For a pessimist such as myself, yesterday’s match against FJK had all the markings of a huge disappointment. It was a match that we were expected to win, but those are sometimes the most difficult ones. Among the supporters there was definitely a feeling of looking ahead to more exciting matches down the line, and I even feared that the overall attendance might be low because this match did not have anything special going on around it. The two previous matches had been greatly hyped, but this one felt like average.

But it turns out that even average is pretty damn good these days in our club. The attendance was in fact 182, slightly higher than in our home opener against UrPS. With the temperature soaring above 30 C (86 F), I’m sure the club sold a record number of soda cans and juice boxes.

The match itself was a very typical match in Pyynikki. On the small field there is not a lot of extra room, and matches tend to have low scorelines. We were always in control of the match, but still we only scored one goal. It was a very cliché punish-from-a-counter attack goal close to the end of the more evenly fought first half. FJK’s Benedikt Emeka, who had had a couple of other decent looks on goal earlier, nearly scored a goal after breaking free from our defence, but goalie Kalle Heltonen came out to smother the ball. A quick counter via Niko Saarinen and Jan Riikonen resulted in a goal scored by fan-favorite Mika Kytöviita.

In the second half we had nearly a dozen good chances to score the second goal and freeze the match. During the last half-hour all I could think of was the cliché repeating itself in the form of “if you keep wasting many chances, the opponent will eventually score on you”. Even when FJK did not really threaten, I kept thinking that all it would take is one mistake leading to a half chance. And at the very end there were indeed a few heart-attack inducing moments, but nothing of substance really ever came out of those either.

The victory puts us third on the table, we are four points behind VaKP and three points behind NePa, but both of them have played two more matches than we have. Right now LeKi-futis is the only team that has dropped fewer points than we have – in fact they are the only team that has not lost a match yet – so we are in a pretty good position.

And as for our home stadium Pyynikki, it is becoming a fortress for us. So far we have won all three Nelonen matches that we have played there, and the combined scoreline is 8-0. On Tuesday we will have another opportunity to continue this streak, albeit in a match that is nominally an away match. The match will be hosted by Ilves, the biggest club in Tampere, but unfortunately I doubt they will have any services for the 150-200 people that I expect to attend this match.

TamU-K – FJK 1-0 (1-0)
41 min Mika Kytöviita

Discipline:
xx min Niko Saarinen, TamU-K (booking)
xx min Petri Vadén, TamU-K (booking)