The 24-year-old Icelandic-American suffered through an injury-plagued 12 months but has returned to form, and with a vengeance, helping his Dutch club finish third and qualify for Europe.

BY Brian Sciaretta Posted

May 17, 2015

12:00 PM SHARE THIS STORY



ARON JOHANNSSON SAVED his best for last, scoring four goals in his final three Eredivisie games to lift AZ Alkmaar to a third-place finish and a spot in the 2015-16 Europa League.

His performance in Sunday’s 4-1 win over Excelsior was his best of the season—by a wide margin.

Johnannsson, 24, scored two goals and added an assist in the win. AZ needed the win and the Alabama-born forward gave his squad the crucial early goal in the fifth minute in dramatic fashion. Excelsior failed to make a clearance and the ball bounced high in the box. Johannsson’s only play was a bicycle finish, which he executed to perfection

Just one minute later, he helped put the game out of reach with a cleaver assist on Steve Berghuis’ sixth-minute goal to give AZ Alkmaar a 2-0 lead.

In the 56th minute, he put the exclamation point on the win with a header on a cross delivered by Dabney Souza.

Johannsson finished the 2014-15 season with nine Eredivisie goals. He missed his team’s entire preseason and first 10 games due to ankle and hip surgery following the 2014 World Cup. He made 21 Eredivisie appearances but his strike ratio was impressive. He played just 1,514 minutes this season so he ended up scoring with a ratio of one goal per 168 minutes. That is not far off from the ratio he had last year in the Eredivisie where his 17 goals were done at a ratio of one per 153 minutes.

Even more impressive, however, was the timing of his goals for AZ Alkmaar. Few gave AZ much of a chance to qualify for the Europa League last month but AZ’s four-game winning streak at the end of the season allowed it to gain 11 points on Feyenoord over the last four match days to ultimately leapfrog the club into a third-place finish.

From a U.S. national team perspective, it could not have come at a better time. Jozy Altidore suffered an apparent hamstring injury on Saturday night playing for Toronto FC and was forced out of the game in the 20th minute. The fact that Johannsson is playing so well gives Klinsmann a valuable option should Altidore’s recovery stretch into the start of the Gold Cup.