Gallant Iceland footballers have gone back home heartbroken but unbowed after a premature end to their first World Cup adventure, ruing what might have been after a narrow defeat by Croatia.

Iceland caught the public imagination with their fairytale run to the quarter-finals at Euro 2016 in France and waltzed through qualifying for Russia, topping their group, which included Croatia.

At the World Cup they held their own in a section that also featured Argentina and Nigeria but were left to regret a string of near misses in their final match before Ivan Perisic sealed their fate with a last-minute winner on Tuesday.

“It’s sad to go out after that performance. We had more inside us and thought we would go further in the tournament. That was our best game of the World Cup, we had many chances to score,” defender Sverrir Ingason said.

After Milan Badelj put Croatia ahead early in the second half, a Gylfi Sigurdsson equaliser from a penalty meant the Nordic side were a goal away from their first-ever World Cup victory and a berth in the next round. “We left everything on the pitch today. We go home proud from our first and not last World Cup,” said striker Alfred Finnbogason.

‘‘We had chances to win it so of course there is disappointment, but we did everything we could. If you do that you shouldn’t be disappointed. We can look each other in the eye, hold our heads high, Iceland coach Heimir Hallgrimsson said.’’