It’s just like watching bowls
It is a tedious cliché that Finnish football is small-time and insignificant, but it is unfortunately also kinda true. Precarious finances and a disinterested public make the professional game here seem lower profile than, say, crown green bowls in the UK, or cricket in the United States. That is a little stark. There is coverage...
Galactic Order Has Been Restored – NFN’s Veikkausliiga Preview – Rankings
Did you miss NFN’s three-part Veikkausliiga preview? Don’t worry, you can find it here, just click on the linka. Part I -Part II - Part III. Nordic Football News has once again brought you the most definitive Veikkausliiga preview concievable. Now for the final part, our standings prediction. After much debate and wrangling, NFN Editor Egan Richardson...
Finnish Cup final day picture special
Olli Jantunen is busy taking pictures at all three Finnish cup finals today. This post will be updated throughout the day, but first we have a few photos from the women’s and ‘little’ finals (the latter is something like the FA Vase. ...
Stuart Baxter meets the press (transcript)
I went to the press conference at the Finnish FA yesterday, and it was pretty interesting. This is the first chunk of transcript, much of which wasn’t reported in the Finnish press today. I’ll write up the rest – detailing the Belgium match and Lauri Dalla Valle – tonight or tomorrow. Apologies for the delay....
TPV 3 Klubi 04 2: ressies out!
One of the many loveable idiosyncrasies of Finnish football is the relaxed attitude to registrations taken by the authorities here. Players can switch clubs with bewildering regularity, via an intricate network of co-operation agreements between clubs at all levels of the game. Promising young defender Johannes Mononen has played for all three of Tampere’s top...
The cutting edge reality of Finnish football fandom
Finland’s friendly against Poland was televised live on Saturday evening. That is not such a common occurrence in Finland, as the media tends to rank football somewhere between tractor-pulling and volleyball in the list of broadcasting priorities. Helsingin Sanomat’s reporter at the game, Kristian Sundqvist, kindly gave NFN permission to translate his column from Sunday’s...
Tammela Talk: Finnish football phrase book
I’ve been thoroughly enjoying this football season. Pub Harald have expanded their beer-selling operations from Ilves to TPV matches, ensuring that pretty much every game taking place at Tammela can now be enjoyed with alcoholic enhancement. And Finnish football, much as I love it, does often need alcoholic enhancement. An integral part of the Tammela...
Finnish football, foreigners, and youth development
Soccernet recently asked me to write something about Finland’s new TV deal, specifically in relation to the bonuses for fielding fewer foreigners and the potential implications if this were applied in different leagues, but I haven’t yet gotten around to it.
Partly because I just started a new job and am pretty busy at the moment,...
