Monthly Archives: July 2010

Team analysis, part two

I’ve been away for a few days.

This is the second part of my team analysis. The first part covered the goalkeeping and defence areas.

Midfield
Jari Litmanen has been Finland’s star player and talisman for at least fifteen years. Now aged 39, he cannot be expected to consistently produce his magic, but he still has a valuable role in the line-up or as an impact substitute. It is to his great credit that he has not stepped down from the national team, despite it becoming very common for players to do so at ages as early as 30. He demonstrated his ability in style in Finland’s 2-1 victory over Wales in March 2009, but that will be eighteen months ago once Finland’s Euro 2012 qualifying campaign kicks off in Moldova in September. Joonas Kolkka, with 98 caps, has been another mainstay of Finland’s midfield, but he is now 35. If Finland are to prepare for the future, they need to build around the likes of Teemu Tainio (30) and Mika Väyrynen (28), so as not to rely on their old hands for every match.

My opinion: Tainio and Väyrynen have got the quality required at international level, and Stuart Baxter has been trying out a few youngsters in midfield lately who could play alongside them. Finland should not demand too much of Litmanen and Kolkka, but they can help other players to fit in to the squad.

Attack
4-5-1 seems to be the favoured formation in world football at the moment, and if Finland are to play with that system as well, their “1″ in attack will almost certainly be Mikael “Miklu” Forssell. His scoring record for the national team is decent, at almost one goal every three games. If Baxter needs someone else to partner Forssell up front, that could be more problematic. Jonatan Johansson has scored about one goal every five games for Finland, but he is now 34, and beyond him there are no standout candidates. Teemu Pukki has shown some potential, but is only 20 years old and has only won three caps so far.

My opinion: Forssell is a good player, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he were to play as a lone forward for large parts of the upcoming campaign. If a goal is required in the closing stages of a game, Jari Litmanen could play as a supporting striker, but not for 90 minutes.

Appraisal
Finland’s current crop of players seems to be strongly divided into two categories: ageing stars who perhaps cannot be relied on to play every game, and unproven youngsters who are yet to make their mark at the international stage. The overall quality of the squad is fair, but not in the same class as the Netherlands, and not quite as good as Sweden, who have been boosted by the return of the talented but enigmatic striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic, either. It will be difficult to mesh the two groups together successfully, but that is Stuart Baxter’s task. The hope is that the older players can stick around to show the younger players the ropes before they head off into the sunset of international retirement. A lot is resting on captain Sami Hyypiä’s shoulders, but he cannot score or create all the goals for the side, so others must step up to the plate.

In honesty, a third-placed finish for Finland in their Euro 2012 qualifying group would be very respectable. However, it would not be much of a step forward, considering that their group is not as challenging as the ones they have faced in their last two campaigns. Second place must be their target, and to do that, they should aim to claim maximum points from all of their matches against Hungary, Moldova and San Marino, while beating Sweden at least once. Anything picked up against the Netherlands would just be a bonus.

Qualifying for the European Championships will be a difficult task, as it always is for small nations such as Finland, but it is not out of reach, and that should give the players hope and motivation. I look forward to seeing them take on the challenge.

Team analysis, part one

Previously on this blog, I examined Finland’s recent performances in qualifying stages, and looked at their upcoming opponents in Group E of the 2012 European Championship qualifiers. Today, the focus switches to the Finnish team themselves. Do they have what it takes to make it to the first international tournament of their history?

Finland are, undoubtedly, a minor footballing nation. Ice hockey easily beats football as the most popular sport in the country, even though there are more people registered as football players. Like all small countries, the fortunes of the national team fluctuate between over-performance and under-performance depending on the abilities of the group of players available at the time. Finland have actually been blessed with a very talented collection of individuals in recent years, notably Jari Litmanen (third placed European Footballer of the Year, 1995) and Sami Hyypiä (part of the UEFA Team of the Year, 2001). Their qualification record does not suggest as much, however, as they have faced a succession of tough groups since 2000. With a little more luck, they may well have reached a European Championships or a World Cup by now, but instead they are still waiting for their debut appearance while their “golden generation” of players continues to age and begins to retire from football.

How many of these illustrious players are still involved with the Finnish team, and which young players are faced with assuming the mantle of those that have moved on? Here is SISU’s position-by-position analysis.

Goalkeeper
Jussi Jääskeläinen has been Finland’s most recent first-choice goalkeeper. As well as performing well in Finland’s jersey, he has also had an excellent career in England’s Premier League; at the age of 35, he is still going strong with Bolton Wanderers, the club he has played for since 1997. Jääskeläinen announced his retirement from the Finnish national team in October 2009, having won 55 caps, to focus on his club career. Since then, Finland have used five different goalkeepers in four friendly matches, so the position is up for grabs. Otto Fredrikson, of Russian side Spartak Naltšik, seems to be the most likely successor, but he is still inexperienced: he is 28 and has only 6 caps to his name. Peter Enckelman, 33, is one alternative, but his 12 international caps have been spread over 11 years without him ever really proving himself at the top level, and he is currently without a club for the upcoming season.

My opinion: Fredrikson should be given the chance to establish himself as Jääskeläinen’s successor, but I can’t yet offer a judgement of his quality.

Defence
Sami Hyypiä is the rock at the centre of Finland’s defensive line, and just completed an excellent season in Germany’s Bundesliga with Bayer Leverkusen, being named the best defender of the league for the first few months of the season. Though his best years may be behind him, he still managed to make 32 appearances over the course of the year and shows no signs of retiring from the international set-up. He is also the captain of the team.

Hyypiä’s most frequent partner in central defence has been Hannu Tihinen, who won 76 caps before retiring earlier this year at the age of 33. The main candidate to replace him should be Petri Pasanen, of Werder Bremen in Germany. Pasanen has sometimes played for the national team at right- or left-back, due to a lack of players in those positions, but he is a natural centre-back. He is a capable defender, and the partnership of Pasanen and Hyypiä should provide a solid foundation for the rest of the team.

On the flanks of the defence, Veli Lampi and Niklas Moisander can play on the right and left respectively. Both players play in the Dutch Eredivisie, Lampi having recently signed for Willem II and Moisander having played for AZ Alkmaar since 2008. Moisander is not a natural left-back, but he is probably the best option Finland have for filling the position. Lampi is a natural right-back who has won two Swiss championships with FC Zürich; his inclusion in the team can allow Pasanen to move to the centre.

My opinion: I would like to see Pasanen play in his natural position, alongside Hyypiä in a strong central-defensive partnership. Stuart Baxter may shuffle his cards differently, however, as full-back is not a strong position for Finland.

In my next post, I’ll be taking a look at the midfield and forward areas, and giving an overall appraisal of the strength of the team.

Reasons for encouragement

In yesterday’s entry, I explained how I was going to be attending all five of Finland’s home qualifying matches for the upcoming European Championships in 2012. Today, I’m going to look at where Finnish football stands at the beginning of my “immersion”, starting with a review of their performances in recent qualifiers, and a brief look at their upcoming opponents.

2008 European Championship Qualifiers
Going into this qualifying stage, Finland had fallen down the UEFA Coefficient Rankings and were placed in the fifth “pot” of teams for the draw. That means they had four supposedly stronger teams in their group, making qualification unlikely. But the team, under the guidance of Roy Hodgson (now manager of Liverpool), surpassed all expectations and, astonishingly, went into the final match with qualification from Group A still a possibility: they needed to beat top seeds Portugal, in Porto, to reach the play-offs, with Poland already qualified at the top of the group. However, with Portugal needing only a draw, their focus was on defence and the game finished 0-0. Finland missed out but could feel very proud of their efforts.

2010 World Cup Qualifiers
Finland were faced with an exceptionally difficult task to qualify from Group 4, as they were placed with the Euro 2008 runners-up Germany and third-placed team Russia, with only the top team qualifying and the second-placed team potentially reaching a play-off match. The campaign started promisingly with a 3-3 home draw against Germany, with Finland taking the lead three times but being pegged back by the profuse goalscorer Miroslav Klose each time. Aside from home and away defeats by neighbours and rivals Russia, the rest of the campaign went as well as anyone could have hoped: five victories out of six against Wales, Azerbaijan and Liechtenstein, and a 1-1 draw in Germany to round things off. Head coach Stuart Baxter, though disappointed not to qualify, spoke of the importance of finishing third, to keep Finland in the third “pot” of teams for the Euro 2012 draw, meaning they would be drawn with only two higher-ranked teams, and three lower-ranked teams.

So, that’s us up to date, but what about the upcoming 2012 European Championship Qualifiers? What are Finland’s chances? Let’s start off by looking at their opponents. They are in Group E, alongside the Netherlands, Sweden, Hungary, Moldova and San Marino.

The Netherlands have, of course, just contested a World Cup final, finishing second, and are top seeds for the group. They will be expected to qualify at the top of the group, and my own prediction is that they will do so comfortably. Questions about their style of play and team identity have been raised by the World Cup, but it should not be forgotten that they have won fourteen of their last fifteen competitive matches and will prove too strong for Finland.

Sweden are Finland’s biggest rivals in football, as they are in all sports and just about everything else where a rivalry is possible. The antagonism seems friendly from the outside, but for many of the young Finnish men I know, it’s deadly serious. I expect the home match against Sweden on the 7th of October 2011 will have the highest attendance of all Finland’s games, particularly if qualification is still possible for both teams. Sweden didn’t make it to the World Cup, but they participated in all the other major tournaments of the past decade, and will provide Finland with stern competition for the play-off position in the group.

Hungary, Moldova and San Marino are the remaining opponents. Hungary have a proud footballing history, but haven’t qualified for a major tournament since the 1986 World Cup. Moldova are yet to qualify for a tournament, and San Marino are one of the real minnows of European football, having never won even a single competitive match of football. Finland should expect to take at least fifteen points out of the eighteen available against these three teams if they want to achieve second spot in their group.

So, in summary, Finland have a good chance of reaching the play-offs, though they’ll be very unlikely to win their group. In my next post, I’ll be examining the Finland team’s own strengths and weaknesses.

Preamble

It’s the morning after the 2010 World Cup Final, and I’ve woken up with a hangover. Not from alcohol, but from football. Like a heavy drinker who doesn’t know when to stop, I feel like I have watched a month of enjoyable tournament football and then one final match that took things too far. Oh my aching head!

Perhaps you were lucky enough not to have seen the match between Holland and Spain, so here’s a brief summary: twenty-two players ran around the pitch kicking lumps out of each other, feigning injuries, arguing with the referee and each other, missing chance after chance to score and taking very nearly two hours to get the ball into the goal. There may have been a little more to it than that, but I was so utterly bored by it all that I can’t really remember.

To be blunt, it was a disgrace. Over 700 million people had the misfortune of watching last night’s match, many of them only casual or occasional football fans, and as an advertisement for the game it was pretty much exactly the opposite of what it should have been. And indeed, what it could have been: Holland were everyone’s second-favourite team before this tournament because of their flair and commitment to attack; Spain were (and are) the European champions, with a “golden generation” of sublimely skilled footballers. Yet the match they put on was low-quality and bad-tempered: there were fourteen yellow cards, and one red card! That must be some kind of record for a final.

But it doesn’t have to be like this. That’s what I’ve been telling myself today. I’ve been watching international football since 1996, and I know how exciting it can be, how much joy and pride it can bring to whole countries, or in the case of this just-passed World Cup, an entire continent. I know that teams can play fairly, positively, and excitingly. I know that football can be a rollercoaster of emotions, with highs and lows, not just the same mistakes being made repeatedly.

I won’t be hung over forever; I just need something to help me rediscover my passion for the beautiful game. I am half-English, but I can’t look to the England national team, one of the biggest underachievers at this World Cup, and in truth, at many before this one. They have not managed to capture my imagination since 1996, when I was just a wee lad.

I am also half-Finnish. Now, Finland’s national football team have never qualified for a major tournament, neither the World Cup nor the European Championships. Presently, they are ranked way down at number 52 in the world, sandwiched between Bosnia-Herzegovina and Peru. Hardly a prestigious position.

But I feel that now is the time to look beyond FIFA rankings and previous history – after all, if things were that simple, England would have at least made the quarter-finals at the World Cup! Finland have shown they can punch above their weight, by very nearly qualifying for Euro 2008 at Portugal’s expense, and then by finishing a highly respectable third in their World Cup 2010 qualifying group behind the powerhouses of Germany and Russia. Finland have begun to surprise a few people and teams, under the guidance of Roy Hodgson and now Stuart Baxter, and recently all their performances have featured the application and determination that some of their more illustrious counterparts often lack. In short, they play with sisu.(More on what that means another time.)

I have been living in Finland for two years, and I have never been to see the national team play a match. Nor have I attended any league games. For someone who considers themselves to be a knowledgable football fan, that’s pretty poor. So I’ve decided to do something about it: I’ve bought a “season ticket”, committing me to attending all five of Finland’s home matches in the upcoming qualifiers for Euro 2012.

And that brings me to the purpose of this blog. I will be aiming to provide comprehensive coverage of Finland’s national team, in English, which I don’t think currently exists on the internet, or anywhere else for that matter. It is a niche area, I know, but even if it attracts no readers, it will still be an education for me. I’ll also be using the blog to follow Finnish players’ clubs, and to occasionally write broader pieces about international football, the media’s coverage of it, or just the game in general.

Expect match previews and predictions, results and reports, player profiles, tactical analysis, and some general ramblings. You’ll be learning about the things I learn, as I learn them. Welcome to SISU!