Today I present a very Milky Easter weekend – 17 games over Friday and Saturday, all in the Milk Cup. The only one on the 18th to feature teams from the same division was decided in Extra Time, and of the rest only two more were decided by a margin of less than 3 goals.
Völsungur are Lengjudeild rivals to Þróttur Reykjavík this year thanks to their promotion in 2024, but have since lost some valuable contributors to other clubs in the division – Juan Guardia to Þór, Ólafur Örn Ásgeirsson to HK. Arguably no losses were more significant than that of 2.deild top scorer Jakob Gunnar Sigurðsson to KR, who was then dealt on loan to Þróttur.
The home side had bolstered the squad with a pair with Besta deild experience in Elfar Árni Aðalsteinsson from KA (though he didn’t feature on Friday) and Elvar Baldvinsson from Vestri. They also took an early lead into half time, but the classic of conceding just before the break proved part of their undoing. That job would be completed by Kári Kristjánsson in Extra Time, but they got there thanks to a late equaliser from who else but the previously mentioned 2007-born wonderkid Jakob Gunnar, against his former club.
I barely count Vestri needing penalties against HK as a near-upset – they were in the same division last year and finished on the same points total and HK’s wildly poorer goal difference sending them down. Meanwhile, Njarðvík had a solid start to 2024 but ended up outside of the Lengjudeild playoffs and Stjarnan were in the top half of Besta Deild. Örvar Eggertsson not scoring deep into stoppage time would have resulted in a huge upset that wouldn’t have been overshadowed by a different penalty result in Ísafjörður. Extra Time saw the visitors run out of steam, plus Sigurjón and Kjartan picked the wrong day to have the second name Már.
The final game I want to highlight from Friday was Selfoss beating Haukar, and that’s purely because the next day saw the reverse result with both ending in a 4-0 win for the Lengjudeild host against a 2.deild visitor, and two of the goals had kind of similar timings. The only other notable thing from these games is that Frosti Brynjólfsson moved from Haukar to Selfoss during the winter and scored against his former club.
What else happened on Saturday? A small piece of history as two sides made their Mjólkurbikarinn debuts – the Grindavík/Njarðvík combo won 1-0 to book a Second Round match against Reykjanes and Lengjudeild rivals Keflavík. KÞ were the other newbies on the day, and their result became part of the headline of this post. The team is a development squad for Þróttur, so the name is a play on the initials from the badge of that parent club but also stands for Kapp og Þól, which means something like “effort and patience”. I forgot to ask how they’re actually translating it when I spoke to Caroline VanSlambrouck (formerly a player for Njarðvík, Keflavík, and ÍBV) who is one of the Head Coaches along with Sigurður Sigurðsson (current player with SR, formerly of Björninn, and Skallagrímur).
These results above are more interesting than the scoresheets might suggest, with all four clubs looking to compete in a wide open Lengjudeild campaign this season. There will be more on the state of that division and their respective Lengjubikar performances in the preview and review posts for each, but ÍA won 7 of 7 in the preseason tournament while Afturelding lost 6. I would put more stock in Milk Cup results than that, and the first round has these four teams looking suitably matched. There’s been so much change I’m just not sure what to predict at this point.
And so to the headline. You’ll notice the women’s scoresheet is missing here, and that’s because you’ll see that in a separate upcoming post. Congratulations are due for 2010-born Alexander Rafn Pálmason who got his first ever senior goals with this hat-trick, but aside from that we have to admit that a demolition like this isn’t particularly interesting from a competitive standpoint.
What does interest me, bizarrely, is the 11-0 scoreline from an historic perspective. Men’s Milk Cup games won by a margin of 10 goals or more is a point of research I’ve been working on for the last year or so, and if you’ve read this article down as far as this I’ll treat you to a snippet of the data… These numbers are from since the competition began in 1960, but the first instance was when Keflavík beat the reserves from Þróttur R. 13-0 in 1961.
So as much as it stands to reason that the most common scoreline in games won by 10+ goals would be one of the lower scoring varieties, I find it interesting that 11-0 is actually the one most frequently seen. It’s also notable how infrequently a losing team gets a goal of their own, and yet 13-1 has happened 5 times.
Someone who doesn’t know the extent of what I do with B11 recently threatened to stage an intervention if I “write about second division Icelandic football”, so I hope they don’t see this.
Oh, here’s the rest of the results from Milky Weekend
