The world of sport doesn’t have a lot of room for those past their prime. Once you stop being a winner, it’s time to make room for someone who is. Some athletes handle this change in fortune well, parlaying their on-field fame into off-field success. And then there’s Skarphéðinn (Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson) a man who who hit rock bottom and started digging.
Back in the 90s he was a star, a legend on the handball court and a shining light of Iceland’s team. Then he crashed and burned, trashed his marriage and lost his money. Now he’s a shadow of his former self, getting drunk on park benches and living off his former glories – literally, as he’s put his 1989 World Cup medal up for sale (something similar happened for real a decade ago, when handball player Sigfús Sigurðsson sold his Silver Medal from the Beijing Olympics due to financial problems).
Ingvar E. Sigurðsson as Skarphéðinn. Credit: Ásgrímur Guðbjartsson / Viaplay
This doesn’t go down well with the Handball Association, or Iceland in general. Winning a medal is a matter of national pride: selling it because you’ve become a drunk living out of a plastic bag is a national disgrace. Old friend Eysteinn (Þorsteinn Bachmann), who’s now a board member of Icelandic sporting club Afturelding (he’s also in charge of handing out free toilet paper), is on the case. The Handball Association takes care of things by buying the medal back, Eysteinn says the club will handle the costs, and Skarphéðinn can go back to… whatever it is he was doing.
Being back in Iceland brings home just how far he’s fallen. Staying at his ex mother-in-law’s is pretty grim; trying to hit on women down the pub and not even being able to afford to buy them drinks is even grimmer. So when Eysteinn offers him a coaching position, it’s a last chance lifeline he’d be a fool to pass up. Thing is, it’s a position coaching the women’s team, and this particular drunken womaniser is “simply not interested in coaching a bunch of broads”.
It’s fair to say Skarphéðinn is no Ted Lasso. This isn’t a series about a coach turning their team around using the power of niceness, and not just because this particular coach’s attitudes towards women solidified at some point around the period of his greatest sporting success. But there’s a good man somewhere under Skarphéðinn’s shabby exterior; he just needs to get his life back on track. Taking the coaching job might seem like a humiliation. On the other hand, what other options does he have?
Saga Garðarsdóttir as Hekla. Credit: Jakob Ingimundarson / Viaplay
And while the women’s team needs to lift their game, at least they have a good excuse for struggling. Afturelding fields both men’s and women’s handball teams, but while the women have to repeatedly ask where their pay is, the men are driving around on petrol the club paid for. It’s no surprise the men are enjoying the lion’s share of the funding and support; if the club really was committed to making their women’s team a success, they wouldn’t even have considered hiring a washed-up drunk to coach them.
That said, Afturelding can’t take all the blame for the on-court failures of their woman’s team. Individual members have their own problems they need to deal with. Hekla (Saga Garðarsdóttir) is back living with her mother Run (Steinunn Ólína Þorsteinsdóttir) and it’s throwing off her game; Brynja (Svandís Dóra Einarsdóttir), a former handball professional, has returned to Iceland to play, only to find it’s not as easy as she though it would be.
A modern man Skarphéðinn is not. A rich man he isn’t either, and a job is a job. While there’s always the risk of falling back into his old ways, (having a friend who runs a sports gambling site is not helpful), maybe it’ll be a chance to reconnect with his estranged daughter Elínborg (Vala Kristín Eiríksdóttir). Maybe he’ll be able to turn the fortunes of the women’s team around. And maybe being surrounded by women with no time for his old-fashioned ways might end up knocking some sense into him.
Coach is streaming now at SBS On Demand:
Stream free On Demand
Coach
