– Football is not an easy sport, ass. It is a mental game, which can be tiring. I think that’s why I really appreciate coming home on a little vacation, taking it easy and being far away.
He talks about a 2021 that feels like “far more than a year”.
Now the time has finally come to breathe.
Old funnels and safe frames often leave room for reflection. Look back. Process what has been.
Also for Aron Leonard Dønnum.
TV 2 meets the football profile at home on a rare short visit to the childhood home at Eidsvoll.
– – This is my first Norwegian interview since I left, says Dønnum. Photo: Guro Asdøl Midtmageli / TV 2
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What really happened?
Contrasts
The 23-year-old was the dribble-happy splash of color on Vålerenga’s wing who did exactly as he wanted in the Elite Series this spring.
Loved and hated.
He was the provocateur who made his national team debut in June, and who only a month later fulfilled his dream of playing professionally abroad.
It was six months almost too good to be true. Then came the fall.
– AIR TRIP: Aron Dønnum with the family dog, Doffen. Photo: Guro Asdøl Midtmageli / TV 2
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An autumn that was to be even more challenging than he could have imagined.
– There are so many who do not talk about how it can be experienced to come to a new club in a new country. There are many who do not say how it is, says Dønnum.
Rolex stunt: – Put pressure on myself
We turn the clock back to May.
Just before the start of the series, Dønnum appeared in a VG interview with teammates Amor Layouni and Vidar Örn Kjartansson.
The Vålerenga trio’s expensive Rolex watches came into focus, and received a lot of attention – for better or worse – in the time that followed.
– I look back on it as a fun thing, Dønnum begins with a smile.
– WIN: Dønnum ravaged Vålerenga in the early summer. Here in the match against Brann, where he scored two of the capital team’s three goals. Photo: Marit Hommedal / NTB
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– I thrive and perform best when expectations are high, and when there is a little pressure around me. When I do a little bit of things, which in turn creates pressure.
He quickly responded to the indictment with two goals against Brann in the second round of the series. In the celebration afterwards, he of course kept up with a drawing of a Rolex watch on a tape around his wrist.
The elite series’ biggest profile was created.
The big game continued throughout the spring.
And after what he thought was a completely normal training, he suddenly gets the message he had previously only dreamed of once getting:
Here Dønnum gets the message: – The fat man has been taken out!
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– It is the biggest moment so far in my career, he says seriously when asked about the national team selection.
– You are touched. I have had little focus on expectations of the national team, but when it first happens, it is incredibly big – and you become very humble.
– Wanted to preserve my position
The national team dream came true when he was replaced by Luxembourg at the beginning of June.
And just six weeks later, the next childhood dream awaited. The Belgian big club Standard Liège made Dønnum its most expensive transfer in 2021.
Finally, he was to test his life as a foreign professional. It had to be celebrated – with a new Rolex watch, of course.
– Now the foreign adventure was underway, Dønnum recalls.
– BIG EXPECTATIONS: Dønnum graced the front page of Belgium’s largest football magazine after the transfer to Standard Liège. Photo: Guro Asdøl Midtmageli / TV 2
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The choice of club was well thought out. He wanted to continue the development at an even higher level, but at the same time not be what he describes as a “long-term project”, where he had to wear the bench without playing time.
– I wanted to go to a place where I could maintain the same position that I had built up here in Norway.
The first meeting with Belgium was fantastic. He tells of how he was “intoxicated” when he arrived, and was convinced early on that the choice was right.
– I’m coming down, and the place is spot on. The promise was that I would be able to play absolutely all of the matches.
– Everything was different, but the sports manager, me and my agent (Jim Solbakken, journ. Note) had talked a lot about my role when it came to playing time and my position in the team. I was their biggest transition this year, so everything was in place for this to be very good.
The first week of training, Dønnum felt good. Crowded with energy, full of confidence and big in the mouth – just the way he used to be. At the same time, this was something completely different from what he was used to.
– THE FLAG ON THE CHEST: Dønnum’s Norway debut against Luxembourg in June. Photo: Geir Olsen / NTB
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He had taken lightly what he thought were marginal cultural differences from Norway to Belgium, but everything was unfamiliar.
– I quickly discovered that the pace was higher and had to readjust to do things much faster than what I was used to.
– Lost a lot of self-confidence
However, the debut could not have been much better. With a quarter of an hour left on the clock, he is replaced, and is second last on the ball on the score that gives Standard Liège the victory in overtime. The next three matches he gets to start. He describes his own achievements as “perfectly ok”.
He makes things easy. Will not make mistakes.
But along the way, he experiences that the coach and the sports manager do not share the same opinion about the expensive purchase from Norway.
– For me, good communication is very important and crucial in all relationships, not least with the coach and employer. When communication was poor, things became very frustrating. If it was not personal on the part of the coach, it was quite clear that something was not right.
Furthermore, he was then shown to the bench in several matches. And when before a match he also discovered that he had also been completely expelled from the squad, the frustration reached a new level.
Dønnum picked up the phone.
– I called Jim and my parents. “What’s going on?” He remembers asking.
The time that followed was demanding.
– Photo: Teacher A. Midtmageli
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I missed two-meter passes. Completely simple things did not work, because the head is filled with so much other than what to do on the court
Understood why: – A relief
After a while, the news came that the coach had been fired. A news that came quite abruptly, but still not entirely surprising, according to himself.
He gradually understood more and more of what had been going on behind the scenes.
– I got an understanding that the sports manager and the coach did not agree on the details of my transfer. It was in many ways a relief, as it became a confirmation that things around me had been full of conflict. It was not personal, but a thing between the then sports manager and coach.
– It was tough. When I came, I was myself. I left people, had a completely different self-confidence. While in that period things do not go with, all rod goes out instead of rod in. I missed two-meter passes. Completely simple things did not work, because the head is filled with so much other than what to do on the court.
Lack of playing time was also the reason why he was left out of the national team squad during this period. It was heavy.
Fortunately, he immediately experienced the chemistry with the new coaching team in Belgium as very good.
– LOCAL HEROES: In the middle of TV 2’s interview, a car stops. A fiery soul comes out from the sports team to greet – and hug – Eidsvoll’s own foreign professional. Photo: Guro Asdøl Midtmageli / TV 2
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The conversation that made things turn around
One conversation in particular changed everything.
– I was so bored, annoyed and burned inside with so many emotions, that I took the initiative for a conversation with the new coach. I took him aside and explained my experience of the last few months. It was a very positive conversation and the basis for a good relationship.
Not long after, the settlement against the giant Club Brugge awaited. Dønnum saw it as a unique opportunity to stand out.
He started the match, scored a goal and provided a penalty. 2-2 against the league leader away was heard.
– It was the match that made everything turn around.
And since then, the good curve has continued. He has now become an important piece in the team.
In the last ten games, he has been named the field’s best four times and scored three goals.
He is “happy”. Finally.
– The last few months have been a huge upswing, he smiles.
Autumn has turned upside down a lot. Given new perspectives on how most football players’ biggest dream, namely professional games abroad, can be experienced.
It’s not just joy.
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Grateful for the experience
– We know you are a tough guy on the field, but how did autumn affect you as a person? It is easy to imagine that many foreign professionals feel lonely?
– I can be tough in the face. It’s a bit of my personality. But I feel it’s honesty that defines me. And that applies to things that are not easy to talk about as well. It is only human to be affected by the things that happened there, he says, before continuing:
– Self-confidence, on which one is completely dependent, disappears. You start looking at mistakes you make, and maybe even do not. But fortunately you also learn a lot through such periods. And that’s the learning I want to take with me.
He worked hard on himself throughout the period, but never considered the idea of going home.
– I thought my hour was coming. This is the attitude I have always had, says Dønnum – who is now clear that he thrives in Belgium.
– It is about one, two or three months of life, how much is about making the right choices and standing in what can be experienced as a storm. But storms pass. Had I made choices when I am tired, sad and things do not go my way, I would have regretted today. As a football player, you get a little spoiled, and sometimes you lose perspective on life. But I’m very privileged, and not many people are as lucky as I am. And it is important to remind yourself, when things can feel difficult at times.
