It’s about time I made this official.

I haven’t posted anything on this website for months, and I’ve come to feel that it’s not worth doing so any more. I can’t write any meaningful articles because I haven’t been following Finnish football closely enough for quite some time. “Real life” has got in the way, unfortunately. University, work and a relationship consume most of my time, and are obviously higher priorities than writing here.

I expect this will my last update. I’ll keep the site online at least until the end of the 2014 World Cup, in case my match reports of Finland’s qualifiers prove useful to anyone.

Thanks to everyone who has shown enthusiasm for this project; I’m sorry to bring it to an end. I suggest you get your fix of Finnish football news from Escape to Suomi, which covers far more of the subject than I ever have, with a particular focus on the domestic scene. When the Frozen Pitch started, it was probably the only English website with such a focus on Finland, but I’m happy to see there is now another. It’s in good hands.

If you need to contact me for any reason, you can find all my details on this page.

Over and out.

This blog has a new name and a new URL!

It was only a month ago that I moved to a new host, for reasons I outlined in an earlier post. At that point, I began using a free sub-domain provided by them, but it was always my intention to get my own domain name, and I have taken the opportunity to change my blog’s name in the process.

Having received press accreditation for this Friday’s Finland vs Sweden match – a first for me – I started thinking about my name, Sisu. Although there’s nothing wrong with it, it is a very generic name here in Finland. There are Sisu trucks, Sisu military vehicles, Sisu pastilles, a Sisu orchestra and even a Sisu right-wing nationalist group, not to mention the dozens of other blogs using the name. I tried to imagine myself in the pre-match press conference, putting my hand up to ask a question and introducing myself as “Oliver Lewisohn, Sisu”. It would have felt ridiculous.

So I made a short-list of about five alternative names, and found out which of them were already being used. Most importantly, I wanted a .com domain name, so that ruled out one name I liked, “Good on Paper”. Eventually I settled on The Frozen Pitch, with a domain name of thefrozenpitch.com.

I know that changing domains can be hazardous for websites, but I don’t think that should be too much of a problem, as the old domain now redirects here. That means all the old links still work. I should point out, however, that my Twitter account has moved to @FrozenPitch, which is always the first place I share my new articles. If you were following @SisuBlog, you’ll still be following me with the new name.

As always, I’d appreciate it if you could spread the word to anyone you think might be interested. Thanks!

A short while ago, I noticed that my blog at sisu.co.cc was getting a lot less traffic than it had been before. After signing in to my Google Webmaster Tools account, I found the reason: Google had decided my site violated their guidelines and would therefore no longer be listed in their search listings.

I immediately appealed the decision, hoping for at least an explanation of why my site had been suspended. I know for a fact that my site has never hosted any malware, so I was unsure of the reason myself. However, upon sending my request for reconsideration, text appeared saying something along the lines of “please allow three weeks for the decision to be made… we cannot answer to each individual request”. So the most likely outcome was that they were going to maintain the removal of my site, without saying why. I had to investigate myself.

I very quickly discovered that Google dropped all .co.cc domains a couple of months ago, because, apparently, a high proportion of them do contain malware. Some eleven million websites were affected. I think that was a terrible decision, because spammers can automatically create dozens of identical websites at different addresses, while legitimate site owners such as myself face huge inconvenience. Google is so dominant as a search technology that I don’t think it’s an understatement to say no Google = no new traffic = no point in running a website. I was also cheesed off that they didn’t either inform me personally or publicise it to a greater extent.

So it was time for a new domain. I decided to look for a new web host at the same time, as my previous (free) one had severe restrictions on Twitter, RSS feeds, and other useful features. I’m now with NearlyFreeSpeech.net, who have a very cheap and innovative pay-as-you-go pricing structure, and no such restrictions. My new URL is thefrozenpitch.com.

There are a number of things to note about this new site:

• I have moved all the old posts over, but removed the majority of pictures from them, because I would have had to edit them all manually to make them work properly, which would have been a pain, and because it saves storage space and bandwidth.
• The layout has changed, because I wanted something simpler to work with, rather than the old theme which I had to edit myself quite a lot. It’s not necessarily final, but I quite like it.
• The RSS feed URL has changed. This is the last post I will make at the old address, so if you were subscribing to the posts there, you should unsubscribe from that and then subscribe to the new one. If you aren’t a subscriber, why not give it a try?

I should also apologise for the recent inactivity. It was very poor of me to write that I wanted to expand this blog, to domestic football for example, and then not post at all for two months. I have been busy, but the main reason is that I often find it difficult to maintain an interest in one thing over a period of time. I like to follow cricket, formula one, rugby, tennis, snooker, and a few other sports, and of course I have non-sporting interests too, as well as a girlfriend who I love spending time with.

I’m realising that it’s foolish of me to commit to any fixed schedule, because my level of interest and my schedule changes all the time. So I won’t be making any more commitments like that – except for that one, obviously. I’ll just try to update it when I can.

Lastly, I need your help! I need to spread my new address around, so I would greatly appreciate it if you could tell a friend or two about it. Posting it on Twitter or Facebook would be perfect. Having more readers would encourage me to update more often, so it’s a win-win situation, right? Here are my posts from the last couple of days, in case you missed them: Väyrynen heading to Leeds United, and Netherlands reflections: No excuses, Perpa.

In Mixu We Trust?

If you notice anything broken on this new site, please let me know via Twitter or the comments form at the bottom of this page. Or just let me know what you think!

Cheers,

Oliver.

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!

As you may or may not have noticed, there was no new blog post on Friday, as there usually is. There were two reasons for this: firstly, I couldn’t find the time; and secondly, there was very little to report on the national team. Everyone is busy with their clubs.

There are inevitably going to be lots of these periods of international inactivity, which gives me a shortage of things to write about. That’s a problem.

The obvious solution would be to cover Finnish league football, but I know very little about it and I wouldn’t really know what to write. The current Veikkausliiga season is coming to an end, and the Suomen Cup final was held last weekend. I might jump in next season if time and money allow, but that’s not until next April.

So I need your ideas: what should I write about in the meantime? At the risk of sounding desperate, I’m open to requests. If there’s any topic you want to see covered, Finnish or not, leave a comment at the bottom of this page and I’ll consider it.

Finland play their next match in just over two weeks’ time, on the 12th of October against Hungary. I’ll definitely be picking this blog up again in the build-up to that, as well as before then if anything significant happens, or if I receive any good ideas. But in the meantime, I need to concentrate on my upcoming exam week at school.

Sorry about all of this; I don’t expect anyone will miss my posts too much, but I felt I should apologise just in case! Here are a few of my favourite sources of football news and comment to tide you over:

Nordic Football News – including regular articles about Finnish football.
Guardian Football Weekly – informative and humorous podcast about English football, with regular looks at other countries.
In Bed With Maradona – a collection of independent football blog writing from around the world.
Zonal Marking – accurate and in-depth tactical analysis of European matches.
F365 Mediawatch – exposing the idiocy and inconsistency of the footballing media on a daily basis.
Swiss Ramble – incredibly detailed posts about the business side of football.

See you soon,

Oliver.