The club announced today that Youcef Chemlal’s ankle injury is looking bad, and he might be out for the rest of the season. This would be a serious blow, and would require the rest of the offensive players to really step up. In addition to losing Chemlal, Henri Rantama tweaked his calf, and his absence in Saturday’s match against PiPo-79 would cause further issues in the defensive end. On the other hand, center back Lauri Heittola is expected to be available, which is a huge help. Yesterday Joonas Niemelä ended up taking the center back position next to Ahmed Lakra, and though he did very well, it would be favorable to use him in his more familiar position in the midfield. Still, there are lot of players unavailable due to injury right now and besides Heittola none are expected to be available next weekend, and so the board of the club is going to discuss the situation on Wednesday.

There is still hope that Chemlal’s injury turns out to not be as serious as it seems and there will probably be word about that in the next few days. Regardless, we will have to assume that he will be out for at least a few weeks, so any news we get will not have an effect on the short term future of the team.

On a more positive note, here are a couple photos of the supporters in the TaPa/2 match. The supporters section at the end line was more than 30 strong, and it was nice to see some people who technically are our opponents (albeit in a different subdivision) show up and support Tampere United like they always used to. In addition I saw several other people on the sideline on the far side opposite to the player benches. Some of them had brought Tampere United scarfs, which was again great to see.