Ruthless Sigurdsson hails unselfish team mates

AG Kobenhavn eased to a 31-25 win over Serbian title holders Partizan Belgrade in their VELUX EHF Champions League Group D opener on Saturday, largely thanks to an effervescent performance by their Icelandic winger Valur Gudjon Sigurdsson, the game’s top scorer with 12 goals.

But the steely-eyed Icelander refused to get carried away and heaped praise on his unselfish team mates. "I don’t care how many goals I score because the most important thing is that we play well as a team and win," Sigurdsson told the EHF in an exclusive interview.

"No one can score by himself, you have to work together as a team and the top scorer always gets a lot of help from the other guys on the team," he said.

The Danish champions are newcomers to the VELUX EHF Champions League and Sigurdsson pointed out that the comfortable win over Partizan, themselves debutants in Europe’s premier club competition, could not provide an accurate barometer how far AG Kobenhavn could get in the competition this season.

"We still don’t know where we stand, we will find out in the upcoming games against tougher rivals. The favourites to win the trophy are always the same, big clubs like Kiel and Hamburg, as well as Barcelona and Atletico Madrid.

They are the fantastic four, if one may call them that, while Montpellier and AG Kobenhavn should not be too far behind. But we have only played one match and the only thing we want right now is to improve and try to get better and better every game.

It’s our first season in the VELUX EHF Champions League, there is a big difference between playing just the national league and this competition too, so we will see how far we will go. We have to get used to the busy schedule and to this level of playing," said Sigurdsson.

Iceland are likely to figure as one of the dark horses in the EHF EURO 2012 in Serbia next January, but the speedy winger believes their chances of success largely depend on whether all their top players will be fit for the 16-team tournament.

"We are very vulnerable to injuries, Arnor Atlason got injured today against Partizan and if he should be unfit in January it will be tough because we don’t have too many players in his position," Sigurdsson pointed out.

"There is still a long way to go, right now we are focused on playing for our clubs because we have three months to go to the European Championship and we will have a better idea what our prospects are when we meet in January," he said.

"The first two or three warm-up matches before the tournament will show where we stand."