Eiður Guðjohnsen

Early career

After spending the 1994 season with Valur in Reykjavík, Eiður played for PSV in the Netherlands from 1995, playing alongside Ronaldo. Following a serious ankle injury, he returned home to play for KR Reykjavík.

Bolton Wanderers

Eiður signed with English club Bolton Wanderers in 1998. He made his debut in September 1998 in a match against Birmingham City. By March the following year, Eiður had become a regular member of the Bolton first team, and the following season, he scored 21 times in all competitions as the Trotters reached the Division One play-offs and the semi-finals of both the FA Cup and the League Cup.

Chelsea

On 19 June 2000, Eiður was signed by Premier League club Chelsea for a fee of £4.5 million. He was the second striker signed by the Blues that pre-season, after Dutch international Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink. Eiður made his debut on 13 August in the 2000 FA Charity Shield at Wembley, replacing Gianfranco Zola for the final 17 minutes of a 2–0 win over Manchester United. He spent most of his first season in London being used as a substitute, but was still able to score 13 times. In his second season, he formed a partnership with Hasselbaink which provided 52 goals for Chelsea in all competitions. Following the appointment of José Mourinho as manager, Eiður eventually played in a more withdrawn role as he helped the club win two successive Premier League titles. On 23 October 2004, he scored a hat-trick in a 4–0 home win…

Eiður made his debut for the Iceland under-17 national team in 1992 at the age of 14. He went on to score seven goals in 26 appearances for the team before progressing to the under-19 side in 1994. He netted twice in nine caps for the under-19s, before making his debut for the U-21 side later in the year. He represented the U-21s for four years, scoring a total of four goals in 11 caps. On 24 April 1996, 17-year-old Eiður and his 34-year-old father Arnór entered football history when playing in an international friendly for the senior Iceland team against Estonia in Tallinn. Arnór started the match, and Eiður came on in the second half as a substitute for his father. Both father and son have later expressed bitterness at the fact that they were not allowed to play together in that match. The then president of the Football Association of Iceland, Eggert Magnússon, gave the coach Logi Ólafsson an express order to not play them together because he wanted it to occur on home turf, when Iceland played Macedonia two months later in the first qualification round for the 1998 FIFA World Cup. As it happened, however, the two never got another chance because a month after the match in Estonia Eiður broke his leg playing for the Icelandic U-18 team against the Republic of Ireland. He had difficulty coming back because of undiagnosed tendinitis in that leg. When he had recovered and was again available for selection for the national team, his father had retired. On 2 September 2006,…

Guðjohnsen was known for possessing a good touch, link-up play, and composure in front of goal, which made him capable of both creating and scoring goals. His qualities as an assist-provider once led his Chelsea manager José Mourinho to dub him "the blond Maradona."

In September 2001, Eiður, Chelsea teammates John Terry, Frank Lampard and Jody Morris, and Leicester City's Frank Sinclair, were drunk and unruly in a Heathrow Airport hotel containing many Americans left stranded by the September 11 attacks. The Chelsea quartet were each fined two weeks' wages, totalling around £100,000, which was donated to the 9/11 relief efforts. In January 2003, Eiður admitted to a gambling problem, confessing to having lost £400,000 in casinos over a five-month period. Eiður's half-brother, named Arnór like their father, signed for Swansea City in July 2017, at the age of 16. Eiður has one daughter and three sons. All of his sons are professional footballers and Iceland internationals: Sveinn Aron Guðjohnsen (born 1998), Andri Guðjohnsen (born 2002), and Daníel Guðjohnsen (born 2006).