October 20, 2012: Player of the Year Awards:
With his 22 league goals, the Brazilian striker Clayton Soares do Nascimento was a major contributor to ÍF Fuglafjørður’s good run where they challenged EB/Streymur for the title until the last round of the season.
However, Soares didn’t start the season very strongly as the coach wasn’t so impressed with the tall Brazilian’s physical shape and rarely had him in the starting line-up in the opening matches.
But that changed in round 8 when Soares scored a hat trick in their 4-1 away to HB Tórshavn and after that, Soares was the first man to be written on the match sheet for the rest of the season.
Until 33-year old Soares changed to ÍF this season, he as strangely enough only played for lesser teams, either in the top flight or the second tier, even though he has been scoring bucket-loads of goals wherever he has been since he first joined FS Vágar in 2002 and then later played for B71 Sandoy and 07 Vestur.
In total he has scored 61 goals in 122 league games in the top division and 91 in 92 games in the second tier, in addition to 14 in 24 cup games.
Soares will also play for ÍF next season.
42-year old Jákup Mikkelsen was for the fourth time voted as the best goalkeeper in the Faroese league; winning it also in 2009, 2008 and in 2005 when he was also voted Player of the Year.
Mikkelsen had yet another stable, although maybe not spectacular, season between the sticks, well helped by a good defensive unit which conceded fewest goals of all the teams, and together they managed 9 clean sheets (where Mikkelsen was deputized by Tórður Thomsen in one of those games).
In August, Mikkelsen also became the oldest ever goalkeeper to have played a FIFA registered international match when he played the first half in the friendly match away to Iceland on 15 August, when Mikkelsen was 42 years and one day old!
Mikkelsen says he will continue to play next season, but that it’s not quite clear on what level. But it should be a safe bet putting some money on Mikkelsen continuing at the highest level.
ÍF’s Danish coach Flemming Christensen, who is in his first season in the Faroe Islands, picked up the award for Coach of the Year.
Amongst the three nominated coaches, that did not include EB/Streymur’s champion coach Heðin Askham, the choice of the runners up coach was reasonable obvious, and according to ÍF’s chairman, the Dane is maybe the most professional person ever been involved with Faroese footballl.
It’s not decided yet if the coach will continue for another season, but the parties will start the negotiations next week.
With a hat trick in the last match of the season, 22-year old KÍ Klaksvík forward Páll Klettskarð drew level with ÍF’s Fuglafjørður’s Clayton Soares, scoring 22 goals a piece.
Just as Soares, Klettskarð also started slowly and didn’t score his first goal until the 6th round, but then he never looked back.
Although the technically well sounded Klettskarð’s abilities have been obvious to those well informed, he hasn’t been quite a household name until he started scoring this season. Last season, then playing for Víkingur, was marred by injury and before joining Víkingur, he spent a couple of years in Denmark.
The national coach has said that he of course has noticed that there was a player scoring many goals for KÍ. Klettskarð has earlier played for all the Faroese youth teams, U21, U19 and U17.
Not much to add here, except repeating that Clayton Soares and Páll Klettskarð scored 22 goals each in the league.
Both started slowly; Soares scoring his first goal in the 8th round and Klettskarð his first in round 6.
Soares scored three hat tricks during the season while Klettskarð managed one which he scored on the last day of the season.
Both of them also made a fair share of assists; Soares producing 7 and Klettskarð 6.
Some new categories were added to this year’s awards that haven’t been before. We’ll just mention them briefly:
Defender of the Year: Marni Djurhuus, EB/Streymur.
Midfielder of the Year: Hallur Hansson, HB Tórshavn (who went to AaB Aalborg in Denmark just before the end of season).
Forward of the Year: Clayton Soares, ÍF Fuglafjørður.
An all-star team was also elected:
Goalkeeper: Jákup Mikkelsen
Defenders: Bárður Hansen (Víkingur), Marni Djurhuus (EB/Streymur), Bartal Eliasen (ÍF Fuglafjørður), Jan Ellingsgaard (ÍF Fuglafjørður).
Midfielders: Kaj Leo í Bartalsstovu (Víkingur), Hallur Hansson (HB Tórshavn), Høgni Madsen (ÍF Fuglafjørður), Símun Samuelsen (HB Tórshavn).
Forwards: Clayton Soares (ÍF Fuglafjørður), Arnbjørn Hansen (EB/Streymur)
The votes were cast by the captains and the coaches of the 10 Effodeildin teams and the press.
Before that, an expert panel had nominated three names for every category. But their nominations seem a bit odd in many cases.
For example they had not nominated the coach of the champions EB/Streymur, Heðin Askham.
On the other had they had nominated NSÍ’s coach Kári Reynheim who faced a difficult task with a new and young team and also did OK, but it’s not spectacular in any way or fashion to become no. 7, even with his inexperienced team who for long also battled in the relegation zone.