Monthly Archives: June 2011

Finnish clubs discover their European fates

The four Finnish sides to have qualified for European football learnt who they will be playing in the Champions League and Europa League qualifiers today, following the draw by UEFA in Nyon, Switzerland.

Helsingin Jalkopalloklubi, better known as HJK, qualified for the Champions League after winning the Veikkausliiga last year. They have been drawn against Bangor City, winners of the Welsh Premier League, in the second qualifying round. Their two-legged match will take place between the 12th and 20th of July. HJK are the seeded team, so are notionally the favourites to go through to the third qualifying round, where teams including Rangers FC of Scotland and FC København of Denmark await them.

Finland has three Europa League entrants. Turun Palloseura, TPS, qualified by winning the Finnish Cup, beating HJK 2-0 in the final last September. They face KVC Westerlo, who won the Europa League playoff of the Belgian Pro League, in the second qualifying round. Kuopion Palloseura, KuPS, were last season’s Veikkausliiga runners-up and are also in the second qualifying round. They have been drawn against Gaz Metan Mediaş, seventh-placed finishers in the Romanian Liga I, who were awarded their European spot after one of the teams above them were denied a competition license for financial reasons. Pallohonka, more commonly just Honka, qualified after finishing fourth in the Veikkausliiga because TPS above them had already qualified through the Finnish cup. Their opponents in the first qualifying round, Nõmme Kalju of Estonia, finished fourth in the 2010 Meistriliiga. Kalju have a number of Estonian internationals on their books, but a home stadium that only fits 500 spectators. The first qualifying round matches will take place on the 30th of June and 7th of July, while the second qualifying round matches will take place on the 14th and 21st of July.

Weekend round-up
Haka against HJK used to be something of a Finnish classic; the joint-second-most successful league team against the first. Haka are having a poor season, however, and that was compounded by the 0-5 defeat they suffered at home to HJK in Saturday’s only match. Finland striker Berat Sadik scored one goal, and former under-21 striker Akseli Pelvas got two.

MyPa were the other team to score five goals away from home this weekend, as they beat Jaro 1-5 on Sunday evening. Canadian striker Riley O’Neill scored a late hat-trick, with all three goals coming after the 87th minute.

Mariehamn overcame Honka 1-0, and the two other matches to be played on Sunday both finished 1-1, VPS drawing at RoPS and TPS drawing at KuPS. Finland’s Mika Ääritalo was on the scoresheet for TPS once again; he now has six goals in ten matches this season.

The league’s surprise package JJK travel from Jyväskylä to Turku this evening to take on Inter, the early season leaders who have now slipped back into third place. It should be an exciting match as both teams need three points to keep up with HJK, who currently have a four-point cushion having played one game more.

Finnish players on the move

Two of Finland’s first team players look to be heading for pastures new this summer. Here’s the latest.

The teams of the Austrian Bundesliga apparently didn’t watch Finland going down 5-0 to Sweden earlier this month. Finland defender Markus Heikkinen already plays for Rapid Vienna, and now it has emerged that Red Bull Salzburg have contacted his centre-back partner in that match Petri Pasanen over the possibility of procuring his services for next season. The 30-year-old Pasanen is available on a free transfer after leaving German club Werder Bremen, where he had played for seven years. I’ve seen conflicting reports about whether he was released or turned down the offer of a new contract. Either way, he gave Werder a long service but sometimes caused frustration by making avoidable mistakes, as discussed on the podcast I contributed to earlier this week.
Pasanen has previously represented Ajax and FC Lahti, with loan spells at Portsmouth and FC Hämeenlinna. Today’s Iltasanomat newspaper reports that the centre-back’s negotiations with Red Bull Salzburg are still ongoing, but the energy-drink-owned club’s manager Ricardo Moniz has made his interest public and confirmed that the club have made an approach. I expect the move to go through very soon.

Unlike their Austrian counterparts, I wonder whether the clubs of Italy’s Serie A managed to watch Finland’s recent qualifying matches, because a number of them are hot on the heels of the only Finnish player to emerge with much credibility, Përparim Hetemaj. More likely is that they have taken notice of his performances for club side Brescia, who were in Serie A last season before being relegated. Roma, Fiorentina, Genoa, Lazio and Palermo have all been reported as being interested in him, though it does seem to be mostly speculation at this stage.
According to the Finnish television channel MTV3, Brescia’s chairman Gino Corioni has admitted that the club need to sell as many players as possible to raise money post-relegation, so it seems likely that the Kosovo-born Hetemaj will be playing for a new club next season. Corioni also compared “Perpa”, as he is nicknamed, to Italian legend Gennaro Gattuso. That’s high praise, but I suspect he’s just trying to drive the price up towards the four million euro valuation he has placed on the player. With clubs like Roma and Fiorentina supposedly interested at half that price, it could be a while before a deal is struck.

Player profile: Teemu Pukki

With the national team searching for a striker to fill Mikael Forssell’s boots in the near future, one candidate making a splash in the domestic league is 21-year-old Teemu Pukki.

Teemu Pukki Profile

Teemu Pukki
Information correct as of 16 June 2010
Date of birth 29 March 1990
Present age 21
Place of birth Kotka, Finland
Position Striker
International caps 3
International goals 0
International debut 04 February 2009
Current club HJK, Helsinki
Previous clubs Sevilla, KooTeePee

Teemu Pukki was one of a few Finnish players to catch my eye during HJK’s 5-1 demolition of RoPS last night. He scored one goal, HJK’s third, by keeping his cool in a one-on-one situation when the opposing goalkeeper did not, and he set up two more. His movement was causing problems for the RoPS defence throughout, though his service was limited in the first half by some wayward midfield passing.

In fact it’s been a good start to the season for Pukki, who has now notched up five goals and four assists in eight matches, putting him third on Veikkausliiga’s “power list“. This marks the best period of his career, after a couple years at KooTeePee and a fruitless spell at Sevilla in Spain.¨

Pukki’s senior debut for KooTeePee came at the age of 16 against HJK, the team he now represents. In two Veikkausliiga seasons he made 29 appearances and despite scoring only three goals, he did enough to convince Sevilla to whisk him away from his hometown club, aged 17, to join their youth set-up. Chelsea of England were also reported to be interested. The signing of such a young domestic player by a relatively big European club made the headlines in Finland, and created some excitement about his potential.

At Sevilla, Pukki first appeared for the reserve side, known as Sevilla Atlético, in the Spanish second division. His debut was marked with a stunning long-range goal that won the match for his team and only continued to build the hype surrounding him. In a further 16 matches that season he only managed another two goals, as his team were relegated.

The next season, 2009/2010, did not go at all well for Pukki or his team, who would have expected to finish near the top of the table, but ended up 15th, just one point and one place above a relegation play-off. Pukki did make his first team debut in that season though, in January 2009. That turned out be his one and only appearance for Sevilla, and his playing time for the reserves dried up when a new coach was brought in mid-season.

In the summer of 2010, with the Spanish league season over and the Finnish one a little over half-way complete, Pukki moved from Sevilla back to Finland, signing a three-and-a-half-year contract to play for Veikkausliiga champions HJK. He was immediately involved in their matches, making seven appearances in the remaining part of the season, scoring two goals. This season he had already doubled that figure after the same number of matches.

Pukki has also represented Finland at senior and youth levels. He was the leading scorer in the qualifying stage of the 2007 European Under-17 Championship, and went on to represent Finland under-21s 21 times. His full debut came in February 2009 in a friendly against Japan. He has three senior caps, the most recent coming in May last year, but only 74 playing minutes in total and no goals yet.

The curve of Pukki’s career was at its lowest point around the start of 2010 when he wasn’t playing any competitive football at all, but since his return to Finland it’s taken an upward turn and is now at roughly the same level as before he left. It’s hard to assess his future potential: perhaps he has benefited from his training at a top club, or perhaps he has suffered from a lack of playing time, highlighting the danger of young players moving away too early in their careers. But if he maintains his current level of performance over the course of this season, I can’t see him being anywhere other than in the Finland squad when it comes to the three home matches to be played by the Eagle Owls this autumn.

The other contenders to be Mikael Forssell’s successor as Finland’s number one striker are Mika Ääritalo, on the scoresheet today as TPS won the Turku derby 2-1, his club team-mate Berat Sadik, and the slightly older Roni Porokara of Germinal Beerschot. Of those four, Pukki is definitely the one I’m most excited about.

HJK 5-1 RoPS

My first ever Finnish league match was a thoroughly one-sided encounter, with home side HJK sending RoPS on the long journey back to Rovaniemi with a thrashing and nothing more than a consolation goal to cheer them up.

HJK were missing a couple of key players, particularly in central midfield where both Finland Jari Litmanen and Finland prospect Alexander Ring were out with injury. RoPS, on the other hand, were missing just about all their players; they only managed to pick 15 players out of a permitted 18 (11 starters + 7 substitutes). The recent match-fixing scandal cost them the core of their team, which was primarily formed of Zambian players, and they seem to be struggling to return to a full complement of players.

A respectable start to the Veikkausliiga campaign for the Lapland team, with two wins and a draw in their first five matches, is in danger of being forgotten as they have now gone five matches without a win. Right from the kick-off in this match, they were set up to defend and counter-attack. For the first half of the match, it seemed like it might pay off – although they didn’t score, neither did HJK, who missed a couple of chances but mainly struggled in midfield. Dawda Bah was guilty of giving the ball away carelessly on a number of occasions.

Just four minutes into the second half, HJK scored, and then they just kept scoring. I’m not going to do a blow-by-blow account of all the goals and other incidents like I would for the national team – that information is available at Soccerway – but I will say that Bah more than made up for his first half sloppiness with an absolute peach of a goal to put his side two goals ahead. It was a slow, high, looping shot from the corner of the area that curled past RoPS goalkeeper Alex Nyom and into the corner of the net. He also made the pass that set up HJK’s next goal, scored by Teemu Pukki, playing with his elbow in a support after injuring it against Honka on the 9th of June.

Pukki now has four goals in seven matches (six starts), moving him into the top ten goalscorers in the division. That’s interesting to me because he is a young Finnish player who could be Mikael Forssell’s replacment in the national team one day. Another Finnish striker, Berat Sadik, was my man of the match. He scored soon after coming on as a substitute to put the result beyond any doubt and was fouled in the area later to win a penalty, converted by Rafinha.

RoPS did not give a good account of themselves. They had only a few shots in the entire match, and when they had a good opportunity they usually squandered it. For example, a free kick from the right-hand side of the penalty area was floated out of play when a good cross was required. They resorted to desperation tactics much earlier than necessary, taking a shot directly from the second-half restart with the game still goalless. They did manage to pick up a consolation goal for their troubles, denying Saku Sahlgren a clean sheet on his HJK debut.

HJK now have five straight wins and they move top of the league with this result, at least until Inter take on TPS in tomorrow night’s Turku derby. Today’s other match finished Haka 1-0 KuPS.

My experience
Ticket cost: 7.50€ at the gate for a half-way line seat.
Travel cost: nothing more than I already pay for my monthly Helsinki travelcard.
Travel time: half an hour from my front door to the gate.
The stadium: big, pretty empty, wet and windy even under the roof.
The atmosphere: both sets of fans made a good amount of noise.
The food: I wanted something hot; disappointingly there was nothing vegetarian.
Final thoughts: not a close enough match to be particularly exciting, but a couple of good goals so I won’t complain. HJK stepped up a gear in the second half and were just too strong for RoPS.

Sisu’s year in review

This time last year, the 2010 World Cup in South Africa was in full swing. It was at the end of that tournament, after a really soul-destroying final, that I decided to start this blog. Now it’s time to look back at the past year and consider the future.

As I made clear right from the beginning, the person this blog was primarily aimed at was me. I wanted to provide myself with an education in Finnish football after a lifetime of following the English and international games. Over the course of a year I’ve accomplished that; I now know so much about the national team, its players and staff, that I had absolutely no clue about last July. Even during the five months at the start of this year when I didn’t write anything, I was keeping up with the news and taking in information without difficulty.

I did have another, more ambitious target though: I wanted this blog to become the best English-language resource for Finnish national football on the web. I’ve discovered a few other sites that offer excellent coverage which I could only hope to match, but none of them seem to offer the regular previews and post-match analysis which I have done for every competitive match, and every friendly match but one since I started blogging. Regardless of quality (or lack of it), I think I’m doing something that nobody else is, and I’m very happy with that.

Moving on to the future, then. Just recently I’ve started getting my name and work out a little more – I wrote for Charlie Anderson’s Stone by Stone website and I was a guest on a podcast for the Andrew Gibney’s Gib Football Show. The latter experience in particular gave me a realisation that should not have surprised me: there are still many layers of Finnish football I know nothing about.

To give you a couple of examples, I don’t really follow the domestic game except for glancing at the league table every once in a while, I don’t particularly follow the fortunes of Finnish players at their clubs abroad, and I know virtually nothing about other Nordic nations or leagues. As someone who always wants to acquire a deep understanding of any subject that interests me, I am bothered by that. There are plenty of other independent bloggers and football writers who have immense knowledge of their specialist nations or leagues – I respect them hugely and in many ways I wish I could join them.

In the long term, there might be things that prevent me from doing that, including my important exams in September and next March, but for now I’m going to try to cover some domestic football, and perhaps at some point in the distant future, U21 internationals and women’s internationals. This evening I’ll be going to my first Finnish league match, HJK against RoPS (look out for a report later), and I intend to attend and cover more Veikkausliiga games this summer. I’m very excited about it, and I have plans for this blog if it all goes well, so I hope you’ll join me for the journey!