West Ham 4th August In Iceland - 1500hrs Eurosport 1

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I was there to hike about three summers back. Staggeringly beautiful country – one of the most beautiful anywhere I've seen on the planet. Extremely wild. The whole interior of the island is basically a volcanic desert, but you won't be seeing much of that. But it's a very, very weird place to schedule a pre-season match, and yes, it is very pricey indeed. I've just come back from Denmark, and it beats Denmark, which is far from cheap, hands down for cost of living. My advice to anyone would be, you can justify it to yourself if you really make a holiday out of it (and that would presumably be your summer holiday, unless you're a fair bit richer than me…). That is, stay for a week, go down the coast to the hot spring known as the Blue Lagoon, sip a mojito or whatever as you sit in the beautiful hot water, telling yourself that this is doing your aching bones good, get around the country as best you can (there's only one real tarmacced road going right round the coast), appreciate the girls from Reykjavik (some of them are absolute stunners) etc., etc. In other words, make a real trip of it. Otherwise, just for the match, I'd say it's difficult to justify. Well, I wouldn't go just for that.
It is never hard to justify going to watch City. Ever. As they lower the casket, I doubt few, if any, would pop open the lid and say, "I wish I'd spent fewer minutes enjoying myself".
 
Firstly, Iceland is a beautiful place and truly a delight to visit. There are now loads of options of flights in recent years but the cost of living on the island was sky high due to imports. For example, when we went about 2 years ago and I got a pizza and pasta and I think it roughly converted to £70. No joke. We stayed in the Hilton which is about a mile out of town and it is directly across the road from the stadium which I believe to be their national stadium but not sure which club side plays there. It wasn't huge but looked modern enough like something from League 2.

On the other hand, I don't really understand their rationale for Iceland. There is probably a very small football market but maybe some hype after the Euros. I cant think of any commercial reasons for going unless we are getting sponsored by the blue lagoon, the northern lights or a local fishing trawler. At least it is not a massive commute for the players but when you think united are going to play in Dublin that same week in front of 60k in the popular irish footballing market....

On my final note, where is the most random pre season match you have seen city?
 
Not a random one but for distance I did travel over 4.6k miles to Abu Dhabi to watch our reserves in a friendly when we were first taken over but it was mid-season.

I won the flight in a competition on another City forum.
 
No point in complaining about location etc....it's not for us or West Ham fans it's obviously about raising the profile of the Premier League first and foremost in Iceland and maybe us and West Ham might pick up a few fans out there along the way
 
No point in complaining about location etc....it's not for us or West Ham fans it's obviously about raising the profile of the Premier League first and foremost in Iceland and maybe us and West Ham might pick up a few fans out there along the way

Yeah the 330,000 people who live in Iceland is such a big market to be targeting... It's a pointless match with more pointless travelling for our players who should instead be preparing for next season.
 
I was there to hike about three summers back. Staggeringly beautiful country – one of the most beautiful anywhere I've seen on the planet. Extremely wild. The whole interior of the island is basically a volcanic desert, but you won't be seeing much of that. But it's a very, very weird place to schedule a pre-season match, and yes, it is very pricey indeed. I've just come back from Denmark, and it beats Denmark, which is far from cheap, hands down for cost of living. My advice to anyone would be, you can justify it to yourself if you really make a holiday out of it (and that would presumably be your summer holiday, unless you're a fair bit richer than me…). That is, stay for a week, go down the coast to the hot spring known as the Blue Lagoon, sip a mojito or whatever as you sit in the beautiful hot water, telling yourself that this is doing your aching bones good, get around the country as best you can (there's only one real tarmacced road going right round the coast), appreciate the girls from Reykjavik (some of them are absolute stunners) etc., etc. In other words, make a real trip of it. Otherwise, just for the match, I'd say it's difficult to justify. Well, I wouldn't go just for that.
I'm jealous mate I only wish I could go but after your post it's on my to do list. As you said not for football the beauty of the place. Can you see the Northern lights in summer?
 
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