What does baffle me

Iceland which is a smaller country than Wales have qualified for the World Cup they where in a harder group than ours iceland used to be like San marino they where always get well beaten when I was a young kid but know they really can live with the big boys so what is down to better players better coaching better facilities are there leagues better than our league of Wales have they got more players around Europe than ours are they better than what we got baffles me

How do you figure they had a much easier group? Only one team in the group is ranked higher than them, annoy one of the other teams have hasn't real success.

Croatia got to two semi finals not long after they had independence and turkey have done really well over the past few years

Croatia got to two semi finals not long after they had independence and turkey have done really well over the past few years

its not the teams as very similar quality and the ethos of teams also same (togetherness hard working) only thing left is the difference in manager?