Aron Einar Malmquist Gunnarsson, born 22 April 1989, Akureyri, Iceland.
PART ONE
Aron Gunnarsson joined his local side Þór Akureyri in 2005, and the timing was lucky, because the Icelandic government had by then put money into indoor pitches and that meant young players could finally train all year round instead of waiting for the thaw. The improvement was quick and obvious, and at seventeen the midfielder packed his bags and moved to the Netherlands to join the youth academy at AZ. He debuted for AZ during the 2007–08 campaign, although that turned out to be his only first-team match for the side. Later that season he also made his international debut for Iceland, on 2 February 2008, still only eighteen years old.
The Dutch chapter was short, but it caught the eye of English clubs, and on 17 June 2008 Gunnarsson signed for Coventry City of the Championship on a three-year contract for an undisclosed fee. He did not have to wait long for his first taste of English football, because he made his debut on the opening day of the season against Norwich City, and Coventry won 2–0, which is the sort of start that settles a young foreigner’s nerves and wins over a sceptical crowd in the same afternoon. His first goal for the club arrived on 14 February 2009 in an FA Cup tie against Blackburn Rovers of the Premier League and the attention that followed was serious enough that Coventry offered him an improved deal on 12 March. His first league goal came against Crystal Palace, and by the end of that first campaign in England he had been voted Coventry City Supporters’ Player of the Year and had collected the club’s Community Award as well.
The following season confirmed that Gunnarsson was no flash in the pan, since he played 42 times and scored once, against Middlesbrough, and a midfield player who holds things together without anyone noticing is worth more than the goal tally suggests. Coventry began the 2010–11 campaign well and looked like pushing for the play-offs, and Gunnarsson scored his first goal of the campaign against newly promoted Millwall, though Coventry lost 3–1 that day, and the goals kept coming in a way that surprised everyone, himself included.
He then scored his first goal at the Ricoh Arena against Preston North End, and three days later he scored again against Doncaster Rovers, two goals in two matches for a man who had never been known as a scorer. His contract was running down, however, and on 10 December he said publicly that he wanted to stay at Coventry, but then he picked up the first red card of his professional life against Norwich City, which was not the best way to strengthen a negotiating position. Talks between his agent and the club dragged on without an agreement, Coventry set a deadline and watched it pass, and his agent eventually confirmed that Cardiff City, also of the Championship, were favourites to sign him.
Before that move was settled, there was an international tournament to play, because Gunnarsson was in the Iceland squad for the 2011 European Under-21 Championship in Denmark. The first match went about as well as anyone could have hoped, with Iceland beating the hosts 3–1 in front of a Danish crowd that had expected something else, but it was followed by a 2–0 defeat to Belarus in which he was sent off, and the two losses were enough to put Iceland out of the tournament on a tie-breaker. He was a regular for the senior side by then, and the Under-21 run was a bonus, though a bittersweet one.
PART TWO
On 8 July 2011 Aron Gunnarsson agreed a three-year deal with Cardiff City on a free transfer, as the fifth signing of the new manager Malky Mackay, and because he was under 24 Coventry were due compensation, which softened the blow for them a little. His debut came on 7 August in the first match of the season, when he played the full 90 minutes of a narrow 1–0 away win at West Ham United, and that was the sort of statement of intent that managers love. His second game was a different story, because he limped off with an ankle injury after only ten minutes of action against Bristol City and spent a week on the side-lines, but he came back after the September international break and insisted the injury was behind him. On 22 October he found the net twice in a high-scoring 5–3 triumph over Barnsley and was named man of the match, and by the new year it was quite obvious that Mackay had bought a real bargain.
In February 2012 Gunnarsson played the whole of the League Cup final at Wembley, where Cardiff met Liverpool and lost 3–2 on penalties, a cruel way to lose a trophy. The disappointment did not last, since Cardiff won the Championship in 2012–13 and went up to the Premier League, and by then Gunnarsson was the club’s captain-in-waiting in everything but name. His other captaincy had already been settled, because he was named permanent captain of Iceland before a friendly against the Faroe Islands in August 2012, at the age of 23 and ahead of his 29th cap, which is young to be handed the armband by any country’s standards.
The step up to the top flight brought him a moment he is unlikely to forget. On 25 August 2013, in Cardiff’s first home game in the Premiership and the club’s first home game in the English top flight since 1962, Manchester City arrived as one of the title favourites and went ahead through Edin Dzeko after 52 minutes with a drive from 25 yards. Eight minutes later Joe Hart saved from Fraizer Campbell, the ball ran loose, and Gunnarsson swept it past him for Cardiff’s first goal in the Premier League, and the stadium erupted. Campbell then scored twice, in the 79th and 87th minutes, to put Cardiff 3–1 up, and although Álvaro Negredo headed a late second for City, the Welsh side held on for a famous 3–2 win. Cardiff were relegated at the end of that season, which spoiled the memory a bit, but nobody could take the goal away from him.
The international side was building something at the same time. Under Gunnarsson’s captaincy, Iceland reached the play-off round of World Cup qualifying for the first time, and in November 2013 they ran into Croatia and lost 2–0 on aggregate, which was a disappointment but also proof that a nation of around 330,000 people could compete at that level. On 10 October 2014 he scored his first senior international goal in a 3–0 away win against Latvia in Euro 2016 qualifying, and he scored again in a 2–1 win over the Czech Republic on 12 June 2015. That same month he signed a new contract with Cardiff running until the summer of 2018. On 6 September, in a goalless draw with Kazakhstan at the Laugardalsvöllur in Reykjavík, he was sent off in the last minute, but the point was enough to put Iceland into their first major tournament, so nobody in the stadium was in the mood to hold the red card against him.
Euro 2016 in France was where the whole world got to know what Gunnarsson and his team-mates were about. He led the Icelanders out at their first major tournament, and the first match, on 14 June in Saint-Étienne, finished 1–1 against Portugal, with Cristiano Ronaldo complaining afterwards about Iceland’s approach, though he still agreed to swap shirts with the Icelandic skipper in the dressing room. A 1–1 draw with Hungary followed, and then a 2–1 win over Austria sent Iceland through in second place in the group. In the round of 16 on 27 June they beat England 2–1 in Nice, one of the great shocks in the history of the European Championship, and England’s manager resigned within hours. France ended the run with a 5–2 win in the quarter-final, but Gunnarsson had played in all five games and the men from the north had nothing to be ashamed of.
When Gunnarsson returned from France, Derby County and Norwich City were both said to be interested, but Cardiff’s manager Paul Trollope called him a very important player for the club and he stayed. His performances under Trollope, and later under Neil Warnock, who replaced him, were good enough to earn him the club’s Player of the Year award at the end of the 2016–17 campaign. The following season, 2017–18, was harder, because a string of injuries in the first half of the campaign meant he could not hold down a place in the starting eleven, and Cardiff offered him a new contract that he turned down.
He came back for the final run-in, scored the winning goal against Nottingham Forest, and helped Cardiff win promotion to the Premier League. In May 2018 he was named in Iceland’s 23-man squad for the World Cup in Russia, a second major tournament for a country that had never been to one before 2016, and in July he signed a new one-year deal with Cardiff. Then, in March 2019, it was announced that Gunnarsson would leave the Bluebirds at the end of the campaign. Still not ready to retire, the explosive and hard-running midfield combatant would later play for several clubs, including Al-Arabi and Al-Gharafa in Qatar.