Aron Jóhannsson on the Gold Cup: 'It's up to us to prove we can win it'

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/jul/15/aron-johannsson-usa-gold-cup

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There have been a couple of big changes since Aron Jóhannsson made his controversial decision to sign up for the United States. There’s a lot more competition for positions up front spots, for a start: Gyasi Zardes, Bobby Wood, Julian Green, and fellow Eredivisie-ist Rubio Rubin, to name but a few of coach Jürgen Klinsmann’s new options in attack.

Jóhannsson doesn’t have the flashy hair of Zardes, the big international goals of Wood, or a World Cup highlight like Green. What the 24-year-old does have over many of his younger team-mates, in addition to a few more years’ experience, is a bag full of European goals.

A year ago, after his first full season with AZ Alkmaar, he finished third in the race for the Dutch league’s golden boot. He battled injury through the rest of the year – including at the World Cup, where he would spend four hours a day with the physio – only to finish the season so strongly that AZ took third place. It was a result which both caught the club by surprise, and delivered it a spot in the Europa League.

USA fans have been overheard asking what all the fuss is about, but even for the national team his goals-per-minutes ratio is better than one every other game.

Then there’s quality of his goals. And the array. Bicycle kicks, long-range volleys, sneaky little ones from the outside of the boot – it’s quite a selection.

Jóhannsson was born in Mobile, Alabama, to Icelandic students. When he was three, the family moved back to Reykjavik. At 17, he returned to the States – to Florida – where he trained at a private academy for a year. He would have stayed longer if the financial crisis hadn’t hit Iceland so hard, but he took an important lesson with him: talent won’t blossom without hard work.

Back in Reykjavik, he went semi-pro. Then, at the start of this decade, he set off for the European mainland. After three seasons in Denmark – in which he scored the country’s fastest hat-trick on record – he was signed to AZ Alkmaar in the Dutch top flight. It foreshadowed a change of allegiance at international level.

A year after his last outing with Iceland’s under-21s – and not long after a phone call from Klinsmann – Jóhannsson was running out in the red and white hoops of USA in Sarajevo. It didn’t go down well with some back home.

The German-raised Americans who chose to play for the US have been treated with good will in Deutschland, for the most part. Even Fabian Johnson, who won a European title with their under-21 side.

Related: USMNT's Fabian Johnson interview: 'I always felt American, I just grew up in Germany'

By contrast, Jóhannsson has had to deal with allegations of treasonous behaviour by those upset such a talent had slipped through their grasp. “I didn’t really care what anybody said,” he tells the Guardian. “It was my choice and my choice only, and I made it, and to this day I couldn’t be more happy about it.”

He plays for America, but he still follows the fortunes of Iceland very closely. “Yeah, of course, and especially nowadays, because it’s very exciting what they are doing,” he says. “They are very close to qualifying for the European Championships.”

Iceland’s emergence as a serious football nation is the other big change to take place these last few years. Not that he didn’t see it coming. He is very much a part of this wave of change. The country is fielding fewer Vikings and more “footballers”, and, he says, it’s all started with an indoor artificial pitch. It was the country’s first, and it opened up the road from him when he was in his pre-teen years.

“Until then, we just played outside on the gravel in winter, or inside on like a basketball court.

“When the indoor turf came – it was stationed I think 200 yards from my house or something – I went there as many times I could. So I think I gained a lot from that.

“You see the difference now in players. Before, with players from Iceland, you always think big, strong physical players. Now after the turf came, you can train indoors the whole year, there’s been more football kind of players, small and technical. Not so physical as it was, as it used to be.

“Indoors on turf, you can work on your technique the whole year. But outdoors in the wind, in the snow, and on the gravel, it’s difficult.”

Jóhannsson could well be back in Iceland next season, if only with AZ in the Europa League. The focus right now, though, is on the Gold Cup.

“It’s been up and down,” he says of the US team’s form since the World Cup. “We’ve been using a lot of players and trying new things, but we look forward and there’s always this belief we can win this tournament.

“We have a team that has the qualities to win. It’s just up to ourselves to prove basically to ourselves and to the rest of the country that we can win it.”