Cheering for family: Manitoba politician related to most of Iceland soccer team
WINNIPEG — A Manitoba politician has more than Icelandic heritage fuelling his fandom of the Nordic nation’s soccer team — he also has family ties.
Len Isleifson, legislature member for Brandon East, says he is related to 22 of the team’s 23 players, as well as to its coach.
Isleifson was born in Manitoba after his paternal grandfather immigrated to the province over a century ago. About 30,000 people of Icelandic decent live in the province, the largest concentration of Icelanders outside of the country’s capital.
Isleifson says his 85-year-old dad, Robert, always had a keen interest in their ancestry and, after Iceland’s soccer team qualified last year for its first World Cup, had a genealogy company in Iceland trace his family’s roots to the team.