Third round of Veikkausliiga

Tampere United 1 TPS 1

Honka 0 RoPS 0

Inter 1 Haka 0

KuPS 2 Lahti 3

VPS 0 HJK 0

MIFK 4 KTP 2

MyPa 3 Jaro 0

Click on the result to get highlights. Be sure to check out RoPS’s ridiculous green shirt.

Well, TamU messed things up a bit at the end there. They had looked a lot more stable with newly signed Iiro Aalto back from Cyprus, a left footed player playing on the left making the team much more balanced than they have been. Daniel Nwoke played very well, linking up play well and having a tussle with Kheireddine Zarabi that was very enjoyable to watch. They both played well, but I’d give the edge to the defender. Nwoke’s worth showed once he was brought off, however.

Up until that point, TamU had been able to break a few times through Rafinha, and Daniel had given the TPS defence something to think about. When he went off, the defence relaxed a little, while Saarinen failed to track the midfield runner for the goal. Poor substitutions from Hjelm, i can’t understand why he didn’t bring on James in the anchor man role and Jonne Hjelm as a fresh striker, rather than Niemi who was clearly quite tired by then.

The atmosphere at Ratina is much better now, at least in the main stand. Home and away fans are at either end of the stand and so far everyone’s been pretty loud. Even jaro brought a good following, including a capo who spent most of the match bellowing at his mates. I suspect this is at the expense of those on the ’sunny side’, but with 12,000 empty seats it’s difficult to make everyone happy. Attendances haven’t been great, with a disappointing 3,956 at the TPS game. I think they may well suffer because of the sheer number of games to be played before the break for the European Championships. People just don’t have the time.

Elsewhere, HJK got a draw at VPS and will lick their lips with anticipation at the thought of taking on KuPS while Inter and FC Lahti destroy each others 100% records next Monday.

Helsinki Times anniversary edition: Turku football boom

It is exactly one year since the first English language weekly newspaper in Finland began publication. To celebrate there are a lot of extra features, including this article on Turku’s football boom. If you haven’t seen the paper yet, I recommend buying a copy this week. Here’s the article:

9th May 2008

DURING the first half, one of the TPS fans behind the press box made a comment that his team’s midfielder Chris Cleaver was like toilet paper. A strange analogy, but one that has some foundation. Not the most exciting thing in the world, but vital, willing to do the dirty work and if you invite a load of people round and don’t have it, you’re going to be embarrassed.

Unfortunately for TPS, Cleaver – the battling midfielder that usually gives his team-mates time and space to play – was injured after ten minutes in the derby against Inter on May 4. He overstretched himself trying to tackle Inter’s Nigerian midfielder Dominic Chatto, and despite attempts to run off his injury he was replaced by 19 year old starlet Riku Riski. Riski is a highly regarded prospect, but this was too big a game and too difficult a role for his style of play.

And what a game it was. There were some tickets left on the morning of the match, but these had gone with hours to spare and a capacity crowd of 8,937 filled Veritas Stadium, widely regarded as the best ground in Veikkausliiga. The ground has a capacity suited to the teams that play there, stands close to the pitch, and facilities for lucrative corporate hospitality. It’s no surprise that Turku is experiencing what the local media has dubbed a ‘football boom’, with two sides in Veikkausliiga and an excellent ground to watch them in.

The two clubs have contrasting backgrounds. TPS have the backing of Seppo Sairanen, an investment banker. Their budget is big by Finnish standards, and they are investing for the future rather than blowing everything on players’ salaries. They heavily subsidise ticket prices, for example, and are reaping the rewards with two active, growing fan groups: Young Boys Turku and Sissi Ryhmä. Their plan is to break even by 2011, after running fairly heavy losses, but the Chief Executive Petri Jakonen has a few issues to sort out first.

First and foremost, he is clear that success on the field is the most important pre-condition to all the plans he has put in place. Without a team fighting it out at the top of the league, the plans for expansion and growth will come to nothing, and as such he was very worried by the performance against Inter.

“It was our worst day ever,” said an exasperated Jakonen. “It’s absolutely clear that we have to be top three in this league before we can think about anything else, and that’s why Sunday was so bad for us.”

He can say that again. Without Cleaver, TPS allowed Chatto the freedom to pick his pass, and the first unchallenged long ball he hit picked out Mika Mäkitalo. He turned, looked up, crossed the ball for Ats Purje, and a simple header was all it took to put Inter 1-0 ahead. It looked easy and, for Inter, it was. Their coach Job Dragtsma had prepared his team to take advantage of the somewhat brittle nature of the TPS defence, and with quick passing and movement Inter opened them up again and again.

In the stands things were not going well for the “home” team. “On what day did God create this team and couldn’t he have rested on that day too?” asked a crestfallen TPS fan. The two TPS fan groups turned their backs on the action and their banners upside down, and began chanting at the back of the Olympic Stand while steadfastly ignoring their team’s efforts for most of the second half.

“ I’m surprised by just how bad TPS have been,” said Inter’s goalkeeping coach, Jani Meriläinen. “Cleaver is very important for them, the kind of player you don’t notice too much but really miss when he’s not playing.”

Inter wrapped up the win with an excellent curling strike from Mäkitalo and two close range finishes by former Musan Salama player Timo Furuholm, while Riski and Armand One missed excellent chances for TPS. The big Frenchman found it tough, and often had to come back towards midfield to collect the ball. That’s not his natural game, and it was difficult to see the tactics TPS were trying to apply. In the post-match press conference, the first question for the former Finland manager was “your system didn’t seem to work. Was there one?”.

In the circumstances, it was understandable that the TPS people did not want to dwell on the game. Jakonen was keen to talk about the success of his organisation in selling out the stadium and creating the ‘football boom’ in Turku.

“In Finland football clubs don’t tend to have homes,” says the former Reipas, TPS, HJK and MyPa goalkeeper. “I mean what is a football club’s identity? For me it is the colours, the badge, the team – and the ground. In ice hockey every club has a home, so why not in football?”

“There is only one place in the world where two clubs successfully share the same stadium, and that is in Milan. And those clubs have a lot of history together. Of course we are pleased to have such a good stadium, and we are happy to be here, but if we are to progress we need to do something about the match day revenues.”

Jakonen divides football revenues into three parts: match day revenue, sponsorship money, and TV rights fees. TV coverage of Veikkausliiga is in its infancy right now, and TPS have – according to Jakonen – a level of sponsorship that is comparable to other Nordic clubs and even some sides in the UK; but they lag far, far behind in match day revenues, which at present consist only of ticket sales. Refreshment, revenue and merchandising are all run by Veritas, and TPS want a larger slice of that pie.

Veritas is owned by Kiinteistöyhtiö Kupittaan Stadion, whose board contains FC Inter’s chairman Stefan Håkans but no representative from TPS. They did not have the money to join the company when the new main stand was built in 2003. As a result there is considerable overlap between the Inter and Veritas organisations, and since Sairanen’s largesse began to raise TPS attendances much higher than Inter’s, disquiet has been voiced about the arrangements for merchandise and refreshment stands.

TPS want to keep at least some of the money their fans spend on beer and hotdogs, but according to Jakonen that has never been on the table. According to Håkans, TPS never asked. They could of course both be right – it is clear that TPS are irritated by what they perceive as Håkans’s high handed manner, and think he should be working hard to keep them as tenants, whereas he probably wants them to ask a lot more nicely. Whatever the truth of the matter, the fact is that Turku has two teams attracting good crowds, a great stadium, and an enthusiastic local media. Surely that can’t be turned into a problem?

FC Haka

The previous post was a bit premature, it must be said. Haka still have an appeal, and most people expect them to get their licence, but the whole affair does raise some questions. For instance, why has their budget been passed for Veikkausliiga competition but is apparently not fit for UEFA? Veikkausliiga chairman Jan Walden was asked by Aamulehti whether they’d been playing with a special licence under conditions, and what would happen to that licence now, and his reply was less than confidence-boosting.

“No they haven’t….no comment…I have to go now, bye bye,” said Walden.

Given that the league did indulge in a fair amount of cockswinging towards TamU, Honka and RoPS in the last round of licensing, it would be a bit rum for them to have simply passed Haka ‘with conditions’ without the public naming and shaming given to the others. I would even go so far as to say that it would defeat the entire object of licensing systems (to promote financial responsibility among clubs). But that is speculation, and we’ll see what happens next week.

To be fair, not many people want to say anything worthwhile on the subject. I asked Haka CEO Seppo Laitinen what he thought about it, and he said he “cannot speak about that in English. Maybe next week,” giving the impression that he expects some movement in the appeal, or possibly that his employer will go bankrupt by then. Other Haka sources have pointed fingers at Göran Enckelman (Peter’s Dad) and Markus Juhola, two guys with TPS connections and varying degrees of beef with Haka who served on the UEFA licensing committee. I wouldn’t put too much store by that, but it does show how personal everything is in Finnish football.

The reaction on messageboards and in the media has surprised me a little. There have been stories that the club is on the verge of bankruptcy (denied by Laitinen, in Finnish), but the expectation is that UPM will bail out the club. Haka’s take on this is that the licensing committee has misunderstood the relationship between the newly created holding company, FC Haka Oy, and FC Haka. According to Helsingin Sanomat, Laitinen claims that “the UEFA team licence decision that we have received is clearly based on claims and statements that FC Haka can easily rectify”, so you’d expect this all to be a storm in a teacup.

This is Finland, however, and clubs with multiple title wins go bankrupt very easily indeed. FC Jazz, FinnPa, HIFK and Allianssi are all clubs that have done well in the top flight and subsequently gone bust. So journalists have been reminiscing about the previous bankruptcies, like the time when FC Jazz players were given macaroni casserole instead of a post match meal.

In that article, Sundqvist also expects that UPM will plug the gap, but at some point the forestry sector will surely stop propping up their football teams in Finland. The Finnish paper industry is declining as a proportion of UPM’s business, and my questions to football-interested UPM employees were redirected to ‘the local department’ - Finland is seen as an accounting hub as much as a pulp producer these days, and the big factories, and plans for expansion, are abroad. It will be interesting to see if UPM have the budget or inclination to help out what must surely have been one of their best marketing tools, down the years.

That’s what Haka are, really: a marketing tool. A step up from a factory works side, but they have represented UPM in a European Cup Quarter final against Juventus, when by all accounts (you can take it as read that I haven’t spoken to Michel Platini or his team-mates on this one, and that ex-Haka players exaggerate after a beer or two) they were unlucky to go out. The paper mill is in the corner of the ground, the stadium is called ‘factory pitch’, the sponsors are all aimed at the management of the company and most of the fans work directly or indirectly for the paper mill.

The VIP bus I saw on Monday night was run by Rauman Stevedoring, a west coast shipping company that wants to impress and get the contracts to distribute paper products all over the world, and around the ground hoardings include those from Tilbury docks, Finnlines, VR Cargo and other freight companies. So we can say that in the Finnish mindset they are inextricably linked with the paper industry, just like MyPa.

This has some odd effects. Finnish economic policy has, on occasion, been run to suit the paper industry. Devaluations were implemented in part to ensure that paper products remained competitive on the world market, despite the pain this caused people who had to buy things from abroad. The imperative to keep production running meant that forest industry unions were among the strongest in Finland, always opting out of the economy-wide wage settlements and getting themselves a much better deal. This caused a slightly British ‘tut tut’ attitude towards those unions and that industry, and there is some shadenfreude mixed in now that a small town club run by the paper barons is getting it’s comeuppance.

I don’t share this at all. I think Haka are a great club, that they have a brilliant ground, and that there is a place for that kind of community club in Veikkausliiga. They need to concentrate on producing youngsters, ‘owning’ their town and making a profit on player trading, something like what Jaro aim to do, but they should be able to hold things together. Veikkausliiga is not a big money league, and there are lots of towns of a similar size to Valkeakoski that have competed in much more prestigious leagues than this. The question is whether Haka (and probably MyPa too, not that there are indications of problems there) can handle the transition from being aristocrats of the Finnish game competing in ‘Finland’s classico’ (Haka vs HJK) to being a tightly run club counting the pennies and hoping for success. I hope they haven’t overstretched themselves.

Great throw-ins of our time

Finland’s women played Iceland tonight, and managed to get another draw to go with the one they secured on Sunday. It was 0-0 tonight, and 1-1 on Sunday. This is a vast improvement on the 3-0 defeat that gave Finland a last-place finish in this year’s Algarve Cup, but they still have some way to go before they can be confident of a decent showing in next summer’s European Championships.

That’s all very interesting, but what I really want to show you is this fantastic throw-in from Ásta Árnadóttir:

Haka kicked out of Europe

FC Haka have been denied a licence to play in the 2008-09 UEFA Cup. Apparently this is for financial reasons, and TPS have been ‘promoted’ from the Intertoto to fill their place. The full list of Finnish entrants now reads:

Champions League: Tampere United

UEFA Cup: Honka, TPS, Jaro (if they win the Fair Play ballot)

Intertoto: MyPa

Haka do have the right of appeal against the denial, the results of which will be known in 2 weeks.

More when we get it/I read it

Tepsi torn a new one

I was hoping for Juha to post some of his angst, pain and suffering, but it seems grief is a private affair. The Tepsi fans were not impressed with their side, turning their backs on the pitch and their banners upside down, while all the Inter fans in the stadium pissed themselves laughing. It’s amazing just how crucial Chris Cleaver is to TPS, without him they went to pieces. Chatto and Mäkitalo ran the show, and Furuholm finished well.

In other news, TamU messed up big time in Rovaniemi, putting Niemi in midfield with Hjelm on the left wing, and it did not work. This does rather make the TamU-Tepsi game on Thursday a little bit make or break for both sides, as losing it would mean falling behind HJK. HJK have had a tough start, squeaking home against MIFK and KTP, powerhouses of the Finnish game. If they can somehow squeeze a result from VPS and KuPs, they will stick two fingers up at the fixtures computer that has given them such a difficult season opening.

Highlights are here.

On a completely unrelated note, I recently emailed one of the candidates for this autumn’s mayoral election about his plans for the football stadia of Tampere. He has not replied, so maybe he needs a nudge. You can contact him here. And this is his election film:

Train kept-a-rollin’…

Finns adore the football culture in countries that have it. And they love reading stories about how their friends or internet pals have travelled to Sweden or somewhere to take a glimpse on the culture.

It’s not every week that football fans from all over Finland travel to see a game of their choice in Finland, though. Well, miracles do happen. Some 10 or more people are planning a trip to Turku on Sunday to watch the local derby between TPS and FC Inter. Someone is actually making a 450 kilometre trip from Kuopio.

It goes without saying that this is quite exceptional in Finland. I wish there would be more games in the country that would get the people going from all over Finland.

The derby seems to be selling out at the moment. Out of 6400 seats, some 4500 are sold. Add on to this the probable fact that hundreds of people will expect to be able to buy tickets at the stadium before kick-off, and we could see the stadium sell out easily.

Ykkönen starts this weekend

Or, to be more precise, started this evening. Viikingit beat Atlantis 2-1, and their bullish management believes that this is a first step on the road to promotion back to Veikkausliiga. They were not pretty, by all accounts, but more than 1,500 people saw them got a scrappy win with an 87th minute goal from Jussi Peteri, who also scored the first. Atlantis’s goal came from Panu Autio. you can see some nice sunny pictures, and interviews with the bullish management, from Nelonen sports news.

Ykkönen has a very Helsinki feel to it this year, with KäPa, PK-35 and GrIFK joining Viikingit and Atlantis in the division. Klubi 04, HJK’s farm team, were relegated to Kakkonen last year. It is astounding that there is only one Helsinki club in the top flight, but to be honest i can’t see any of the Ykkönen sides making a sustained challenge to HJK. We will probably have to wait for HIFK to get promoted for that to happen, and after a disappointing 1-1 draw against Kontu (yet another lower league Helsinki team, this time from the run-down eastern suburbs) on Monday it looks like they may have a harder time than they’d like.

It can be surprising, though. GrIFK striker Petter Meyer told HBL that he didn’t really expect to get promoted last year, and his side trailed PoPa for most of 2007. But here they are, promoted as champions, and representing Grankulla (Kauniainen in Finnish, although it is a bilingual municipality with a large Swedish speaking minority) in Ykkönen. Meyer expects that they will get 500 people a game, I think they will be lucky to achieve that in a handball area with a population of 8,000.

Ville Nylund mentioned that the clubs in Ykkönen are so diverse that helping them is not a uniform activity. Sides like KäPa have a very small budget, will be very happy to stay up, and have no intention of trying to compete in veikkausliiga. Viikingit want help with marketing and building their infrastructure, with the intention of establishing themselves on their next promotion rather than scrapping at the bottom of the table.

1st round of Veikkausliiga

Veikkausliiga started last Sunday with six games and the first round was concluded on Monday as HJK paid a visit to IFK Mariehamn. The results were as follows.

FC Inter - RoPS 3-1, highlights 1, 2
VPS - FC Haka 0-0, highlights
TamU - FF Jaro 0-0, highlights
FC KooTeePee - FC Lahti 0-1, highlights
KuPS - TPS 0-3, highlights
FC Honka - MyPa 2-0, highlights
IFK Mariehamn - HJK 0-2, highlights

All title candidates stood their ground with the exception of TamU, who had to settle with a goalless draw against Jaro, who are tipped for a mid-table finish. HJK, TPS and Honka got a two-point lead after the very first round of games and TamU must catch a win next Sunday if they do not want to fall behind during the early stages of the season. They will be favourites to win because they will travel to Rovaniemi to play newly-promoted RoPS, but an inspired RoPS performance against Inter ensured that TamU will not have an easy game coming up. RoPS actually led the game at the 80 minute mark, but seemed to grow tired and stupid mistakes by their defence cost them three goals in the closing stages.

TPS put their game against KuPS in Kuopio beyond all doubt in 35 minutes with Aristides Pertot, Chris Cleaver and Mikko Paatelainen scoring. Head coach Martti Kuusela said the first-half performance was TPS at their best, but it must be kept in mind that a team favoured for the title played one of the relegation candidates. The importance of the next three games cannot be exaggerated, because they will be essential in the team’s title bid. They will face FC Inter in Sunday’s local derby, followed by a trip to Tampere on Thursday the 8th and a crucial home fixture against Honka on the 12th. Most probably they need at least two wins of the following three games.

HJK won a hard victory over IFK Mariehamn, although IFK Mariehamn had all chances of at least drawing the game. With the exception of that and MyPa losing to Honka, teams expected to occupy the mid-table spots come the end of the season kept their nerve. VPS and Haka drew 0-0 despite the attacking performance put on by both sides, FC Lahti won top relegation candidates KooTeePee 1-0 and FF Jaro, as mentioned, got more than expected against TamU.

The highlight of the second round will undoubtedly be the Turku derby between TPS and Inter on Sunday. Inter were not too good against RoPS and they will need to improve considerably. Additionally, they lost Diego Corpache to injury as he was substituted in the first half. However, a derby is always a derby and given their awful performance in the Liigacup final between the sides, TPS are by no means favorites.

HELSINKI TIMES - Veikkausliiga preview

When Tampere United got to the Third Qualifying Round of the Champions League in 2007, it should have been a big step towards confirming the improvements made in the Finnish game. The national team was having one of it’s best ever qualification campaigns, the Under 21s were looking good for the 2009 European Championships, and now the champions had beaten Bulgarian giants Levski Sofia to set up a Nordic derby against Rosenborg for the right to play in the money spinning group stages of the Champions league.

In the end, the progression resulted in an ugly row about a game against TPS Turku, a match that ended up being played in the wrong stadium in front 1,800 people, less than half the number of tickets that had been sold. United were hammered by Rosenborg, and despite a spirited showing against Bordeaux in the first round of the UEFA Cup, their attempts to appear professional were dealt a massive blow by the lack of fairly basic facilities.

It would be difficult to imagine either of Tampere’s ice hockey clubs being forced into this compromise, yet Tampere United’s desire to postpone a game to avoid another defensive injury, combined with a Toto concert at Ratina Stadium, forced them to play the TPS game at the run down and neglected Tammela ground. Ratina is not much better – the undersoil heating doesn’t work, and most spectators are forced to sit in the open and use portakabin toilets – but at least they can fit a big crowd in, and offer decent dressing rooms. Neither is possible at Tammela.

On the eve of a new season, it would be good for Finnish football to learn the lessons of this affair. The team with the best finances is TPS, unsurprisingly, as they also have by far the best stadium in Veikkausliiga. According to Nelonen’s sports news, TPS will have a 2008 budget of €2.3m, and city rivals Inter (who share the stadium) will spend €931,000. While small in international comparison, these figures represent the first and eighth biggest budgets in Finnish football, making Turku about as close to a football city as Finland gets.

TPS have parted company with their manager, Mixu Paatelainen, who left to join Hibs and reunite with his family, who have settled in Scotland. He had ruffled a few feathers and created a side that took no prisoners, but he was unable to beat the champions, losing 3-0 and 3-1 to Tampere and finishing the season in fourth place. While this qualified them for the 2008-09 Intertoto Cup, more is expected by the TPS hierarchy.

In his stead Martti Kuusela has taken the reins and achieved some eye-catching results in pre-season, notably a 2-1 win over Swedish giants Hammarby. Kuusela has made few changes to his team of bruisers, but the fear is that they may be over-reliant on their French centre forward Armand Oné. Hammarby were impressed with his physical prowess, but in the final of the pre-season League Cup against Turku rivals Inter they badly missed his presence and link-up play, going down to a 1-0 defeat.

Inter have some excellent young players, and in the League Cup final showed they have built a tidy team under coach Job Dragtsma. Built around the excellent centre half pairing of Jos Hooiveld and Diego Corpache, Inter are a resilient side who can cause problems for clubs with much bigger resources. Along with the composed Nigerian midfielder Dominic Chatto, Hooiveld and Corpache will attract attention from bigger sides, but if they hang around and stay fit and in form, Inter could do a lot better than last season’s ninth place.

The champions, Tampere United, are making big adjustments on the pitch. After selling Juska Savolainen to Norwegian club Rosenborg for €350,000, and moving Jarkko Wiss upstairs to become team manager, the champions’ midfield is going to look very different this year. Vili Savolainen has come in to replace his brother, and at different points during pre-season he has been partnered by Antti Ojanperä, Jussi Kujala and Chris James. If coach Ari Hjelm can conjure a winning combination yet again, he will surely cement his reputation as the best Finnish coach.

TamU have the second biggest budget in the league, but they may find it hard to maintain the momentum of their European run and back to back championships unless they find a stadium with better facilities for their spectators. At present their sub-5,000 crowds have limited protection from the generally appalling Finnish weather, and rattle around the 16,000 capacity Ratina athletics ground. A renovated Tammela would massively improve their chances of competing with the bigger Nordic clubs.

This is a common theme for Veikkausliiga teams. Rovaniemi’s finest, RoPs, were unsure of their place in this year’s top flight until the Veikkausliiga committee gave their approval to a plan of improvements to facilities for players and spectators at their home ground, which will take place over the summer and hopefully be completed by August. If they don’t implement the deadlines for improvements, they will be fined - €20,000 if there are not proper toilets for spectators by the 30^th of April, and €75,000 if the floodlights are not upgraded by the 24^th of August.

They have already had an eventful year, sacking Belgian coach Tom Saintfielt before a ball had been kicked as he failed to win the respect of the players. With Zambian veteran Zeddy Saileti and 37 year old Finnish midfielder Mika Nurmela in the squad, they will not lack leadership, especially as Saileti takes on new coaching duties this year after 14 years and 343 games with the Laplanders since joining the club from Nkana in 1994.

RoPs will be ecstatic if they avoid relegation, as will KuPs Kuopio, the other promoted club. With budgets of €650,000 for RoPs, and €853,000 for KuPs, they are at the bottom end of Veikkausliiga wage structures.

At the top of the table TPS, Tampere United and Haka will fight it out with Antti Muurinen’s HJK. The former national team manager’s squad includes the well travelled Paulus Roiha, back in Finland after a few years abroad, the soon-to-be Finnish Medo, whose citizenship application is pending, and Jukka Sauso, Miika Multaharju and Petri Oravainen, all returning to Finland after stints in Europe.

After a few barren years for HJK, it would be foolish to bet against them coming back to win the title this season. They have a good coach, a football-specific stadium, a talented squad and the support that comes from being Finland’s most successful club. With Tampere United in transition they could be well placed to take advantage, particularly as they don’t have the distraction of playing in Europe this year. If they mess it up again – and with Roiha already injured, there is a chance that they will – the rest of Finland will laugh heartily.