Monday, October 24, 2016

IFK Mariehamn - Finnish champions

In many ways, 2016 was a pretty typical year in Veikkausliiga. Points deductions for financial mis-management (PK-35 Vantaa), wins annulled due to incorrect paperwork (SJK) and police overreactions to football fans (too many to list).

But for IFK Mariehamn, from the autonomous Åland Islands, lifted their first league title - just one year after their only major honour (the 2015 Suomen Cup). Champions League football is now on the menu, IFK will enter next season's competition at the second qualifying round. They clinched the title with a 2-1 win at home to Ilves, scoring the opener after just 52 seconds.


Their season was based primarily on a solid defence - keeping 18 clean sheets in their 33 matches with keeper Viitala and defender Kojola playing in every match. Albin Granlund received his first call-up to the Finland squad thanks to his performances, while captain Jani Lyyski was superb, weighing in with five goals as well.

Up front, the main source of goals (12) came from Jamaican striker Dever Orgill, who has already confirmed that he'll be leaving in the winter. Diego Assis, scorer of the winning goal on Sunday, has also hinted at his own departure but the two of those have been at the core of Mariehamn's attack for the last three seasons. They will be missed.


Mariehamn itself is a small town, with a population of just 11,000 people. To put it in perspective, that's the same population of the local area I work in (Kew in South-West London) and roughly the number of people in each of the 624 electoral wards of London. Åland issues it's own stamps, it's in demilitarised zone and even Vladimir Putin owns land there, to the bemusement of locals. 4335 people squeezed into the Wiklöf Holding Arena on Sunday to witness the title decider - over a third of the population of the town. 
Over the winter, I'll be speaking to various people involved in the club to get a richer picture of the magnificent achievement. I'm sure there are a number of sore heads this morning - all well deserved.


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Sunday, September 25, 2016

Bad Santa - amateur hour in Kakkonen

On the day the Guardian published an in-depth interview with Hercules coach Daniel Amokachi, the Northern/Western group of the Finnish third tier provided two matches which proved how much work is needed to raise basic standards further down the pyramid.


Amokachi raised a salient point about the availability of his players: "We started the season really well but then you find things that you only see in Finland – players missing games because they’ve already booked holidays, their friend is getting married, things like that. You can’t protest because you’re not really paying them. The professionalism angle is difficult. For them, football is just about getting together with friends and having fun but that’s not what our vision is all about, we want to take them to a different level and we’ve lost some who aren’t used to that kind of push."

On Sunday, two of the sides struggling at the foot of group C were in action away from home and completely proved Daniel's point.

Virkiä, from Lapua, have been in the relegation places all season - yet met notoriety a couple of months ago by beating Hercules 4-1, a shambolic display which raised all sorts of alarms regarding match fixing. In their penultimate fixture, they made the trip to Pori to play MuSa, challenging for promotion. In any case it'd be an uphill struggle - but they only arrived with ten players. They kicked off and gamely lasted the full ninety minutes. Alas it was all for not, with the final score of 8-0. Matters not helped with the second MuSa goal being scored from this corner. Or MuSa announcing their opponents fielding ten men with a tweet including #facepalm.


This wasn't the most outlandish football news from Kakkonen group C. That came further north in Kajaani, where AC Kajaani hosted "banter's" FC Santa Claus of Lapland. Santa again have struggled this season, while the hosts still had an outside chance of promotion via the play-offs. It's quite a long trip from Santa's grotto in Rovaniemi to Kajaani, over 300km. But Santa Claus decided to give some early presents to their opponents.

They arrived with eleven players. Not unheard of in the lower leagues in Finland. However... Three of the eleven were goalkeepers! So when the game kicked off, Juhani Kangas lined up in goal, with his fellow keepers Harri Nykänen and Juho Saukko playing outfield. Despite fielding three goalkeepers, Santa were 6-0 down at half-time, the final score a humbling 16-0. Michael Ibiyomi bagged a double hat-trick, Alberto Ramirez scored three, as did substitute Rundell Winchester.

Ibiyomi celebrates his sixth goal of the game


Strangely, the previous fixture between the two sides in July ended 0-9 to Kajaani. Clearly they haven't been very good little boys.
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