from what was Iceland’s first-ever match at a major tournament, he can feel reasonably content that the coup of the Euros has left a legacy beyond simply popularising the so-called “Viking Clap” – the synchronised, crescendoed bringing together of hands and voices that has been heard and seen at stadiums across sports since Icelandic fans wowed France with it.
The team have given their supporters plenty to applaud with a World Cup qualifying win against Turkey – 2-0 to the underdogs from a country with a population of less than a third of a million against the land of nearly 80 million people – a draw away at Ukraine and a comeback against Finland, who the Icelanders were trailing 2-1 when the fixture went into stoppage time. Iceland won 3-2.
What concerns Hallgrimsson is that Iceland’s success over the past 18 months risks draining the energies if not the ambition of his men.
“There has been a definite hangover from the Euros,” he said, by which he means not a post-party decadence but rather symptoms of simple fatigue, caused by the exertions of the Euros and then long seasons for the heroes of that campaign with their club teams.
“Because we got so far in France, the players did not get their usual holiday time last summer,” explained Hallgrimson after he met up with the players ahead of their most recent game, a friendly victory in March over Ireland.
“They are not used to that in the way, say, a Cristiano Ronaldo is.
“And I have noticed them picking up a few injuries.”
So have some of their club managers.
Hallgrimsson has taken more than one phone call over the season from Neil Warnock, talking to him like an angry patient in urgent need of treatment for a toothache.
Warnock’s complaint is that his midfielder, the Iceland captain Aron Gunnarsson, has been called on too heavily by his national manager, risking his fitness for Cardiff City, who play in the English Championship.
More serious has been the disrupted season of striker Kolbeinn Sigthorsson, who since scoring for his country in the 5-2 quarter-final defeat by France at Euro 2016, has managed just two club matches for Nantes, and, because of injury, none at all for the Galatasaray he joined for a six-month loan.
The fact is, as Hallgrimsson pointed out, that, although Iceland, despite the climatic obstacles to playing football on grass through the year, have developed a sound system for educating young players but do not have a wide pool of resources to draw on when senior men are tired or unfit.
For Sunday, he hopes to call on the tried-and-trusted strengths in midfield on Swansea City’s Gylfi Sigurdsson to provide creativity and dead-ball excellence against a Croatia, who beat the Icelanders 2-0 in Zagreb in November and stymied them in the play-offs for the last World Cup.
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