IN SEPTEMBER 2003, Iceland held Germany to a stodgy 0-0 draw at Laugardalsvöllur. Although the visitors had reached the World Cup Final 14 months earlier, the result prompted sombre self-reflection in Germany.
‘Iceland are top of the table,’ Rudi Völler said on German television. ‘You are saying we have to dominate them away from home? What kind of world are you living in? You have to get off your high horse.’
The printed press bemoaned aimless punts to anonymous forwards and Michael Ballack’s impotence in midfield. Yet, as Raphael Honigstein explains in Das Reboot, sweeping changes were afoot in German football. A painful quarter-final defeat to Croatia in the 1998 World Cup catalysed systematic investment in youth development. Humiliation bred progress. Regional training centres opened from the Black Forest to Berlin. The generation of players who won the World Cup in 2014 were the children of that reform. They benefited from better training, and more of it, than those who came before. As Germany floundered in Reykjavík, the first fruits of the grassroots overhaul – players like Philipp Lahm and Bastian Schweinsteiger – were poised to make an impact.
And in Iceland, as in Germany, radical change simmered just beneath the surface.
‘My vision was to improve the level of coaching and expose Icelandic coaches to foreign experts and coaching at a higher level.’
Siggi Eyjólfsson, the former technical director of the KSÍ, leans back against a dune of pillows in his hotel room in Jordan, where the women’s Asian Cup is being held. He became the head coach of the China team in 2017 and his words echo through a WeChat connection – Skype is illegal in China.
Eyjólfsson was 29 years old and winding down a nomadic career that took him to the USA, England and Belgium, when the KSÍ appointed him as their first technical director in 2002.
‘The KSÍ was very small back then,’ he recalls. ‘There were maybe ten or 11 people. My office was the meeting room, so I always had to clear my desk when there was going to be a meeting.’
Eyjólfsson’s remit was to improve the quality and quantity of Icelandic coaches. He inherited very little. The man previously in charge of coach education juggled the role with a full-time teaching job and leadership of the under-21 national team. There was no structure or syllabus. The budget was meagre. And Iceland, as one of few European nations outside UEFA’s coaching convention, remained on the northern periphery of the continent when it came to coach education. Eyjólfsson’s first task was to move Iceland closer to its neighbours by adopting the UEFA licensing system, which incorporates, in ascending order of complexity, the B Licence, A Licence and Pro Licence. National associations have certain flexibility to shape each licence to fit their specific needs.
Eyjólfsson had a blank slate to work with. ‘We had to design the courses from scratch and decide what we were going to teach at each level. I asked myself: “What is important for the coaches of Iceland to know in order to improve the level of play?”’
He did not rush. He studied a Masters in Sport and Exercise Psychology while playing college soccer in the United States. That instilled an academic respect for the power of patient consideration. He worked as if he would be the technical director for life.
‘I’m the type of guy who likes to research things,’ he says. ‘I like to think about things. To have a really good system you have to put thought into it. If you’re always changing and making new policy, you don’t follow through with your plan and you don’t see it bear fruit. That’s why I started in March 2002 and our UEFA certification didn’t come through until 2004. It took a long while but we have a really good programme that fits well for Iceland. I’m not saying it’s perfect for Germany, Denmark or wherever, but it fits well for Iceland.’
He took UEFA’s template and tailored it to Icelandic needs, mindful that the most talented players needed to be prepared for moves abroad. The result was a holistic approach. ‘I always thought the most important thing was to reach the masses,’ he says.
Coaches in north and east Iceland did not attend many courses in Reykjavík because to do so would require a domestic flight and overnight accommodation. In response, Eyjólfsson set off around Route 1 – the circuitous road that etches a tarmac ring around the island – and took the courses to the towns. UEFA courses are invitation only in other countries, but Eyjólfsson kept access open in Iceland.
Coaching qualifications soon became a status symbol. ‘It exploded when we got the UEFA badges,’ he explains. ‘Everyone wanted the little ID that you can keep in your wallet to show people you were a UEFA-licensed coach. We found that was really encouraging.’
Change always faces some resistance. Gnarled coaches were sceptical. They pointed to their decades-in-the-dugout apprenticeship. What could a course teach that they had not already learned on the job? That attitude disintegrated as the new generation of coaches proved to be, actually, rather good – with innovative and thorough methods.
The KSÍ swerved resistance from clubs by brandishing a stick to accompany the carrot of better coaches for their young players. A club-licensing system made it mandatory for clubs to educate their coaches. If, for example, the champions of Iceland did not have a licensed coach in charge of their under-14 team, the first team would not be allowed to defend their title. The KSÍ relaxed the rule after the initial shock tactic had the desired effect, but clubs still receive a fine if their youth coaches do not have the required expertise.
Eyjólfsson benefited from being part of a small organisation. New policy did not meander through a bureaucratic labyrinth of associations, boards and committees. On several occasions he asked whether, after years of frozen prices, it was time to increase the cost of courses to reflect the inclusion of new books. The answer was always no. The KSÍ absorbed the cost. While Iceland’s burgeoning financial sector chased profit in the mid-2000s, the KSÍ held steadfastly to the egalitarian principle that wealth should not incubate in a Reykjavík bank account but be reinvested through the clubs.
That conviction has not wavered despite the success of the national team swelling the KSÍ’s coffers. Between 2016 and 2018, the KSÍ distributed about £8.5 million to Icelandic clubs, much of it revenue generated from the European Championship and the World Cup. That sum may seem trivial in the shadow of big-ticket transfer fees, but it is a significant injection of money in an ecosystem of amateur and semi-professional clubs.
The first Icelandic coaches passed the UEFA B course in early 2004. By 2018, 669 Icelanders held the UEFA B licence, 240 held the UEFA A, and, courtesy of a link with the English FA, 17 held the UEFA Pro Licence.
One non-Icelandic coach – who counts Iceland as one of 27 countries he has worked in – suspects that the KSÍ awards UEFA licences to coaches who do not meet the required standards in other countries. He may be right. The bar may be lower in Iceland, yet the scale of quality coaching is unparalleled.
There are no volunteer dads on the touchline, barking spittle-flecked orders at a son who is losing the will to live the dreams of his father. Icelandic children are marinated in football, and not in the twee way that we romanticise it in the United Kingdom: dads hoisting wide-eyed kids over turnstiles and into a thronging crowd. UEFA-licensed coaches train Icelandic children from the age of six.
What do all these coaches coach? The answer, more or less, is whatever they want. A rough syllabus exists, but with ample room for variation.
‘The clubs decide how they coach their players from the age of six up to the first team,’ Eyjólfsson says. ‘But there are certain guidelines. You have to teach them technical skills. Which technical skills are most important? That’s up to you.’
The KSÍ offers a framework without being dogmatic. There are two reasons for this compromise. The first rests upon a phrase Eyjólfsson heard as a young coach: ‘If you have the same recipe, you will always bake the same cake.’ A fully centralised process will create homogenous players. Eyjólfsson expands: ‘You don’t want to coach everyone the same way because you want different types of players who can play different systems. There needs to be a degree of freedom in coach education. That’s why coaches don’t have to do their refresher courses with the KSÍ. They can go abroad, observe training at a football club and talk to their coaches.’
Over a tar-thick coffee, Arnar Bill Gunnarsson – who took over from Eyjólfsson as the technical director at the KSÍ in 2013 – explains that scarcity is the second reason for devolving power to individual clubs and coaches. Iceland has too few players to create replicas.
‘We believe coaches are independent,’ he says. ‘We don’t tell the coaches to all do the same thing because we have so few players. The under-17s, for example, may want to play like the national team – which usually plays 4-4-2 – but the under-17s may not have two good strikers. So we keep it open. It’s down to each coach.’
Arnar Bill shares Eyjólfsson’s belief in the importance of coherent long-term thinking. He has tweaked certain things, but principles like ability-based grouping – splitting children into A, B and C teams to ensure they play equal opposition – remain entrenched.
The fundamental principle is to engage children early, to sow the seeds of a passion that will breed perseverance. Overt technical coaching comes later, as does specialisation. The KSÍ encourages children to practise other sports, like handball, basketball or athletics, alongside football until the age of 13 or 14. Aron Gunnarsson played handball for Þór Akureyri when he was 15 and still holds the record for the youngest goalscorer in the Icelandic First Division. No wonder he can land a throw-in on the penalty spot.
‘We teach coaches that, for the first couple of years, football just has to be fun,’ Eyjólfsson says. ‘Don’t take yourself too seriously as a coach. You can horse around with the kids and try to make it fun so they look forward to the next training. Don’t think about results. Just let everybody play. Be encouraging and positive. Engage the parents. And you’re successful if you increase the number of kids at the end of the year. If you can treat that inner motivation in the kids and make them interested and wanting to come to football, you’ve done your job.’
Coaches seek to capture the children’s imagination with deceptively informal drills. Children at one club warm up with the Indiana Jones game, where they dribble around using only their heels. They are encouraged to imagine. Yet coaches often prefer the short, simple pass to the decadent flick or weaving run that have a higher chance of conceding possession. I ask Arnar Bill if hothousing young players in a sterile, UEFA-stamped environment may squeeze out their spontaneity and enthusiasm.
‘No, I would say it’s the complete opposite,’ he responds. ‘Inside the structured session you get a lot of freedom. The key for me is that if you go to a fun, well-structured session, you’re more likely to fall in love with the game. And if you fall in love with the game, you’ll play football outside the organised training sessions.
‘Nobody becomes a really good player if they just show up three times a week for training. You have to stay out on the pitch for fun. I believe more players will do that if they have quality sessions when they start playing. The coaches who have the youngest players are absolutely vital.’ As if on cue, he breaks off to speak to a coach who will be sitting his UEFA A exam that afternoon.
Though the KSÍ prioritises participation and spontaneity, youngsters have access to a busy calendar of competitive football in the form of league competitions and summer tournaments that draw hordes of players and parents from across the country. Geir Þorsteinsson – the former president of the KSÍ – believes the frequency of matches is crucial. ‘Nobody likes to only train,’ he says. ‘You will not keep children in the game if they are not competing.’ In previous decades only one team could represent a club at each age group, meaning dozens of children trained during the week with no promise of a match at the weekend. Now, a club may arrive at an under-11 tournament with five or six teams.
Geir recalls that in the early 1980s, the KSÍ reduced under-11 and under-12 football to seven-a-side and played on smaller pitches. This was an early conversion to small-sided games that have since become a staple of youth football. The principle remains the same in Iceland. Children incrementally progress from five-a-side to 11-a-side at a pace that encourages technical development and the ability to play in tight spaces rather than raw, biggest-in-the-class physicality.
If we had a time-lapse video of the days and weeks and months and years of work that produce a world-class footballer, it would show kick-ups, passing against a wall, bamboozling cones with silk-clad touches. Lots of mundane actions that accumulate.
Children can learn ball skills, but a willingness to accept that football is an exercise in delayed gratification is harder to impart. Paradoxically, early-stage coaches in Iceland use a missionary’s mindset to inspire players to coach themselves.
To this end, the KSÍ distributed 16,000 ‘technical skills’ DVDs to all registered players in Iceland aged 16 and under. The DVD contained 100 skills and drills that a young player could do on their own or with friends, in the garden or on a mini-pitch. But it needed to be something they would cherish, not like the other boxes gathering dust behind the PlayStation. So the men’s and women’s national team players got involved. They returned to their home towns to personally distribute DVDs to the children who idolised them. They were prepped to deliver the message that relentless training for a sustained period was the key to their success.
No amount of coaching DVDs, however, can remove the conflict at the heart of youth development: coaches must simultaneously think about the present and the future. The same questions nibble at every youth coach. Should I select an early developer because he is good today or should I select a late developer because he will be good in five years? Could I play an early developer alongside a late developer in midfield, to provide physical cover? There are no correct answers.
We are familiar with the Lilliputian spectacle of youth football. A brawny and bearded teenager marauds through a swarm of children who, though the same age, are yet to reach the promised land of puberty. Some 15-year-olds have the biological age of a 12-year-old, while others are biologically 18. Teenagers experience rapid physical and emotional change, yet adroit coaches must still assess their progress and potential.
It is easier for coaches to think about the present. Youth coaches often aspire to become assistants or head coaches at the senior level, where pay and prestige are higher. The best way to break into the old boys’ club of first-team football is to win matches at youth level, but that places team results above individual development. Johan Cruyff identified a solution to this problem decades ago. One of his ideas was to rotate coaches around a club so that a first-team coach could take charge of the under-tens for a week. Unsurprisingly, it never caught on. It goes against the entrenched pattern of career progression.
Þorlákur Árnason was the head of youth coaching at the KSÍ until December 2018. He used LinkedIn as a platform to consider this conflict in a series of short essays.
‘Most of the players in under-17 national teams all over the world are early developers,’ he wrote in 2017. ‘They are born early in the year. Their height and weight is above average.’
Þorlákur believes there is a problem with the measurement of success at youth level. ‘Maybe we should start by calling the coach a “teacher of football”. In youth football, results should not matter. You should measure the work of the coach on his progress with the group technically and tactically, not on results.’
The problem, of course, is that technical and tactical progress is difficult to quantify. Nevertheless, it is reassuring that those in charge of youth development in Iceland are critically engaging with such quandaries. The KSÍ is mindful that the need to focus on tomorrow is greater in Iceland than elsewhere. For every talented 15-year-old released by a German club, there is another wonderkid to replace him. Iceland does not have that luxury. Iceland cannot afford to lose players because there are so few. That is why Icelandic players can play for their club – and receive UEFA-stamped coaching – until the age of 19. Nobody is rejected. And all players receive the same coaching until they are 15 or 16. Only then do the better players start to command extra attention.
Some players are so precocious that their path to professional football is clear by their tenth birthday, but most take longer to blossom. Alfreð Finnbogason scored Iceland’s goal against Argentina at the World Cup. At 18 he was languishing in the Third Division at Breiðablik’s feeder club, unable to cross the ravine that divides youth and senior football. Hannes Halldórsson, the goalkeeper who saved Lionel Messi’s penalty, was rejected by a Third Division club in Iceland when he was 23 and did not turn professional until 29.
Youngsters like Alfreð and Hannes developed at a different pace to others. Some literature refers to their type as ‘talent that whispers’. Not all talent announces itself with a bugle horn and a prancing statement read from a papyrus scroll. Iceland caters for the persistent late developers who would have been long discarded elsewhere.
Yet, despite all their impressive work to inspire and develop as many young players as possible, the KSÍ cannot cover every last detail.
‘We teach some mental training,’ says Arnar Bill. ‘But it’s very shallow. We only cover the tip of the iceberg because we don’t have the hours. The course would be too big if we were to make everybody an expert in every area. It’s down to the coach to specialise himself.’
How are individual coaches developing footballers above the shoulders? Part of the process of discovery involved a descent into the dingy six-kilometre tunnel that burrows beneath Hvalfjörður (‘whale fjord’). The light at the end of the tunnel is Akranes, a sedate fishing town that was the heartland of Icelandic football long before mentality appeared in coaching manuals.
Twelve miles north of Reykjavík, Akranes is home to 7,000 people. A derelict factory dominates the harbour like a brutalist ghost from a prosperous past. Fishing boats no longer chug in and out with the same frequency as in 1956, when England’s amateur team played Iceland in the first ever fixture between the two nations. Eight of the Iceland team – nine according to some reports – were from Akranes.
The town’s biggest club, ÍA, dominated Icelandic football for large swathes of the 20th century, producing a succession of professional players for export in the process. They have been less successful since the turn of the millennium, yet they remain the most decorated club in the country.
The view from the club’s boardroom compensates for the ugly pebbledash floor. Soot-black boulders separate the stadium from the moody sea like protective lumps of coal. Pennants hang on the wall as triangular reminders of yesterday’s successes. Barcelona, Feyenoord and Aberdeen all visited to brace an onshore wind that slices across the pitch like a scythe.
Lúðvík Gunnarsson was a ballboy when Akranes beat Feyenoord 1-0 in 1993. Now he is the head of youth at ÍA and he wants youth development to mean more than technique and tactics and fitness.
‘For me as a coach,’ he says, ‘developing the players as people is one of my main goals. I have to work with my coaches to help the kids develop mentally.
‘I think we train football too much,’ he continues. ‘Maybe we should put together a curriculum on how to help them mentally. Only the strong ones will survive in professional football, so what are we doing there? We started with mentors.’
Every fortnight he meets one-on-one with teenage players he has seen rise through the age groups. They talk about football and on-pitch development, but other questions are more important: how are you feeling? Is everything going well at school? Are you still seeing that girl? The travails of adolescence. They embrace it even when the talking gets tough, Lúðvík claims.
‘I’m very upfront. I do the real talk. I had one guy who now plays in Sweden. I trained him when he was younger. I knew him quite well. He was injured for two years and played no football. It was difficult for him to come back. He was a little bit arrogant but for me, it was just insecurity. I told him, “People think you’re rude because of how you act and how you talk to them.” He was quite surprised. I said, “I think it’s because you’re insecure. You need to loosen up a little and enjoy life more.” You can’t just say the beautiful things. You have to say the things they need to hear.’
Several players from Akranes have represented Iceland at youth level since Lúðvík and his colleagues introduced the mentoring programme. Arnór Sigurðsson is the flagship export, having joined CSKA Moscow in 2018 and played in the Champions League while still a teenager. Meanwhile, the ÍA under-19 side triumphed in their domestic competition to qualify for the 2019/20 edition of the prestigious UEFA Youth League. The youngsters from Akranes recorded a blistering 16-1 aggregate victory over FC Levadia of Estonia, but were eliminated by a strong Derby County team that went on to beat Borussia Dortmund in the following round.
Mentoring may not be groundbreaking, and nor does correlation imply causation. Yet there is a sense within the club that investing in the players as people is not only the responsible thing to do but that it also improves performance. Football is, fundamentally, a people business after all.
‘Mentality is more likely to get you somewhere than just your ability to play football. I know some guys who suck at football. Honestly. Anyone could do what they do. But they’re such good characters that they get contracts with Icelandic Premier League clubs. So it is important.’
Yet Lúðvík also appreciates his responsibility to the vast majority of players who will not progress to the professional game and have no desire to pursue that path. This is easier for semi-professional outfits in Iceland than player-production factories affiliated to big clubs elsewhere in Europe, where little Jonny becomes a commodity as soon as he can tie the laces on his boots. Unlike professional academies, ÍA does not exist solely to produce footballers. The club is woven into the fabric of the local community. Its function is to develop well-rounded people as much as to polish a new left-back for the first team.
We leave the charcoal views in the boardroom as Lúðvík leads me to the indoor football house adjacent to the stadium. A 12-year-old boy with blonde hair and skittish energy thuds a ball against the concrete base of the wall, alternating between right foot and left. He is the youngest son of Joey Guðjónsson, the ÍA manager and former Burnley and Real Betis midfielder.
‘He’ll make it,’ Lúðvík says sagely. ‘He’s always in here.’
The under-19s are doing a possession drill. One team pings the ball to feet as their fluorescent-bibbed opponents try to thwart the tiki-taka. Lúðvík points out a languid player who wears a green headband to shield his ears from the chill. We stand, arms crossed, as he glides from space to space, omnipresent, as if time moves more slowly for him than his team-mates. He recently spent time on trial at Ajax.
Lúðvík treats the mental development of youth players like a Rubik’s cube: something to tweak until he intuits an effective combination for each individual. Sometimes he stays silent on the touchline for an entire match. He wants his players to learn to resolve problems themselves on the pitch. For a few parents, the coach is not coaching unless he is shouting. But most trust Lúðvík to innovate.
‘I’m looking forward to the next time a player gets pissed off on the pitch,’ he says with a grin. ‘Have you noticed the top-level coaches passing instructions to their players on bits of paper? When a player next gets frustrated, I’m going to pass him a bit of paper, folded up. It will just have a smiley face on it. I want to see how he reacts.’
The football industry is prone to forget that children are not mini-adults. Lúðvík personifies a shift away from authoritarian, hairdryer-treatment coaching, towards a style based on empathy and emotional intelligence. This is not exclusive to Icelandic coaches, but they are in the vanguard.
Oliver Sigurjónsson, too, is a proponent of this movement. When he fell out of love with playing football, he fell in love with coaching it.
Oliver is approaching his 23rd birthday when we meet in Bodø, Norway, where he plays for Bodø/Glimt. Although he has two Iceland caps, his stock as a player peaked seven years earlier. He was training with the first team at Breiðablik – 500m from the family home – by the time he was 15. He attracted interest from abroad. Lazio made an offer and he spent a period on trial at AC Milan. Yet, by the age of 19, Oliver was back in Iceland after a frustrating three-year stint at AGF in Denmark. He was back at Breiðablik, the club with a blazing torch on its badge, with his internal fire for football flickering.
‘I expected to be in the first team more in Denmark,’ he says, his stubble bristling on the collar of a black puffer jacket. ‘I didn’t get the playing time and I didn’t train as often as I wanted. I also broke up with my girlfriend, who I had been with for four years. There were a lot of bad things in one soup. I went back to Iceland with a bad feeling about being a professional footballer.’
Like the players who did not make the breakthrough at Norwich, Oliver was another young Icelander left deflated by a challenging experience in a foreign academy. The volume of young players seeking a professional contract means this is a common occurrence, though it rarely spells the end of the dream. There is always another route to a professional career, even if it requires a step back in order to take two steps forward.
‘There were a lot of effects on my confidence. I could have been like, “Fuck this, I’m quitting,” but I’m not like that as a person.’
Oliver is comfortable being different. For one thing, he is the only Icelander I have met who does not drink coffee. And he dealt with rejection in a different way to most.
He first helped out with coaching at Breiðablik when he was 13. He shadowed his own coach during sessions with the under-tens and under-11s. Oliver enjoyed the challenge with a whistle between his lips and a set of cones under his arm.
So, when he returned from Denmark, he completed a UEFA B course funded by Breiðablik. His first position was assistant coach with the under-14s, before moving on to coaching specific skills to the best players at under-16 level – shielding the ball, one-on-one situations in defence and attack, and so on. Oliver was rejuvenated and coaching was part of that.
‘I get really motivated when people doubt me,’ he snarls. ‘I just love it when people doubt me. I’m like, “I’m gonna fucking show them I’m good enough!” I took the coaching course because I wanted to become a better player by becoming a better coach. I want to have a better understanding of the game. I want to know what coaches are looking for. I want to know what scouts are looking for. I thought that if I could coach others, I could be a better coach of myself.’
Has it worked? ‘Yes. I’m a tactical player. I read the game rather than go into tackles all the time. I want to see the game one step ahead, read it defensively. In training I think about things that other players maybe don’t think about. I think about my position and why I might not be available to get the ball when another guy gets it.’
Coaching is one pillar of a supportive framework that Oliver has built around his football career. He also enrolled on a psychology module at the University of Reykjavík.
‘You have to be good with personalities,’ he responds when I raise my eyebrows. ‘With some people you need to be really hardcore and with others you have to be really soft. That’s something I struggle with as a person in the team and as a captain, like I was with the Iceland under-21s. Who am I approaching this way and who am I approaching that way?’
A personal training course followed. ‘I’ve had a bit of a problem with injuries,’ he elaborates. ‘If I have information that can help me, I can use it on myself. It’s my own body and my own career.’
I am taken aback by his unquenchable thirst for knowledge that will help him as a footballer and beyond into retirement. Oliver, however, is hesitant.
‘Sometimes when you have a Plan B, you don’t go after Plan A as much as you would if you only had Plan A. That’s something I’m struggling with now.’
It is not as if his Plan B is opening a bar or a fashion label, I point out.
‘That’s true. But I’m always thinking about Plan A through Plan B.’
Although Oliver saw coaching as a means to improve himself as a player, it cultivated a passion for drawing the best from others. ‘I love to teach people who want to be taught. I have my opinions on football and I really want to play my own style when I become a coach. I want to play the ball.’
Pep Guardiola and Jürgen Klopp are natural role models, as curators of the aggressive, technical brands of football Oliver favours. Julian Nagelsmann – the gilet-clad German who took Hoffenheim from the brink of relegation to the Champions League before joining RB Leipzig – has also made an impression.
‘He has an iPad and a big screen at the training ground,’ Oliver purrs, ‘so he can show the players what they are doing right and wrong. I love that. It’s like porn for coaches! You can give the players information in a concrete and quick method, so they stay focused and can learn more in a short space of time, because we don’t have so many Einsteins in football!’
He also has clear views on youth development, which is the area of coaching that garners his interest. During his own youth career he encountered some coaches who prioritised winning, and others who placed technical and tactical development above results. Oliver situates himself towards the development end of the spectrum. This is based on a belief in exposing children to challenging situations early, while providing the support to help them learn from the experience.
‘If I’m developing a guy who could play in a big league, he cannot experience mistakes, playing out from the back, or playing under pressure in a small area [for the first time] when he’s 20. He should have been doing that his whole career.’
But his commitment to short passing is not sacrosanct. The needs of the individual come first. ‘It’s about what type of players you have and what you are developing as a coach. If I had a big target man who was really good, I would sometimes play a long ball, even though I want to play short, just to improve him as a player. If Kolbeinn Sigþórsson [Iceland’s star striker] had never been played a high ball, he wouldn’t now win 19 headers out of 20. As a youth coach you have to adapt to make the best players for the senior team, teams abroad, the youth national team, and so on.’
I had spoken to Oliver during my visit to the Nordlandshallen in Bodø simply because he happened to be an Icelandic player based there. I had not expected him to be one of the most erudite individuals I would speak to in the course of my time in Iceland. Indeed, I had judged the book by the cover. Oliver is a professional footballer and has modelled for fashion company Jack and Jones in Iceland; the chances of him completing a full house by being engaging and articulate seemed slim.
When Siggi Eyjólfsson sat in his modest meeting room in 2002, he knew that coaching in Iceland would not change with an overnight revolution. Rather, it would change as a result of a succession of sensible decisions made over months and years and decades. Taking courses to each corner of the country was one such decision. The training DVDs was another. It happened incrementally as a long-term vision took shape. Conscious, creative coaches like Lúðvík and Oliver personify that vision. And there are many more like them.
There are disputes and imperfections in Iceland like anywhere else. Influential voices like Heimir Hallgrímsson and Þorgrímur Þráinsson have expressed concern that the next crop of Icelandic players will not reach the level of the current golden generation, despite their access to phenomenal facilities and coaching. Indeed, there is a farfetched suspicion that budding footballers now have it too easy in Iceland.
Coaches like Siggi, and those who have followed him at the KSÍ, are patient with their methods. To them, the next 20 years is more important than the next two, and they have created a model for youth development that will endure in the long term.
As Icelandic coaches pithily repeat, ‘nowhere else in the world can children play football for as long, with as well-educated coaches, in as good facilities’.