Finnish football legend and current assistant manager of the national team Sami Hyypiä has been given control at Bayer Leverkusen of the German Bundesliga for the rest of the season, in arguably the highest-profile appointment for a Finnish manager in history. Despite not yet having all the necessary coaching qualifications, Hyypiä will effectively manage the team until the end of this season, working alongside the club’s under-19 coach Sascha Lewandowski, who is fully licensed.

Five consecutive defeats spelled the end for Bayer Leverkusen’s previous manager, Robin Dutt. That run included a 7-1 thrashing at the hands of Barcelona in the Champions League, but it was their loss at home in the league to Freiburg that proved to be the final straw. Freiburg are currently battling relegation in the Bundesliga, while Leverkusen harbour ambitions of playing European football again next season and are now seventh.

Hyypiä joined Leverkusen as a player in 2009 from Liverpool, where he had played for ten years, winning the Champions League and becoming a popular player with the fans in the process. He excelled in his first season at Leverkusen too, but decided to retire from the game one year later at the age of 37, becoming a coach at the German club as well as the Finnish national team.

His appointment can only be a good thing for Finland. Whatever experience he picks up from Leverkusen can be transferred to his coaching of the national team (and vice versa). It should be stressed that he has only been appointed as a caretaker-manager, but if he does well, as I fully expect him to, there’s no reason why he couldn’t manage his country as well one day.

Finland international striker Teemu Pukki scored in the 26th and 73rd minutes as Schalke 04 were held 2-2 in their away match against Hannover 96 yesterday evening. Pukki was making his first start for the Gelsenkirchen-based club since his €1.5m move from HJK in the summer.

Pukki made his debut in Schalke’s 0-2 defeat to Bayern München on the 18th of September as a substitute, but then found his playing time limited as he struggled to get ahead of Raúl González, Klaas-Jan Huntelaar and Ciprian Marica in the pecking order. With Huntelaar out with a broken nose, yesterday’s match against Hannover represented Pukki’s first start for his new club, and he went on to repay the faith showed in him with two well-taken goals.

The first came from a precise pass from the left wing by Christian Fuchs in the 26th minutes, which played Pukki in behind the Hannover defence. He just managed to get to the ball before the onrushing Hannover goalkeeper, Ron-Rober Zieler, deftly flicking the ball past him and slotting into the empty net.

Schalke’s opponents equalised three minutes later through an Kiriakos Papadopolous own goal, making it 1-1. They took the lead for the first time in the match in the second half, with Norwegian striker Mohammed Abdellaoue getting the goal. But Pukki was on hand to level things up once more with a strike in the 73rd minute. Jefferson Farfán played him in to the Hannover penalty area, and although Pukki’s first touch seemed to take him too wide to the right of the goal, he pulled off a nice shot which surprised the goalkeeper and rolled into the far corner for his second of the match.

The match finished 2-2, but Pukki was the game’s real talking point. Scoring two goals on his first start at such a high-profile club must fill him with confidence, and can only be good for his future at Schalke and for Finland, who have been desperately short of goals recently. He’ll be joining up with the national squad to face Denmark next week and can be expected to start that match.

Mixu Paatelainen has named the eleven players he is taking along to Finland’s training camp in Eerikkilä, a little over 80 kilometres north-west of Helsinki.

The lucky players are Jens Portin, Jussi Vasara, Ilari Äijälä, Sebastian Sorsa, Sebastian Mannström, Riku Riski, Berat Sadik, Akseli Pelvas, Toni Lindberg, Joel Perovuo and Joni Aho. Nine of them are currently with Finnish clubs, while Jens Portin and Riku Riski play in Sweden, the latter on loan from Widzew Łódź of Poland.

The event is a chance for Paatelainen and the rest of the coaching staff, including assistant Markku Kanerva and goalkeeping coach Antti Niemi, to look at some players who are not in Finland’s first team before their attention turns to the friendly with Denmark in a fortnight’s time. That explains why domestically based players who have played for Finland recently like Alexander Ring and Timo Furuholm are not involved, particularly with Furuholm looking to move abroad after his contract with Inter Turku expired.

It wasn’t a good week for Finns in Europe, with Carl Jenkinson picking up a knee injury in the Champions League on Wednesday evening and no wins for any Finnish player in the Europa League on Thursday. None of them managed to score either, but they certainly got a few cards.

Finland and AZ Alkmaar captain Niklas Moisander played 92 minutes of his side’s home match against Austria Wien before getting sent off for two yellow cards. AZ were trailing 0-2 after half an hour, during which time Moisander had picked up his first yellow card, but they rallied to draw 2-2 with one goal from Sweden international Pontus Wernbloom and the other an owl goal. Moisander’s second yellow came right at the end of injury time in the match, for a foul on Wien’s Zlatko Junuzović. AZ lost their place at the top of group G to Metalist Kharkiv of Ukraine and might be disappointed with the result, but will probably be relieved to have salvaged a point from a match they looked like losing. Moisander will miss their next game, which is the reverse fixture in Vienna on the 3rd of November.

Also in group G, Markus Halsti watched his Malmö side lose 1-4 at home to Metalist from the substitutes’ bench, not taking any part in the match. Malmö scored the first goal and had a one man advantage for most of the match after Metalist’s Jonathan Cristaldo was sent off, but contrived to lose the match emphatically. They have only one point from three matches and don’t look like they will be participating in the competition beyond the group stage.

Former Finland captain Petri Pasanen went through the reverse experience to Moisander, as Red Bull Salzburg threw away a two-goal lead to draw 2-2 with Athletic Bilbao in Spain. Pasanen played the whole match and picked up a yellow card, but it was two of his defensive colleagues at fault for the conceded goals. Fernando Llorente scored two penalties, the first after a foul by Ibrahim Sekagya, the second after a hand-ball by Rasmus Lindgren, who picked up a second yellow card and was sent off in the process. Salzburg are third in group F on four points, level with Paris Saint-Germain and three behind Bilbao.

Finally, Alexei Eremenko Jr came on for Rubin Kazan in the 78th minute of their 1-0 loss to Tottenham Hotspur. He also picked up a yellow card, in what seemed to be the theme of the night for Finnish players. Rubin were arguably the better team on the night – they had more possession, more shots and more shots on target than their opponents, but couldn’t find a goal. It was a Russian player who scored against them, Roman Pavlychenko with a sweet free kick for the home side. Rubin are third in group A behind Spurs and PAOK of Greece, but have two home matches coming up in November to turn things around.

This post was made as a contribution to the Europa Legion, a network of Europa League bloggers on Twitter.

Veikkausliiga weekend preview

In this weekend’s Veikkausliiga matches, RoPS will be relegated if they lose at KuPS, or if Jaro beat JJK and VPS beat Honka. Inter Turku will seal second place if they win away at Mariehamn and Honka and JJK both fail to win. Champions HJK are at home against MyPa and TPS will be hoping for a win against Haka to stay in the race for a Europa League spot.

I think KuPS vs RoPS could be a very interesting match. KuPS are clearly stronger on paper, but they have lost their last two matches while RoPS have won both of their last two. KuPS are safely in mid-table with nothing to play for, while their opponents must be spurred on by their recent results to try to achieve a miraculous escape from relegation. Their fate is not in their own hands, and I’m still pretty sure they will be relegated, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see them win once again this weekend.

All the matches take kick off at 14:00 (Finnish time, UTC+3) on Saturday, apart from Inter vs Mariehamn, which kicks off an hour later.

The last time I wrote a European football round-up, I stated that there were no Finnish players in this season’s Champions League competition. That isn’t strictly true – Carl Jenkinson, who has represented Finland at under-19 and under-21 levels, is in Arsenal’s squad and had been playing in place of Bacary Sagna before picking up an injury this evening.

Jenkinson’s chance in the first team came about because of Sagna’s injury, but unfortunately he has now picked up an injury himself, becoming the latest in a long line of Arsenal players currently out of action. He seemed to twist his knee while attempting a clearance in the 27th minute of his team’s 1-0 victory in Marseille this evening. The 19-year-old defender continued playing until the 62nd minute, when he finally had to be substituted. Johan Djourou replaced him and went on to provide the cross, seemingly unintentionally, for Aaron Ramsey to score in the last minute of the match and give Arséne Wenger’s men the three points.

Compared to the generally shaky performances he had made since signing for Arsenal, Jenkinson had a good match. He got forward at every opportunity and was solid in defence against the tricky Ghanaian winger André Ayew in his right-back position. There was a moment in the first half when the ball struck his arm in his own penalty area, which almost certainly should have led to a Marseille penalty, but was ignored by the match referee. Aside from that, Jenkinson put in arguably his best performance for the club he joined from Charlton Athletic in the summer, and Finland fans will be hoping his injury does not keep him out for too long so he can continue to pick up valuable experience at the top level of football.

Jenkinson’s manager Wenger was quoted as saying, “He had a very good game, he had a little knee problem so we hope it’s not serious. He overstretched his knee.” That doesn’t sound too serious, thankfully.

Update: Jenkinson is expected to be out for two weeks, which means he will miss Arsenal’s matches against Stoke and Bolton, but could return to play some part against Chelsea on the 29th of October.