Reykjavik, Iceland. The conversation is about Gylfi Sigurdsson, as it often is in the land of ice and fire, and sometimes it is difficult to know what is true and what is not.
A few weeks ago, Sigurdsson’s latest club, Valur, travelled to Scotland to play St Mirren in the second leg of a Europa Conference League qualifier. Officially, the reason given for Sigurdsson’s absence was a back problem. But then other stories began to circulate.
“I was told he didn’t travel to Scotland because when they played (the first leg) in Reykjavik, there were some St Mirren fans chanting bad stuff,” Vidar Halldorsson, the former Iceland national team captain, tells The Athletic. “It seems that some football fans can be so nasty if they want.”
When you are the most famous and talked-about footballer your country has ever produced, perhaps you just have to get accustomed to your life being a subject of fascination. On Friday, Sigurdsson won his 81st cap in Iceland’s Nations League tie against Montenegro. Tonight, when Turkey are the opponents in Izmir, it will be number 82. Nobody should be too surprised if Iceland’s record all-time scorer has gone past a century of international appearances by the time his playing career is done.
Against that backdrop, even the people in charge at Valur will accept that a player who scored 67 Premier League goals, wore the colours of Everton and Tottenham Hotspur and once commanded a £45million ($59m) transfer fee (a record for Everton that still stands seven years later) should, in theory, be playing club football at a considerably higher level.
But there are good reasons why Sigurdsson, who turned 35 yesterday, has preferred to go back to Reykjavik, the world’s most northern capital, after his absence from the Everton line up for the year before his contract expired in 2022. That absence has never been publicly explained.
Where, for instance, would he be better received? “He’s by far the biggest name in (Icelandic) football,” says Halldorsson, the long-standing chairman of FH, the club where a schoolboy Sigurdsson came through the junior system. “Everybody here was happy to see him back in football.”
That, he says, includes the Icelandic media, which feels important given the scrutiny on Sigurdsson. “They are very supportive of him,” Halldorsson explains. “They always have been. The only thought, because he hadn’t played for two and a half years, was how difficult it would be for him to come back.”
Sigurdsson pursues St Mirren’s Dennis Adeniran (Hulda Margret Oladottir/SNS Group via Getty Images)
Sigurdsson saw a penalty saved by Ederson on his last appearance for Everton, a 5-0 defeat at Manchester City in May 2021. His return to football might well have been with DC United in MLS. Wayne Rooney, then DC’s head coach, wanted it to happen. Talks were arranged but, in the end, nothing came of it.
Instead, Sigurdsson decided to remain in Europe. First, he had a short spell at two-time Danish champions Lyngby Boldklub and, when that did not work out, the deal was arranged with Valur in Besta deild karla (Iceland’s “best men’s division”), where his team-mates include the former U.S. international Aron Johannsson.
Sigurdsson, unsurprisingly, is regarded as the best player in the league. Valur are one of the biggest, richest and most successful clubs, having won the league championship 23 times and the Icelandic Cup on 11 occasions. They also hold the domestic attendance record from a European Cup tie against Benfica in 1968 when 18,243 packed into their old ground. And it is evident that Sigurdsson is making the most of his new life.
“It seems so, and thank God for that,” says Borkur Edvardsson, the Valur chairman. “It (the move) was meant to happen, I think. It’s different for him than when he was playing with Tottenham and Everton, but it’s more family-oriented here. He has found his balance in life and I think he is happy.”
Sigurdsson has his penalty saved by Ederson at the Etihad Stadium in May 2021 (Peter Powell/PA Images via Getty Images)
Edvardsson says the reception from Valur’s supporters has been unanimously positive since Sigurdsson’s arrival in March. In fact, he sounds slightly puzzled by the question given it was such a big event for his club. Sigurdsson, he says, is “an easy-going guy, very professional, on and off the pitch, and a role model for our younger players”.
It has not gone entirely to plan, however, since Sigurdsson was brought in with the challenge of turning the 2023 runners-up into the 2024 champions. This season, in a league played from April to October, Valur are a long way back in third position, 11 points behind leaders Breidablik.
“Obviously, we wanted to finish top,” says Edvarsson. “We signed Gylfi and a couple of other players, but it has been a bit of a struggle. We are not so happy about it. But the only thing we can do is work on it, see what went wrong and prepare for next season.”
These days, Valur’s home attendances do not stray much higher than 1,000. The 2,465-capacity Hlidarendi stadium opened in 2008 and Edvarsson talks of “a beautiful stadium, a beautiful clubhouse… just a family-friendly atmosphere”.
It is not, however, a place the pompous and pretentious of the Premier League would consider particularly glamorous.
Hlidarendi stadium, Valur’s home (Daniel Taylor/The Athletic)
There is only one stand, which is attached to the side of an indoor sports hall. The pitch is artificial grass, which makes sense as the weather this close to the Arctic can be pretty brutal (Iceland is one of the countries in the world not to have mosquitos), and there is not much on the other three sides of the ground bar some advertising boards, an old-fashioned scoreboard and some wooden crates that spectators can stand on for a better view.
It is the kind of stadium you would expect in, say, England’s seventh or eighth tier.
When the team played at St Mirren, there were 22 Valur fans in the away end. It finished 4-1 to their opponents.
Watch Sigurdsson closely, though, and you can still make out the sureness of touch that has helped him win player of the season awards with three of his former clubs — Reading, Swansea City, and Hoffenheim of Germany’s Bundesliga.
You have to assume he missed the comfort blanket of football — why else would a man with his career earnings have returned to the sport?
“Playing football can be a therapy,” Age Hareide, Iceland’s national manager, tells The Athletic. “Because when you play football, you don’t think about anything else. You’re concentrating on winning the game, doing your best and working hard.
“I know players who have had different problems. I had a player who was at (Norwegian club) Molde and had a girlfriend with cancer. She died while they were fighting for the championship and he said that, while she was near to death, he couldn’t sleep at night. He was distraught. He came to training and it helped him to start to deal with it.
“After she died, seeing his team-mates helped. It (football) is a good place to come because there are no questions — they (team-mates) just want you as a footballer.”
Iceland’s head coach, Hareide (Marcel ter Bals/DeFodi Images via Getty Images)
Hareide has been in the football industry for more than half a century, including five years as manager of Norway and a four-year stint with Denmark’s national team that involved taking them to the 2018 World Cup.
“Gylfi has been one of the best football players Iceland has ever seen,” says the 70-year-old Norwegian. “I’ve seen him from the outside, too. When I coached Denmark, we met Iceland in a friendly. Iceland were preparing for Euro 2016 and he scored against us.
“He has football in his legs, you know. And inside his head. The way he moves, the way he picks up spaces — it’s a natural gift. He still has these gifts. I think he’s a natural-born footballer, in many ways.”
Sigurdsson was not involved in Iceland’s shock 1-0 win against England at Wembley in June because of an injury. The game against Montenegro was his third since returning to the international setup last October and, officially, it brought in a crowd of 4,687. Unofficially, it was a good few more because the open ends at Laugardalsvollur, Iceland’s national stadium, meant spectators could stand among the trees to watch for nothing.
Iceland won 2-0. Orri Oskarsson, the rising star of Icelandic football, got the first and at least those trees provided some protection from the winds that had been whipping up the ocean, cancelling all the boat trips, whale-watching tours and Northern Lights expeditions that form a daily part of Reykjavik’s tourism trade.
As for Sigurdsson, the two-time winner of Iceland’s Sports Personality of the Year award was deprived of the chance of a 28th international goal when a second-half penalty was scrubbed out by a VAR intervention. He did, however, set up the second goal. Sigurdsson was substituted after 65 minutes, replaced by Andri Gudjohnsen (son of Eidur), and left the pitch to applause from the crowd and an appreciative handshake from his manager.
It was also noticeable how often the noisiest group of Iceland fans, known as Tolfan (the 12th Man), sang his name.
Iceland’s players train in Izmir ahead of the game against Turkey (Lokman Ilhan/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Outside the stadium, a statue shows Albert Gudmundsson, Iceland’s first professional player. It might be a stretch to imagine Sigurdsson will be honoured the same way one day (though don’t entirely rule it out). What is clear, however, is that the people of Iceland are unquestioningly in his corner. And maybe, in his position, that is enough.
“I’m sure he could still play in the Premier League — he’s that good,” says Edvardsson. “But he is comfortable and happy with Valur. He wants to be with his family in Iceland and take part in a normal life.”
(Top photo: Hulda Margret Oladottir/SNS Group via Getty Images)
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