‘Hard to beat, no easy goals’

STRONG DEFENSIVE mind, risk-taker, smooth operator, team-oriented.

These are only some of the traits used to describe the new senior men’s national team head coach, Heimir Hallgrimsson, by Icelandic journalist Guðmundur Ásgeirsson and Runólfur Þórhallsson, traits they believe will be critical assets in his bid to end the two-decade wait for a Reggae Boyz World Cup Finals appearance.

The 55-year-old Hallgrimsson was officially unveiled on Friday, the latest foreign-born coach tasked with leading Jamaica back to the glory days of 1998, their first and only senior men’s World Cup appearance.

Additionally, Hallgrimsson sees the potential within the team as greater than his work with the Icelandic national team as both an assistant and head coach, which resulted in a quarter-final run at Euro 2016 and World Cup qualification in 2018.

Ásgeirsson, who writes for Fotbolti.Net, believes that there is merit to Hallgrimsson’s claim because of the level of individual talent that the country has to choose from compared to what he started with in Iceland, something that Hallgrimsson stated during his unveiling.

“I think Jamaica has a lot of great players with so much quality. It’s exciting for Heimir to work with these players. Maybe the Icelandic team didn’t have as much individual quality as Jamaica does so it’s interesting to see if he can take them even further than the Icelandic team,” Ásgeirsson told The Sunday Gleaner.

“I think there is also more of a possibility for him to win a trophy with Jamaica in the Gold Cup,” Ásgeirsson added. “Jamaica also has a larger population than Iceland, so maybe Heimir sees the possibility to help football grow in the country as a whole – maybe he sees the change to help the country create even more quality footballers than before.”

ADAPT AND LEARN

While local pundits have outlined and Hallgrimsson himself admitted that he will have to adapt and learn about the Jamaican culture before implementing his philosophy on to the team, what can be encouraging for Jamaican fans is his philosophy, particularly in defence where it has been the country’s Achilles heel.

Þórhallsson said that he kept the same principles cultivated between himself and Swedish coach Lars Lagerbäck during their Euro 2016 qualifying and tournament run, making them a hard team to break down and adapting when necessary to suit his players as sole head coach during their run to the 2018 World Cup, becoming the smallest nation to qualify.

“He went from a rigorous 4-4-2 system (that worked very well) to a more 4-2-3-1. Maybe that showed his tactical side as well because we lost some key players in that 4-4-2 to injury. Instead of being married to the system, he changed it to suit his players,” Þórhallsson assessed.

“One might say he is a defensive coach but then again we scored the most goals in qualification for the World Cup 2018 and we had Croatia, Turkey and Ukraine in our group,” Þórhallsson added. “Hard to beat and no easy goals might be two of his motto if I were to guess.”

For a nation that conceded 22 goals in the previous World Cup qualifying campaign, second most only to Honduras (26), it is an assessment about Jamaica that Ásgeirsson also concurs with a clear understanding of each player’s responsibilities.

“I think you can safely say that Iceland was one of the best defensive teams in the world under Lars and Heimir,” Ásgeirsson noted.

Hallgrimsson the tactician, however, is just complemented by Hallgrimsson the man manager in Ásgeirsson and Þórhallsson’s eyes.

Ásgeirsson believes that his similar experience when he started as an assistant will be invaluable to a programme that has experienced constant conflict on and off the field.

“When he took over as national team coach in Iceland, the team was a shambles and I feel like the federation was in a similar place to what I’ve heard about the Jamaican federation lately,” Ásgeirsson recalled. “There was a lot of room for improvement and Heimir and Lars Lagerback saw that. They saw that it was as important that the players felt well off the pitch as they did on it. So they put a lot of focus into improving the framework around the team so everything was well taken care of. I think that helped a lot with the results on the pitch.”

Behind his calm personality, however, will be a man that will not be afraid to make the tough decisions when necessary as he hopes to mirror the success that has made him revered in his homeland.

“He is by no mean one of those coaches who we might class as a ‘dictator’, but he will put the hammer down when needed to. If players are betraying his trust, he will not hesitate to make big decisions about their future,” Þórhallsson warned. “His positive outlook on life, his positive demeanour, I just can’t see how people will not like him unless the results are terrible. He will do his best to connect the team with the fans and if that works (Jamaican fans) are in for a treat.”

daniel.wheeler@gleanerjm.com

HALLGRIMSSON PROFILE

Age: 55

Birthplace:

Vestmannaeyjar, Iceland

Coaching career:

Hottur Women (1993)

IBV women (1999-2001, 2003-2004

IBV men (2002, 2006-11)

Iceland senior men nation team: (Assistant: 2011-2013

Joint head coach with Lars Lagerbäck 2013-2016)

Head coach (2016-2018)

Al-Arabi (2018-2021)