retired_marcias

The populations of the various European mainland nations could be forgiven, at least by each other, for forgetting that Iceland is, geographically, part of Europe also. Perched as it is, at the north western extremity of the continent, its existence has relatively little impact on the lives of the inhabitants of most of the rest of Europe. In football terms, Iceland is even more anonymous and football fans of Italy, of Spain, of Germany and other major nations could be forgiven, at least by each other, for not realising that Iceland even has any football teams. Still less that these teams compete, if 'compete' be the right word, in European competitions. Of course fans of random Latvian, Estonian, Irish and other footballing minnow nations' clubs may be aware of the likes of Keflavik, FH and IA Akranes as they do battle in the preliminary stages of qualifying to see who can go through to get caned in the next round by a team that maybe someone somewhere has actually heard of. In general though, Iceland may as well not exist in a footballing sense, as far as most people outside of the country itself are concerned.

Two men in particular had every intention of changing that viewpoint. As long as there were at least 11 men between the ages of 17 and 35 living in Iceland, there could be a football team. If there could be a football team there was no reason why it couldn't potentially beat any other football team of 11 men. Such was the simplistic logic of one Gretar Sigurdsson who, in February 2006, became manager of Icelandic Premier Division side Grindavik. Gretar was confident, bordering on arrogant, and declared it as a given that within 5 years, probably fewer, Grindavik would be dominating Icelandic domestic football and that making inroads in continental competitions would be the club's perennial aim. As far as Gretar was concerned, the first long-term aim was to become the first Icelandic club to qualify for the group stages of a European competition. Unsurprisingly, his bold and brazen comments in public immediately alienated the managers, chairmen and players of the other 9 Premiership clubs, most of whom saw Grindavik as a middle of the table, run of the mill team who might challenge FH, Fram and others for the odd Icelandic title, but nothing more.

As a neutral observer, one would have to side with the latter view. Grindavik is, after all, a small fishing village with a population of ~2300 and no history of producing world class, continental class or even national class footballers by the boatload. The financial constraints within which the club had to work meant that, initially at least, Gretar had next to no transfer funds. As it turned out, that hardly mattered anyway because it seemed that no-one wanted to come to Grindavik, even if the club's measly transfer budget could stretch to meeting a player's valuation. Gretar wasn't unduly bothered though. His job was to manage the team he had. The club had scouts and it would be their job to do the donkey work on finding players who might actually want to play for Grindavik.

So it was that Gretar sent his scouts out to Iceland, Scandinavia and Eastern Europe, the latter because he decided that it gave the best chance of yielding players who might actually think a move to Iceland was a step upwards. The scouts all had the same brief, they had a dossier to fill out on any player they spotted and if the dossier was not complete they should not even consider showing it to Gretar because he was not interested. Any players over 23 should be discounted immediately and again not brought to Gretar unless the scout in question wanted to be fired on the spot. Gretar had no interest in bringing ageing overpaid has-beens to Grindavik, he wanted a youthful team of largely unproven players who would be cheap to sign, willing to play for the club and hopefully develop into something special. Needless to say, he had faith in his ability and also in that of his coaches, for he was fiercely loyal as well as arrogant, to develop young players into stars to either sell on or hopefully to take Grindavik forward.

The other man whose aim would soon become to take an Icelandic club into European competition was Faroese national manager Jakup Poulsen, but it would be a while yet before he would enter the fray. For now he was busy watching his Faroese team get thrashed every time they took to the pitch. When the call would eventually come though, from IA Akranes, Poulsen would jump at the chance to manage a club side and, perhaps, actually win his first game of football as a manager after some 2 years in the job.

retired_marcias

Author's Note

I'll try to make sure I stick with this story, unlike previous efforts!

FM 2005/6, Icelandic and Danish leagues active, players from all Scandinavian nations plus some smaller European nations and Panama included. Not much else to say really from the technical side. I have 3 managers in the game, but my Panama manager will have no impat on the story at all unless he ever takes control of an Icelandic club side.

shannon2007

Yay a copycat \o/ :p (Apart from Panama of course. Panama Oh well whatever floats your boat!)

Only kidding, be interested to see how you go with this, good luck :thup:

retired_marcias

Yeah, I was inspired to try it again after your story, but Grindavik are a team I've wanted to manage properly for ages, my last attempt was aborted because it was FM2005 and I bought FM2006.

Kind of regretting including Danish league because I'm getting swamped with Danes coming through my youth system now and the Faroe Islands national team bombed so spectacularly that there'll be no strand involving them to my story - unlike you, I was such a failure I resigned after winning just 2 matches in 5 years

shannon2007

Thats a shame. I assume you have retain all Faroese players, and if you're lucky you should find Faroese regens in Iceland particularly for some reason. I find very very few in Faroes for some reason and the Icelandic/Danish ones are usually better. Give it another go :p

retired_marcias

Yeah, there's a big difference from my Whitley Bay save game where there were next to no U19 Faroese players coming through because I only had English league. Grindavik and Akranes get the odd Faroese regen, as do other Icelandic clubs, but so far most have been useless.

I might try again - I was just so hooked on my club sides that the constant international squad selections and matches were irritating me when I just kept losing and was stuck in a rut. Mebee I'll try new tactics and ideas with another manager

retired_marcias

Disclaimer

Any arrogant or patronising tone in any following posts of my story are purely for the sake of narration and in no way reflect the writer's personal opinions of his fellow FMSers. The writer is confident all his fellow FMSers will, in fact, have an indepth knowledge of Icelandic football, but wishes to be patronising, condescending and arrogant just because he feels like it

:p

retired_marcias

So, Iceland...I guess none of you really care how Grindavik did in that little domestic league somewhere up in the northern Atlantic Ocean. You just want to fast forward to the bit were we stumble and bump our way through the early qualifying rounds of the champions league or UEFA cup, past some other team you've never heard of and couldn't care less about. You just want to get to the part where we get to travel to your beloved Manchester United, Chelsea or Juventus and get humiliated live on national television in whatever important country you live in. There's not much point introducing you to our squad or telling you who we added because you'll never have heard of them and will have no idea who plays where, who is good and who is bad and you no doubt don't care anyway. Basically you've browsed your way to the wrong page and now find yourself accidentally reading a random story about a tiny little football team from a village so small its entire population can fit within its "stadium". And let's face it, it's not as if the 2500 capacity Grindavikurvollur rivals the Bernebeu or Nou Camp in size.

Well, tough. Cos you know what? I do care about Iceland, I do care about Icelandic football and I am passionate about Grindavik football club so you'll have to put up with hearing about all those players you can neither pronounce nor spell nor even find the right keys on your keyboard if you did know how to spell them. That said, I'll spare you a pointless list of names of those who ply their trade at Grindavik. If they're good, you'll hear about them anyway and if they're not then I've just saved a few seconds of your life by not bothering to introduce you to them, suffice to say they won't have stayed long at Grindavik. 7 players in total joined those already at Grindavik during the 2006 season. Of those, three have made a significant impact. Jon Skaftason is a goal scoring central midfielder whose goal per game record is impressive despite, or perhaps because of, never really establishing himself as a first choice pick in a competitive midfield. Emil Alricsson is a pacey Swedish left-back who can dribble and cross with the best of them and does occasionally defend too. His arrival just 2 months after another left-back, Brandur Brekkan has left the latter having to content himself with warming the bench for large parts of his Grindavik career. And then there's Guðjon Aðalsteinn Guðmundsson, a clinical finishing nippy Faroese striker who has faced strong competition for his place in the team, but has come through it all the stronger.

retired_marcias

As for the action? Well, it began, as ever in Iceland, with the extravagant Upper League cup which essentially eliminates the need for pre-season friendlies for those not too fussed about winning the competition, containing as it does an 8-team group section of 7 games before an 8-team knockout phase. Gretar Sigurdsson's opinion was, unsurprisingly, that the '4 from 8' qualifying criterion was hardly the most taxing and arduous 'cup' competition ever invented. Defeat at HK in his very first game was, therefore, an annoyance and disappointment, but little more as Grindavik soon found their feet, beating Volsungur, Þor Akureyri[/b] and Vikingur and drawing at KR before slipping up to another 0-1 defeat, this time at KA. The final group game saw Grindavik host competition favourites FH who should have provided a stern test. In the event, having taken the lead after just 5 minutes they blew up in style, going on to lose 6-1 despite Grindavik playing for an hour with just 10 men. Scotsman Ian Paul McShane ran the midfield, striding forward to net a hat-trick as well as an assist.

On to the knockout stages and Gretar was confident a home tie against the nobodies of Þrottur would provide little in the way of a challenge and basically just give Grindavik a chance to strut their stuff. 90 minutes later he was rather less than pleased as, despite creating a glut of chances, Grindavik had scored just 2 and contrived to let in as many at the other end. Extra time it was then, and Grindavik's leaky defence creaked again after veteran defender/striker Sinisa Kekic gave them a 106th minute lead, only for Þrottur to bag a 118th minute equaliser. Now Gretar is a confident, even arrogant man, but even he couldn't profess to be expecting much from his team in a penalty shootout. A more useless bunch of spot kick takers you would struggle to find if you plucked 11 random people off Grindavik quayside. However, 3 of them somehow found the back of the net whilst Þrottur's first 3 penalties were all pathetic. That they finally scored with their 4th was academic as Grindavik nudged through to the semi-finals 3-1 on penalties.

Now no doubt I will dwell here on Grindavik failures in the future, but to be honest I don't feel at all disposed to give you lot the satisfaction of reading in great detail about the semi-final debacle. Suffice to say it lasted 120 minutes, we had 19 shots on goal, scoring none, Fram had a single shot on target all match and chose the 119th minute to slot that 1 solitary shot into the back of our net. So that was that. Who cares though anyway? It's only a glorified pre-season friendly league/cuppy thing. Gretar somehow doubted that people on the streets of Barcelona, of Newcastle, of Munich and Rome would be discussing for years to come who won the 2006 Icelandic Upper League cup. They would though, over the coming years, start to discuss Grindavik, Gretar was confident of that. The club would make waves in Europe one day and that day would be soon, it would be his destiny to lead them there.

retired_roo_girl_9

Love your story man!!!
Hope i will be continued very soon!