Reykjavík Grapevine - 31.07.2015, Síða 23

23The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 11 — 2015
hard to be a supporter of Fram, I
would say. All my life, the team has
been struggling—saving their asses
for a few years, then being relegated,
and coming back, and doing the same
thing over again.”
Loji now plays football in a Sun-
day league team made up of fellow
musicians. “The team has people like
Gunnar from Grísalappalísa, Sindri
from Sin Fang, Örvar from múm, a lot
of artists,” he explains. “Einar Þór
from Singapore Sling is the heart and
soul of the team. Högni from Hjal-
talín plays for us, too. He’s a great
finisher, I would say!”
The team plays in the Gull league,
sponsored by the Icelandic beer, and
features all kinds of teams. “Some-
times the other teams are made up
of a group of friends,” says Loji. “But
sometimes they’re people from Dom-
ino’s pizza or something. It’s nice—
competitive, but fun and relaxed. We
get on a good run now and then and
win two or three games. Other times
not so much. But I have a really good
feeling about this summer!”
The Veteran
Pétur Marteinsson also started play-
ing at Fram. He’s a well-known pro-
fessional footballer in Iceland, now
retired after a career as a defender
that took him to clubs in Sweden,
Norway and England, and saw him
win 35 caps with the Iceland nation-
al side.
“I grew up in Breiðholt,” says Pé-
tur, “so I started playing at the club
Leiknir, aged six. I cried, and said
'But my dad played for Fram!' until
I got to go and practice there.” He
started taking the half-hour bus ride
to the club’s ground three times a
week. “Most of the practices were on
gravel,” he remembers. “There was
no astroturf at that time. We were
tackling in training, and we’d get
bloody. Not a single kid today would
train in those conditions, but back
then it was just part of the game — it
was all about the tough vikings going
out to play.”
Pétur advanced through the
youth system until he was spotted
playing for Iceland during an un-
der-21 friendly match against Swe-
den, where he was named man of the
match. The resulting attention ended
up with him signing a two-year con-
tract with Swedish side Hammarby,
and postponing his enrolment in a
pre-med course at Berkeley in the
US.
“I was just playing because it was
fun,” Pétur smiles. “I didn’t have any
grand ambitions. But when I got the
call to try out as a professional play-
er, I didn’t hesitate. It was a 'Sliding
Doors' moment—choosing to be a
footballer in Stockholm or a doctor
in the States.”
Now a successful businessman,
Pétur still follows the game closely.
He’s watched with interest as the
Iceland national team has risen in
the rankings over recent years, and
offers various insights as to the rea-
sons for their gradual improvement.
“Our current national team is not
just a f luke,” he says. “It’s not some-
thing that just happened. It’s been a
ride. Back in 1998, Gylfi and Kolbe-
inn and the rest of the national team
were eight, nine, ten years old. They
saw Iceland play France after they’d
just won the World Cup, and draw 1-1,
and they thought: ‘We can do this.’
Even those playing in ‘98 had their
role models—Ásgeir Sigvinsson, who
was one of the best players in Eu-
rope, and Arnór Guðjohnsen, who
was a really good
international player.
When I was little I
thought, ‘These guys
are heroes! I would
love to be like them!’
And today, hopefully
we’re seeing the re-
sult.”
The Superstar
One such role model is Eiður Smári
Guðjohnsen. Now aged 36, Eiður’s
illustrious career has seen him play
for some Europe’s biggest clubs, in-
cluding stints at Chelsea in the UK,
and Barcelona, for whom he was the
first Icelander to appear in the UEFA
Champions League finals.
Eiður recently moved to Chi-
na, signing for Shijiazhuang Ever
Bright. “I’ve been here for just under
a month now,” he says, over a crack-
ling phone line. “It’s not something
I ever anticipated, to play in China!
But when it came up, it was a very in-
teresting opportunity. It’s a different
world out here—the further you get
from Shanghai and Beijing, the less
people speak English. We interna-
tional players have a translator with
us—they’re doing everything they
can to help us settle in.”
Eiður is a former Iceland captain,
and holds the honour of being the
nation’s all-time highest goal scorer,
netting 25 times in 79 appearances.
He’s seen the team’s fortunes f luc-
tuate over the years. “We fell out of
the top 100 in the international team
rankings at one point,” he says. “It
was a low point. But now we’re 23rd.
When you have good results and a
good run of form,
you climb steadily,
and we’ve been doing
that for a few years.”
“The major-
ity of the players in
the current national
team are... I hesitate
to use the phrase,
but you could say
they’re a golden gen-
eration,” he continues. “They’re the
first Icelandic players to make the
Under-21 European Championship
finals. They’ve been together for
a long time. They’re also the first
generation coming through since
Iceland got indoor pitches—they’ve
been ready to play abroad younger,
and gather that experience. And they
also have an experienced manager in
Lars Lagarbäck. It’s the combination
we’ve been waiting for.”
Eiður thinks the current team
has every chance of being the first
men’s team to break through into
the European Championship finals,
and are perhaps paving the way for
the future. “I hope that this team has
set some role models for the younger
generations to come,” he says. “Every
boy dreams about playing in a Euro-
pean Championship or a World Cup.
Maybe now they’ll realise it doesn’t
have to stay a dream.”
The
Players
1 Kolbeinn Theodórsson,
Víkingur youth team player
2 Sigurbjörn Örn “Bjossi”
Hreiðarsson,
Valur Assistant Coach
3 Haukur Páll Sigurðsson,
Valur Club Captain
4 Pétur Marteinsson,
retired footballer & business-
man
5 Sara Björk Gunnarsdóttir,
Iceland captain and FC
Rosengård player
6 Eiður Smári Guðjohnsen,
Iceland and Shijiazhuang Ever
Bright player
7 Fanndís Friðriksdóttir,
Kolbotn IL and Iceland player
8 Loji Höskuldsson,
musician and Sunday League
player
9 Alexander Júlíusson,
Valur Stadium Manager
“Most of the play-
ing surface died last
spring. It happened
to stadiums all over
Reykjavík. The grass
died and rotted under
the ice.”
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