Hungary needed an 88th minute own goal equaliser in Marseille after dominating Iceland for much of the game as a controversial penalty put the Nordic minnows ahead in the first half.
A robust Hungarian performance was marred by individual errors, which nearly cost the team, as a 93rd minute free-kick (that was nearly a penalty) was deflected wide.
Hungary survive and top the group with four points, after Portugal failed to beat Austria.
Here are some of the major talking points to come from the match:
Plucky Iceland find a way
Hungary came out on the offensive and dominated possession with 69% against an Iceland team that was happy to defend for most of the game and hit on the counter-attack.
Iceland’s chances all resulted from sloppy defending and individual errors. Tamás Kádár was muscled off the ball by Jóhann Berg Gudmundsson, forcing Gabor Király to make a huge save. A few minutes later and the Hungarians gave away an atrocious penalty when their 40-year-old goalkeeper committed a huge error by dropping a cross in a crowd that forced left-back Tamás Kádár to foul Gunnarsson.
Gylfi Sigurdsson, who was anonymous for most of the game, calmly slotted it home to send the country of roughly 330,000 people into delirium. The third chance came off another silly foul, as Ádám Lang committed a near catastrophic error that nearly resulted in the score being 2-1 to Iceland.
That would have been incredibly harsh on the Hungarians, who were arguably the better side for most of the game.
Hungary fail to translate possession into goalscoring opportunities
The main problem was that most of the Hungarian possession was fruitless. Despite the fact that all four defenders finished with 80 plus touches, the final ball was often lacking and the attacks often petered out in midfield.
The forwards and wide players failed to get open and get the right service, resulting in a gaudy discrepancy. The duo who created the goal to see off Austria was particularly ineffective, with Tamas Priskin ammassing just 12 touches, while Zoltan Stieber had 30 in 65 minutes but they were largely redundant touches.
Laszlo Kleinheisler was also less effective in getting the balls to the forwards and by the end of the game Hungary had clearly got their tactics and personnel all wrong .
Hungary coach Bernd Storck must be kicking himself not just for his choices in Priskin and Stieber not paying off but the profligacy in attack was reaffirmed.
Adam Szalai is wasteful and scores roughly once every 18 months, Daniel Böde is too slow and cumbersome at this level, Priskin is far too erratic and Nemanja Nikolic can apparently only score goals in the Polish League (to be fair he was the runaway top scorer with 28 in 37 games).
Iceland’s defence strong like the ‘Mountain’
The Iceland centre-back The Mountain from Game of Thrones, Ragnar Sigurdsson deserves credit for his 13 clearances and often being a one man wall that thwarted the Hungarian attacks.
Iceland had little of the ball and no player reached 50 touches and remarkably the team finished with zero accurate crosses. However, they fought valiantly and arguably had the better chances in the game.
The resilience and team spirit is clear and if Sigurdsson can inspire another disciplined display in their last match against a highly fancied Austria, then a fairytale could well be on the cards.
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