Monthly Archives: August 2010

Match preview: Moldova vs Finland

Moldova FlagMatch details
MOLDOVA vs FINLAND
Date: 03/09/2010
Kick-off time: 19:30 (UTC+3)
Type: UEFA Euro 2012 qualifying round match
Venue: Zimbru Stadium, Chisinau, Moldova
Capacity: 10 500
Odds: Moldova 3.70, Draw 3.40, Finland 2.12

Preview
Finland kick off their Euro 2012 qualifying campaign with a match against Moldova, ranked 89th in the world. The match takes place in Chisinau, the capital of Moldova. Information on the Moldova football team is very hard to come by – even their football federation’s website was down today – but I can tell you that they first started playing football as an independent nation in 1994, and that they, like Finland, have never qualified for either a European Championships or a World Cup. They finished bottom of their qualifying group while trying to reach the 2010 World Cup, below even Luxembourg, after failing to win a single game.

After much wrangling, YLE have finally announced that they are going to be broadcasting the match live on television after all, which is fantastic news. You can watch it on channel TV2, starting at 19:20 (ten minutes before kick-off). This means that the state broadcaster is now scheduled to show every match of Finland’s campaign bar two, which are listed as “negotiations ongoing” on their website.

Head-to-head record
Finland have played Moldova twice in their history. They have won one of those matches and drawn the other. In total, they have scored three goals and conceded two against Moldova. The last time the two teams met was in June 1999, in Chisinau, for a European Championship qualifying match which finished 0-0.

Match squads
Peter Enckelman withdrew due to injury and was replaced by Anssi Jaakkola.
Juha Hakola withdrew due to injury and was not replaced.
Names and positions as per UEFA.
MOLDOVA FINLAND
Nicolae Calancea
Eugen Matiughin
Stanislav Namasco 		G
K		 Otto Fredrikson
Anssi Jaakkola
Jukka Lehtovaara
Vadim Bolohan
Vadim Boret
Semion Bulgaru
Alexandru Epureanu C
Petru Racu
Alexei Savinov 		D
F		 Markus Heikkinen
Sami Hyypiä C
Veli Lampi
Niklas Moisander
Petri Pasanen
Jonas Portin
Valeriu Andronic
Vitalie Bordian
Evgheni Cebotari
Andrei Cojocari
Victor Comlenoc
Nicolae Josan
Alexandru Suvorov
Igor Tîgîrlas
Denis Zmeu 		M
F		 Roman Eremenko
Kasper Hämäläinen
Roni Porokara
Daniel Sjölund
Tim Sparv
Teemu Tainio
Mika Väyrynen
Igor Bugaev
Alexandru Dedov
Anatolie Doros
Viorel Frunza 		F
W		 Alexei Eremenko Jr
Mikael Forssell
Jonatan Johansson
Shefki Kuqi
Jari Litmanen

Key opponent
In lieu of any better information – I’ve never seen any of the Moldovan players in action – I’ve plumped for their captain, Alexandru Epureanu. He is one of the more experienced players of the side, with 30 caps to his name. He currently plays for Dynamo Moscow in the Russian Premier League, meaning he faces a far higher calibre of opponent than most of his team-mates. He can play in midfield, but as Moldova are missing three of their regular defenders for this match, he’ll almost certainly be at the heart of the defence.

Analysis
To put it simply, Finland have to win this match if they have any ambitions of qualifying for the European Championships in 2012. Moldova are a very weak team, and aside from their home crowd, they should not have any weapons to really threaten Finland with. That’s not to say that Finland will be taking the match lightly; I expect Stuart Baxter to name a full-strength side, including the returning Sami Hyypiä. The main area of uncertainty in Finland’s starting XI is likely to be up front. With Mikael Forssell not having scored for the national team in fourteen months, and currently not getting any playing time at his club Hannover 96, Baxter has said that there is no number one attacker in the squad at the moment. Shefki Kuqi has been brought into the squad to provide another option, but I still think Forssell will start. Expect to see Kuqi make an appearance late in the game, though, particularly if Finland need a goal.

Prediction
It is often said that there are “no easy matches” at international level, but Finland should win this match relatively comfortably. Moldova 0-2 Finland.

Week 34 roundup

This is the first of a regular Friday column that takes a look back at the week’s Finnish football news.

Baxter announces squad to play Moldova and Holland

Stuart Baxter has named the 25 players who will compete for selection in Finland’s upcoming Euro 2012 qualifying matches against Moldova and Holland. It’s a a familiar-looking group, with only one uncapped player being brought in: defender Jonas Portin of Ascoli in Italy. Sami Hyypiä makes his expected return, as does Shefki Kuqi, nearly one year after he played his last match for Finland (and nearly one day after I suggested that he might not have much of a future with the national team in a comment on this blog). Baxter said of Kuqi, “there’s room for a cult figure in every team”.

Full story: YLE (in Finnish)

YLE to show Holland and Hungary matches, still no Moldova broadcaster

The Finnish state broadcaster YLE have announced that they have secured the rights to show Finland’s away match against the Netherlands live on their FST5 channel. The match takes place on the 7th of September 2010, from 21:15. They had already purchased the rights to Finland’s final qualifying game against Hungary on the 11th of October 2011. Less good news is that, with only one week remaining, no broadcaster has stepped forward to televise the match against Moldova in Chisinau. As it stands, YLE will be covering it on their Radio Suomi radio station, which is better than nothing but far from ideal.

Full story: HS (in Finnish)

Porokara awarded goal against Belgium

Örebro SK striker Roni Porokara has been named as the scorer of the only goal in Finland’s 1-0 victory over Belgium earlier this month. His shot had taken a large deflection off Vincent Kompany, and had originally been registered as an own goal for the Belgium defender, but match referee Alan Hamer has awarded it to the Finn. Both players must be happy with that. Porokara now has three international goals from 14 appearances.

Full story: MTV3 (in Finnish)

Finnwatch – keeping an eye on Finland internationals at their clubs.

Mikael Forssell has been linked with a move to Austrian club Rapid Wien, as I wrote in his player profile earlier this week. The primary obstacle in the transfer is Forssell’s wages – Rapid cannot match what he earns at Hannover 96, and he is believed to be unwilling to take a pay cut. After their Europa League qualifying round 4-3 aggregate victory over Aston Villa, Rapid could at least offer the prospect of European football to Forssell, as well as regular playing time.

Manchester United have maintained their interest in young Finnish goalkeeper Lukas Hradecky. After giving him a trial earlier in the summer, they reportedly sent scouts to watch him play for the Finland under-21 side, as manager Alex Ferguson searches for a successor to 39-year-old Edwin van der Sar in the United goal. Hradecky has been quoted as saying, “it is unreal that they follow me”.

This year’s UEFA Champions League group stage has Finnish representation in the form of Petri Pasanen after his Werder Bremen side managed in a thrilling extra time victory over Italian side Sampdoria in the final qualifying round. Bremen are known for playing both the best and the worst football in Germany, and it was primarily the latter on show on Tuesday night. Pasanen played for 80 minutes, during which time Bremen conceded three goals. He and his team mates will need to defend better if they are to have a chance against their group stage rivals Tottenham, Twente, and last year’s champions Internazionale.

This story was from last week, but I missed it: it has emerged that new Liverpool boss Roy Hodgson had sought to reunite Sami Hyypiä with his former club – and the defender was keen on the move himself. The two men had previously worked together when Hodgson was at the helm of the Finnish national team. Hyypiä currently plays for German side Bayer Leverkusen and was one of the top defenders in the Bundesliga last season, so Leverkusen obviously wanted to keep hold of him. Their CEO Wolfgang Holzhauser told a reporter, “Sami came to us asking if there would be any chance to return to Liverpool. We had an open discussion. Sami accepted straight away that we were desperate to keep him here”.

Helsingin Jalkapalloklubi, or HJK, were thrashed 0-4 at home by Besiktas of Turkey in the final round of Europa League qualifying matches, sending the 2009 Finnish Veikkausliiga champions out of the competition with an aggregate scoreline of 0-6. That means there is no Finnish club involved in any form of European competition this season. Former Finland manager and current HJK manager Antti Muurinen attributed the defeat to finance, saying “the difference is millions of Euros. They can afford Guti and Quaresma, who can decide matches”. Better news for the Helsinki club was that they are on the verge of signing Finland international Teemu Pukki from Sevilla, where the 20-year-old’s career was affected by injuries and a lack of playing time.

With thanks to Henna.

Player profile: Mikael Forssell

The first player in (hopefully) a series of player profiles on this blog is Finland’s main striker, Mikael Forssell.

Mikael Kaj Forssell
Information correct as of 23 August 2010
Date of birth 15 March 1981
Present age 29
Place of birth Steinfurt, West Germany (now Germany)
Position Striker
International caps 68
International goals 19
International debut 09 June 1999
Current club Hannover 96, Germany
Previous clubs Birmingham City, Borussia Mönchengladbach, Crystal Palace, Chelsea, HJK

Mikael Forssell has become a fixture of the Finland side. His talent was recognised at an early age and he made his debut for the Huuhkajat at 18 years old. That was eleven years ago, in 1999; only injuries have kept “Miklu” from picking up more than his 68 caps in that time.

After coming through HJK Helsinki’s youth system, Forssell made his first appearance in the Finnish Veikkausliiga aged just 16, and a year later he was already on his way to Chelsea in England. As is so often the case with young talents moving to “big” clubs, he found his playing time limited, making it very difficult to break into the first team. This led to a number of loan spells, first with Crystal Palace, then Borussia Mönchengladbach and Birmingham City. In total, Forssell spent four years playing at other clubs while still in Chelsea’s employment.

Despite flitting between clubs and suffering from a recurring knee injury, Forssell managed to make 33 appearances for the national side while he was a Chelsea player, scoring 11 goals in the process. One of his best performances in a Finland shirt came in June 2001, as he scored two goals in the first half of a World Cup qualifying match against Germany which ended 2-2.

In 2005, Forssell completed a £3m transfer to Birmingham City, but he was unable to replicate the same form he had produced for them while on loan, and his contract was allowed to expire in 2008, paving the way for the striker to move to Hannover 96 in Germany, the country of his birth. His debut came in a remarkable pre-season match where he scored 10 goals in a 23-0 victory over an amateur side, but he was unable to find the same scoring touch in the Bundesliga, scoring only seven goals in 32 matches over the last two seasons.

Meanwhile, Forssell’s next 38 international appearances resulted in only eight goals, three of which came in a 5-1 demolition of Macedonia in Tampere in 2005. That match aside, seven goals in 37 appearances gives a strike rate of one goal every five-and-a-half matches, significantly down from the one in three he achieved in the first half of his career.

That brings us up to date. What should be made of Forssell’s career overall? Unfortunately, Forssell hasn’t been able to fully realise the huge potential he showed for the Finnish youth teams, and in one season at Birmingham in particular where he scored 17 goals. It would be harsh to blame the player himself, as injuries and a lack of playing time during his formative years at Chelsea have been big potholes in his path.

Forssell’s main strength is, or has been, his ability to convert chances into goals, and he remains a highly important player for Finland. As I discussed in my team analysis, Finland don’t have a lot of options up front, so Forssell’s international career looks like it is far from finished. The team will be hoping he can rediscover his form to help them through their Euro 2012 qualification campaign.

A story that broke today is that Rapid Wien of Austria have made an approach for Forssell, who has fallen down the pecking order at Hannover and is unlikely to feature regularly in their starting line-up unless other players succumb to injury. If he is to reach full fitness and sharpness, he needs to be playing as much football as possible, and so the move would seem like a sensible one. It seems that the biggest stumbling block is (if you read my previous post, you can probably guess:) money. Rapid cannot offer the same pay as Hannover, so unless the German club subsidise Forssell’s wages after he leaves them, he may well stay put. I shan’t go as far as to criticise him if he does stay where he is – how many of us could honestly say we’d move to a new country to receive less money for our work – but I really do think he would benefit from the extra playing time. Rapid are also in the qualifying stages of a European competition – the Europa League – which is more than Hannover can boast.

I follow Mikael on Twitter, and in the last few weeks he’s made two particularly interesting tweets. One said he sat on the bench for 90 minutes in Hannover’s first league match of the season, and one before that said that he missed a penalty while the team were knocked out of the DFB-Pokal, a domestic cup competition, by lower-league Elversburg. Could that have been his last action at Hannover? We should find out by the time the transfer window closes in eight days’ time.

Away match broadcasts in the balance

The sports section of this morning’s Iltasanomat, a Finnish tabloid newspaper, leads with an article that examines why no Finnish television broadcaster has purchased the rights to show the national team’s away matches of the Euro 2012 qualifiers.

YLE, Finland’s national state broadcaster, have committed to showing all five of the team’s home matches, and one away match – Finland’s trip to Hungary in the final round of games on the 11th of October 2011. When purchasing the rights for the home games, they only have to negotiate with one seller, the Football Association of Finland. Simple enough. But when it comes to away matches, they must deal with agents representing each of the football associations of the countries Finland is going to be playing separately. So, in this case, that means five different agents to deal with. It would seem that some are more realistic than others when it comes to pricing.

“The desire to show the away matches is there, but the money isn’t”, said YLE’s Head of Programming, Atte Jääskeläinen. “Agents have different ideas of the value of the matches to us. In particular, central European agents do not understand that football might not hold as much significance in Finland”.

And there lies the crux of the problem. As a public broadcaster, funded by license fees, YLE cannot spend disproportionate amounts of money on football when it does not attract many viewers. The commercial broadcasters who could purchase the rights, such as MTV3 and Canal+, would not be able to raise enough advertising revenue to make it worthwhile.

The situation is anything but ideal. There is no way that football will ever attain a higher profile in Finland without the national team’s matches being broadcast. If the sport can attract more fans in the country, then it can get more youngsters playing it, and begin to produce a higher standard of player that will play for Finland in the future.

I dearly hope the situation can be resolved. I imagine the worst case scenario will be that YLE will broadcast the matches online, as they did with Finland’s recent friendly against Belgium, which is better than nothing, but a far cry from the high definition widescreen picture that could and should be broadcast. It would also make it very difficult for bars and pubs to screen the game, causing them to lose an opportunity to profit.

“The discussions are ongoing”, said YLE Sport’s Executive Producer, Jyrki Kemppainen. “We need to have a quick resolution. We can’t wait forever for the programme to come together.”

I’ll keep you posted.

Frequently asked questions

I’ve written this entry to form the contents of the “about” page of this blog, which can be accessed via the top menu. I may add more questions and answers later.

Like most “Frequently Asked Questions”, or FAQs, I’ve made these questions up myself. But if you have any, do get in touch via the comments form at the bottom of the page!

Who are you?
I’m Oliver Lewisohn, 22, originally from England but now living in Finland. I have dual British/Finnish nationality, and I originally moved here to do my compulsory army service, which I completed in 2009. Since then I’ve been studying at an “aikuislukio”, a high school for adults, in Helsinki.

Do you speak Finnish?
Yes I do! Not perfectly – yet – but well enough, and I’m learning every day I live and study here. It’s useful to know the language, because it allows me to understand and translate interviews and statements given by the Finnish football players… as long as they don’t speak too quickly.

Why have you started following the Finnish national football team?
The real question is why I wasn’t following them all my life. Football and Finland are both subjects I am passionate about, yet I had never previously associated them with one another. That may have been forgiveable while living in England, but Finland is my home now, and if I want to embrace life here as much as possible then I need to start paying the same attention to Finnish football as I do to English football.

And why did you start this blog?
I know a lot of immigrants in Finland who enjoy football, but who don’t yet speak much Finnish. There is a real lack of coverage about the national team for them – it’s all in Finnish. That makes it difficult for them to begin following the team, to find information about it, and therefore to attend matches. English is an internationally spoken language, and I hope to use it to make the national team’s progress accessible to a far wider audience. I am proud to run the only website on the internet dedicated to covering Finnish football in English.

What are your future plans for this blog?
It’s always a little dangerous to make predictions about the future of anything on the internet, but this is perhaps the third or fourth blog I have made in my lifetime and it is already the longest-running, so perhaps I am entitled to feel slightly confident about its future! In the short term, I am planning to run it exactly as I have done so far – as a fan. I have bought a season ticket for all the home Euro 2012 qualifying matches, and I want to go to the games to enjoy them and not to take notes. I’ve got some ideas for improvements later on, but… baby steps.

Which football team(s) do you support?
Besides Finland, I also reluctantly follow the England team, and I keep an eye out for Germany’s results too. At club level, I support Fulham FC of London. Being completely honest, though, I am more interested in the sport itself than in any particular clubs. I enjoy exciting attacking football and I respect honesty and fair play. If any team or player exhibits both of those, then I am happy to watch them and cheer them on.

What is “sisu”?
Sisu is a word that is very difficult to translate into English, and most Finns people give different explanations. I would say it is a Finnish mixture of bravery and determination, and, perhaps most importantly, the ability to make the right decisions in a difficult situation. In other words, exactly the characteristics required of the Finland team if they are to overperform and qualify for a major tournament for the first time in their history. I learnt what it really meant while I was in the army.