Petur Petursson is coming home

Peter van Duyl
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Friday 10 October 2008

There is one Icelander who will play a home game Saturday night.

Assistant manager Petur Petursson returns to De Kuip, where he had his heyday as a player, 30 years ago.

A man walks through the central lobby of the Bilderberg Parkhotel in Rotterdam

A stubbled chin and a trendy pair of glasses on his nose.

Under the tracksuit of the Icelandic FA he wears a pair of checkered slippers, that he brought from home.

He shakes hands and says in fluent Dutch: "Hi, I am Peter Petursson."

On the outside nothing about Petursson reminds of the player who fired up the fans of Feyenoord Rotterdam.

The long hair, once his trademark, has been clipped and little is left of the juvenile restlessness.

He'll be 50 next year - a grandfather and a balanced person.

Exactly 30 years after his debut in De Kuip he is back in Rotterdam.

It brought back a flood of good memories.

"It's like I am coming home," he says.

"I went for a walk through the city center this week. It has changed a lot with all these new buildings, but I love it. Rotterdam has always been a great city."

Petursson played for Feyenoord almost four years, divided over two periods.

Especially between 1978 and 1981 he was very successful, scoring 42 goals in 68 league games, totaling 60 in 106 official games.

Two of these he scored in the Cup final of 1980 against Ajax (3-1).

The forward grew to be one of the most popular players ever in Rotterdam.

Petursson knew as a young boy he was going to play in Europe, even when a professional career was years away.

"As a young boy I wanted to be a hippie in Amsterdam. Outside my window at home there was a busstop. There used to be a lot of hippies there. I thought it was great. The long hair, the cloths and the flowers."

"My father had me cut my hair once a month. I always looked like a soldier. But I knew at that time: when I have the chance I'll grow my hair long. And what do you know: I wanted to be a hippie in Amsterdam, and I ended up in Rotterdam. Not bad, huh?"

In front of him lie a couple of scrapbooks, all yellow with age.

Petursson gently thumbs through them.

He lingers at the three goals he once scored in European Cup match against Malmö FF.

He calls the Cup final against Ajax 'one of his best memories'.

In Rotterdam he was hosted by Jan en Ko Snijders.

Arriving here on Tuesday his first was to the old address, where he embraced his foster-mother (Jan Snijders sadly passed away).

"They meant a lot to me. They housed me an taught me the language."

"I never knew any difficulties at Feyenoord. I cam here in October of 1978. I went back home for Christmas, but I had only been home a few days and I was longing to go back. I made the team here pretty quickly and had a good time. Training in the daytime and than play the game in De Kuip. Fantastic!"

In the greatest stadium of the Netherlands Petursson had his best days of his professional career.

And that is why - by way of exception - he took along his wife and his four kids for this match of Iceland against Oranje.

"I want them to see the stadium," he explains.

"Of course I have told them all about it. But you can never fully understand if you haven't seen it with your own eyes. Now they can see for themselves where I played."

In 1984 - after stints with Anderlecht and Antwerp in Belgium - Petursson returned to Feyenoord for one season.

He was on the training ground daily with Johan Cruyff and Willem van Hanegem who had already retired and were scaling down in De Kuip.

"There was this old coffee machine and the two of them would often sit there smoking and talk about football for hours and hours. And what was great about it: they would never agree. I was a bit of a cheeky lad, but with these two I would listen. Sitting there and thinking: bligh me, I'm here with two of the World's best football players."

It was strange, but then at the age of 25 Petursson had already peaked.

After his departure for Belgium he had increasingly had trouble with the discipline that professional football demands.

"At Feyenoord everything was well taken care of. No problems there. But in Belgium no one looked after me. I felt lonely so I would go out on the town. And now? Ha! I haven't been out for 10 years. I have two grand children and prefer to stay at home."

Petursson went back to Iceland in 1987 and turned his back on football.

He became a happy man as a photographer until the day they approached him to become manager of KR Reykjavik.

The temptation was too big to resist.

"At Feyenoord I played with Mario Been. If there were two players of whom everybody knew for sure they would never be managers it was us two. And look at us now!"

But still Petursson has his doubts.

"As head coach I have never been truly happy. I like it a lot better to work with the young. I have just signed a three year contract with the youth academy of KR. At the highest level players are like children sometimes. But I enjoy to watch a youngster getting better and better."

He combines it with the job as assistant manager of the national team.

"Last year Olafur Johannesson, the manager, called me. He wanted me to join because I always speak my mind. I do a lot of analyses. And I have watched the footage of Holland-Australia and Macedonia-Holland extensively. The two of us then talk about it and he makes the decisions. When the players go out on the pitch tomorrow they can not be taken by surprise. They know what might happen."

It seems a superfluous question whether the current generation of Icelandic players know who Petur Petursson is.

Next week Iceland will choose it's All Time Best Player.

Petursson is one of 10 nominees, together with Asgeir Sigurvinsson, Arnor Gudjohnsen and his son Eidur Gudjohnsen, the current captain of Iceland and forward at Barcelona.

"For the TV-show they needed footage of my goals at Feyenoord and they also brought these scrapbooks. It's not that I read nothing else at the moment, but it's at these moments that I realize what a great time it was back then in Rotterdam."