Northeastern University women's soccer player Greta Samuelsdottir was one of 22 players invited to join the Icelandic national team for the first game of the 2013 UEFA Women's Championship. This is the second time in 2011 that Samuelsdottir has been selected to represent her home country, having played on Iceland's Algarve Cup team in March.

Iceland got an early start to the UEFA qualifying phase, cruising to a 6-0 win on May 19. Most of the tournament's qualifying stage will begin in earnest in September.

Iceland also will face Norway, Belgium, Hungary and Northern Ireland in group three of the qualifying phase.

The group winners and best runners-up (not counting results against sixth-placed teams) will qualify for the finals alongside host Sweden. The six remaining runners-up will contest home-and-away play-off matches on Oct. 20-21 and Oct. 24-25 of 2012, with the three winners of these ties also qualifying. The 12-team finals will be played in July 2013.

Iceland will look to continue the momentum it gained in the prestigious Algarve Cup, where it advanced to the final before losing to the United States. Northeastern's Samuelsdottir logged nearly 30 minutes in the Algarve championship game, as well as quality minutes in two of the team's three group-play matches.

Read more
UEFA.com: Iceland too hot for Bulgaria