We had a good laugh about England’s pain
Burnley’s Icelander says now his national team will be taken seriously
THE Icelander in Burnley is not one for gloating. He is quite unassuming, actually. But even Johann Berg Gudmundsson, under the heavy weight of peer pressure, has finally made his point to the club’s English contingent.
It came the night before last week’s Premier League defeat at Chelsea in a hotel near Stamford Bridge. As part of his initiation as a new summer signing, Gudmundsson rose from his seat after dinner and fulfilled the obligation.
He sang Iceland’s national anthem — fairly well, it’s claimed — before then breaking out into the Viking Thunder Clap, the choreographed move synonymous with a rip-roaring European Championship campaign that ended in the quarter-finals. It went down well.
This had been a long-running joke between Gudmundsson and his new Burnley team-mates, who implored their Scandinavian winger to rib goalkeeper Tom Heaton about that night in Nice ever since he arrived from Charlton.
Heaton sat on the bench as Roy Hodgson’s world came crashing down, England freezing against opposition they took dangerously lightly.
‘They were always waiting for me to get stuck into Tom but I didn’t really need to do that,’ he said straight-faced before breaking into a smile. ‘The damage had been done.’
Heaton is a similar character to Gudmundsson, but Iceland’s players had heard the tales of disrespect from other members of the England camp.
Most staggering of which was the coaching delegation deployed to check their final group game with Austria, deliriously cheering Arnor Ingvi Traustason’s late winner as it transpired they would face Lars Lagerback’s side. Hodgson and his No 2 Ray Lewington did not even show up, in Paris sightseeing instead.
Iceland also noticed the newspaper columns penned by former England players. ‘I knew they [the staff] were at the game and heard that story afterwards,’ added Gudmundsson. ‘It didn’t really matter for us. We read some other comments that were made, that England should be confident and be arrogant, so we had a good laugh about that.
‘They thought they were going to run over us. When they went 1-0 up they thought this was going to be a walk in the park. It was probably a little bit tough for them to take.
‘England have great players and they should be doing a lot more in these tournaments but there is something not right for them. For us, everybody knows their role and we know how to play.
‘England were really pumped up. It didn’t scare us. We knew we always score in every game. I read that maybe they were too pumped up. I don’t know . . . you could be.’
Ukraine will certainly be pumped up tomorrow, the first nation to take a stab at knocking Iceland off their perch as their World Cup qualifiers start in Kiev.
Manager Lars Lagerback has left, assistant Heimir Hallgrimsson, who runs his own dental practice, taking his place. In a group including Kosovo, Iceland know they are a potential scalp. Turkey await next month; Croatia in November. This is not an easy group.
Yet Iceland fancy themselves and there have been significant changes to reach this point. Gudmundsson revealed Lagerback ripped up the ‘amateurish’ malpractice of previous regimes and that grassroots coaching has stepped up a notch.
‘When pros are going to the national team you want the same environment as you have daily,’ he said. ‘It was not like that. When Lagerback came in he changed everything, making life easier for us.
‘In qualifying we had Latvia away, then Holland. Normally we’d just take commercial flights, so you might have to take two to reach Iceland. But having our own plane now helps with recovery time.
‘People really thought we could get to the Euros and do well. Now you’re thinking, “Can they do it again? Was it a one-off?” ’
There is a belief that this rise has been coming regardless. Iceland has scores of indoor pitches. Many are being offered the platform to improve in Holland as they reach their 20s before moving on.
Gudmundsson and Gylfilfi Sigurdsson, both of whomm played together at Breidablik, are the exceptions.
Sigurdsson was taken by Reading, Steve Coppell astonishingly tried to turn him into a central l defender. Gudmundsson, n, meanwhile, moved to Londonndon for family reasons, with timeti att Chelsea and Fulham. Later he went to AZ Alkmaar and at 25 is now a top-flight midfielder.
For so many others, who tend to drift towards Holland, the pathway is clear but not rigid. They do not sign academy contracts with clubs in Iceland, just play with their local teams. No academies? ‘That’ll seem strange for an English person,’ said Gudmundsson. ‘You join the team in your neighbourhood, grow up with them, and then after that you mightmig move in your late teens.tee It’s constant training.in You probably train more than you do here, probably about four times a week. I’ve heard thatt English clubs maybe traintr twice a week. ‘You‘ will always get that chancecha in Iceland. I don’t really know why we’re producingd i so many good players but we must be doing something right. ‘We’re much more technically gifted than we were before. Then it was more passion and fighting. It still is but with a little bit more quality.’
23 Iceland’s world ranking — not bad for a team rated 131 exactly four years ago