Finally – well, for me at least – the Icelandic Premier League (aka the Pepsi Max League for sponsorship reasons) kicks off this Friday. We’re getting a treat for an opener as last season‘s champions Valur kick off the 2021 campaign by welcoming the sleeping giant ÍA. The teams are far from evenly matched as it‘s widely predicted that Valur will retain the title (or at least hang in the top two) while ÍA will struggle to maintain their spot in the league.
Valur is a team that puts a lots of emphasis on title success and in recent years they’ve been funding their top three sports departments (football, handball and basketball) to that means (both men and women‘s teams have celebrated title glory in those sports recently). Even though the 2020 season was cut short due to the third wave of Covid-19 breaking out (with four games to play) the tightly trained Valur ship was meant to keep in the direction of a trophy. The backroom staff and board made the executive decision that in preparation for the 2021 season, the team should implement more professional schedules and methodologies – keep in mind that the league and footballing environment is largely Semi professional and few players make their singular living in Iceland by playing football. As the pre-season kicked off Valur seemingly reaped the benefits of that approach and didn’t lose a game of their 10, scoring 37 goals in the meantime. The environment for bringing in stronger foreign players from abroad is often weird and the semi-pro approach often sees teams bring in their marquee foreign players into the squad shortly before the proper season starts, meaning that those players often seem to bring disjointed performances as they try to gel rapidly into the team. This does not apply to Valur today.
As per the quality of players Valur has at their disposal, there’s hard to find a weakest link. However – a gun to my head – their defense has less quality in the depth than other areas of the squad. Valgeir Lunddal, last season’s young player of the year ventured abroad to Häcken in Allsvenskan and center back Eiður Aron Sigurbjörnsson opted to return home to ÍBV in the tier below. While this might come back to haunt them against other top ranked teams, they seemingly shouldn’t have problems when facing an opponent like ÍA, predicted to struggle this season. And rightfully so, I might add. Why? Let’s have a look on them.
As the 21st century imploded into our lives, the five-in-a-row title glory that ÍA enjoyed mid-90s seemed a distant dream and as the years have gone by, ÍA has been diminished onto a struggling top division side. ÍA has however overseen development of future Icelandic talent (including but not limited to Arnar Gunnlaugsson, Siggi Jonsson and Joey Guðjónsson) and in recent years their strengths have been building up on this unique footballing talent seemingly emerging from their midst – more detailed selling their youngest players to bigger clubs in hopes of seeing revenue windfall and sell-on clauses help the development of their club.
I’m definitely not knocking it, the talent we’ve seen emerging from ÍA recently is going far, such as Arnór Sigurðsson who currently plays for CSKA Moscow and the brightest star of Icelandic football, Ísak Bergmann Jóhannesson currently at Norrköping and his magnificent performances at young age have been drawing the attention of larger continental clubs. The flipside to that fiscally beneficial coin is the gap those departures leave in their squad. Stefán Teitur Þórðarson who scored 8 goals in 17 games last season departed for Danish 1st Division promotion hopefuls Silkeborg and Tryggvi Hrafn Haraldsson departed on loan to Lillestrom in Norway only to end up at today’s opponents Valur. Tryggvi scored 12 goals in 17 games last season and those two amounted to slightly more than half of their 39 total goals last season. Both are home grown at the club (and have long standing family ties to the club too) and the replacements that have been brought in aren’t looking likely to be as clinical.
To praise ÍA, they run a tight ship with their youth program. Their u19s competed in the UEFA Youth League in 2019 and caught the eye for a decent performance against Derby County in the second round after thrashing Estonian Levadia in the first round. Players from their academy have often featured frequently in the youth national teams of Iceland and three ÍA-grown players featured in the recently finished u21 European Championship (second best number of players after Breiðablik with 5). This season we’re likely to see them give more younger players minutes since they’ve been cutting down their squad to stay afloat in the rough financial environment brought on by the Coronavirus outbreak and ÍA actually managed to clear some debts last summer via sell on clauses. So, their success might not be noted in the trophy room this season.
There’s a marginal gap in quality between the teams and I’m expecting it to be visible from the get-go. Valur suffered a shock 4-1 defeat to ÍA last season (at home) and that has got to sting a bit to decorated head coach Heimir Guðjónsson. The ÍA squad should not be anticipating relegation but what should be key is the points they can potentially win against similar opponents, rather than the best teams. The fitness level between a quasi-full time professional team like Valur against a youthful but somewhat inexperienced side like ÍA can be key as the Pepsi Max Deild clubs will play seven league games (out of 22 total) in the first month of the competitive season.
There are two bets I’ve taken on this game related to my anticipation of Valur taking charge early on:
Valur to win both halves. Bet 365 @ 2.50
Valur -1 alternative first half asian handicap. Bet365 @ 2.300
Those bets were shared with TeamCBK members last Wednesday and the aforementioned odds are down a bit. Each have been shared for a unit (while confident, the first match of the season might play a factor here).
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