Iceman Gylfi is bringing the heat
GYLFI SIGURDSSON is joshing with Ronald Koeman about which of them is best at free-kicks — ‘the keepers weren’t as good then; it’s close,’ he says — and generally looking as if butter would not melt. But there is steel behind the facade: 10 bruising years in English football have seen to that. Sigurdsson’s last big move did not work out, but the £45million signing from Swansea insists Everton have a different player from the one who joined Tottenham in 2012. ‘What was I: 20, 21?’ he says. ‘I’m far from being the same. I wanted to go back to Swansea and play football, because your career is really short.’ He was equally dissatisfied to find himself playing for the reserves at Reading, having left Iceland as a 19-year-old in 2008. ‘The firstteam players did not want to be there so these games were not good.’ He went to Shrewsbury on loan and found himself playing in Accrington on an October night in 2008. ‘It was freezing and raining,’ he says. ‘It was tough.’ Sigurdsson’s side lost 2-1: they were two down inside six minutes. For a player whose journey within these shores started so early, the lucrative move has come late, but he’s flirted with Merseyside twice before: in 2012 when he rejected Liverpool for Spurs and in 2001 when he landed two weeks at Everton as a 12year-old. He will not have much longer to settle in on this occasion. How he will fit in with Wayne Rooney is an issue, as both like to occupy the No 10 spot. Sigurdsson, who is unlikely to start on Monday at Manchester City, does not look like a player who will flinch, though. ‘I put the pressure on myself,’ he adds. ‘That’s all I need. That’s all I focus on.’