Nor will they care much whether Didier Drogba leads his country to one more World Cup tournament when Ivory Coast plays Senegal on Saturday.  Those are big players, and the Icelanders enjoy them immensely on the long, dark nights up there near the Arctic Circle.  But Friday will bring soccer fever closer to Icelandâs doors than ever before. Iceland, population 325,010, is two games away from reaching its first World Cup finals.  Croatia, by no means a giant with its own population under 4.5 million, stands between the Nordic island and the dream. But Croatia, which went very nearly all the way in 1998 when it finished third in the World Cup, would be mistaken if it swallowed the line about Icelandâs being the smallest nation ever to qualify for the tournament finals.  Physically, the Icelanders are strapping athletes. Emotionally, their people are so motivated by this match that almost 10,000 tickets for the stadium in Reykjavik sold out before sunrise, even though the sale was posted unannounced on the Web at 4 in the morning.  The reason for that clandestine sale was that the national soccer federation, the KSI, feared the site would crash if tickets were put online in daylight. The Laugardal Stadium can hold 15,427, but Croatians are as soccer-crazy as the Icelanders. They follow their team to the ends of the earth, and come rain, wind and chill â which are in the forecast â they will be there.  So, even in an arena that is open to the elements, Reykjavik is the hottest ticket in town.  Who will win this, and the return match Tuesday in Zagreb? It is a remarkably close call. Croatia has vastly more experience, epitomized by Darijo Srna, who has represented his country 108 times and has led the Ukraine club Shakhtar Donetsk with indefatigable zest as a cavalier defender since 2003.  Reykjavik will not daunt him. Nor should it scare the creative Real Madrid player Luka Modric or the Bayern Munich striker Mario Mandzukic. However, the fact that Croatia is in this playoff, and not an automatic qualifier, speaks for itself.  This is not the Croatian team of 1998. That had Davor Suker, a finisher superior to Mandzukic. It had classy defenders in Igor Stimac and Slaven Bilic. It had wonderful technical players in Robert Prosinecki and Zvonimir Boban.  And they were driven by the nationalism arising out of the Balkan conflicts, so theirs was an especially galvanized Croatian generation.  Bilic almost recreated that spirit when he coached the national side from 2006-12. Bilic was replaced by Stimac, but last month Suker, now the head of the Croatian soccer federation, had to dismiss his former teammate.  After three defeats and a draw in four World Cup qualifying matches since June, Stimac was replaced by another former defender, Niko Kovac.  Kovac will make his debut as national coach on Friday. His adversary, the Iceland Coach Lars Lagerback, has the experience that Kovac lacks. âThe atmosphere probably wasnât the best in their squad,â Lagerback said after studying video of Croatiaâs recent defeats. âIt was not a team in harmony when they played Scotland, for example. I donât think it is an advantage to change the coach when you only get four or five training sessions to prepare for a game.â  Lagerback, the laid-back Swede, has been building this Iceland team since October 2011. He has 20 years experience in international soccer having coached Sweden and, briefly, the Nigerian national side.  He took the Icelandic challenge because he liked what he saw of the generation of players then emerging at the Under-21 level. Lagerback has no single dominant player as he had with Ibrahimovic in Sweden. Monetary reward was unlikely to have induced him because Iceland has yet to fully recover from its financial collapse in 2008.  But Lagerback, now 65, could see raw players coming through for him to organize into a World Cup candidate. His benchmark player, Eidur Gudjohnsen, is 35 and no longer the force he was with Chelsea. But Gudjohnsen still is useful, still is a positive person around the group, and still possesses what the coach calls âa wonderful football eye.â Gudjohnsenâs pivotal attacking role has been taken by Kolbeinn Sigporsson, the 23-year-old Ajax striker who has hit 13 goals in 19 appearances for Iceland. The key midfield direction comes from Tottenham Hotspurâs Gylfi Sigurdsson, another of the emerging talents who excited the coach.  Lagerbackâs way is to build around solid pillars, players who put the team first. And his captain Aron Einar Gunnarsson operates as the anchor of the midfield.  Lagerback picked Gunnarsson for his strength of character and his leadership of the maturing group. Gunnarsson had battled hard in England for what he now has, a place in the Premier League with newly promoted Cardiff City.  The language used between players and coach on the Icelandic team is English because of their Scandinavian languages are so different. But Gunnarsson easily articulates the strength of the coach. âHe succeeded in sharing his experience, and brought us a new philosophy,â said the captain. âHe believed we have huge potential, despite the small size of our country.â  The limitations are that the group itself is small. Take two or three individuals out and, unlike Croatia which has experienced players in reserve, Iceland struggles.  If Croatia is sagging on Friday, its new coach can turn to strikers on the bench, proven goal-scorers like Ivica Olic and the naturalized Brazilian Eduardo.  Iceland must hope that by that time, the result will be going the home sideâs way. No one will sleep in Reykjavik if that is the case; the party will go on and on among people who seem never to sleep.
Iceland, with a population of about 325,000, will become the smallest country ever to qualify for the World Cup finals if it can get past Croatia.