New Blue Gylfi Will Be Worth The Wait

Everton broke their transfer record in August to sign the sublime Gylfi Sigurdsson from Swansea City. The Icelander’s consistent brilliance and variety of talents have dazzled footballing luminaries across the world - and they are only too happy to admit it…

- Paul McNamara

Ronald Koeman, it turns out, is but one of the high-rolling members of Gylfi Sigurdsson’s vocal fan club.

The Everton boss made no bones about it when he had finally reeled in his prize catch this summer: Koeman, by his own reckoning, had landed “one of the Premier League’s best players” when the Blues completed a Club-record deal to procure Sigurdsson from Swansea City.

In the guarded world of professional football, with its unwritten rules about keeping your cards close to your chest, Koeman’s statement demanded people sit up and listen.

And anyway, if the topic is GylfiSigurdsson… well, rules are there to be broken.

Take Mauricio Pochettino as a case in point. The Argentine is in charge of a Tottenham Hotspur team stuffed with firstrate internationals and capable of producing some truly compelling football.

But even with Harry Kane and Dele Alli at his disposal, not to mention Christian Eriksen and Mousa Dembele… Pochettino rues the one that got away.

Sigurdsson was sold by Spurs before Pochettino had the chance to get his feet under the table at White Hart Lane three years ago.

“I think after he moved to Swansea and we saw his development, he was a perfect player for us,” said Pochettino last year.

“Every time we meet him and see him, he shows his quality – not only as a player but as a man.”

Koeman and Pochettino’s respective eulogies represent some commendation for the application and talent of a footballer who arrived on these shores from Iceland as a callow 15-year-old, with only two aims in life.

One was to simply forge a professional career in his chosen sport. So far, so normal. Remarkably, the other determining factor that underpinned Sigurdsson’s decision to leave his homeland was the 12-months-a-year access to grass pitches in this country.