Tomorrow’s match is against a club with whom we could have the biggest derby in Finland one day. You see, we play against the club that was a founding member of Tampere United, and whose spot in Ykkönen (second division) Tampere United originally inherited for the 1999 season. This club is of course Ilves. Our histories are intertwined in ways that are quite unusual and intriguing.

The modern incarnation of Ilves was created in 1974 when two other clubs merged their football departments with Ilves. These two were Ilves-Kissat and Tampereen Palloilijat, who now play in Kakkonen (third tier) and Kutonen (seventh tier), respectively, but their comebacks are a different story altogether. The history of football in Tampere is a complicated one – and it is filled with reasons why club culture has not really existed in Tampere.

Ilves got into severe financial trouble by the mid 1990s, and finally in 1998 the decision was made to start a new club, Tampere United, that would run a top division team. The plan was to gather all the best players in the region into one team. Ilves and other participants became clubs whose youth systems fed players into the joint first team, Tampere United. After less than twenty years in the top flight, Ilves seemed to be done with top-level adult football.

Originally the other big club in Tampere, Tampereen Pallo-Veikot (TPV), was supposed to be a part of the project, but they withdrew at the last minute. After this, the most common interpretation of the situation was that the first team of Ilves had merely just changed their name to Tampere United. Indeed, Tampere United inherited a spot in Ykkönen (second division) from Ilves, and probably more than 80 % of the players came from Ilves. In the early years of Tampere United this interpretation even manifested itself in match day and season programs, where the accomplishments of Ilves were listed as TamU’s accomplishments.

Tampere United ended up playing one season in Ykkönen in 1999, and then 11 consecutive seasons in the top flight in 2000-2010. Success came early and it came often. Finnish champions in 2001, 2006 and 2007 and Finnish Cup champions in 2007. The club also played in European competitions every year between 2002 and 2009. As most readers will know, the history of TamU as a professional club was cut short in the spring of 2011, when the Football Association of Finland expelled TamU from all competitive football under allegations of laundering money that led to a still-unproven suspicion of fixing matches.

At this point almost everybody thought the club was dead. However, first there was one stubborn guy who talked another enthusiast into going to the district office of the Football Association to talk about options for playing in 2011. Then there were some 11 supporters playing on a dirt pitch in a recreational league, and about a couple dozen others singing for them on the sideline. And the rest is the well known history of TamU-K, the rise of the phoenix from the ashes.

In the meanwhile Ilves seized their opportunity, and started talking about moving their first team, then in Kakkonen (third division), into the top division. Up until then they had been talking about having no intention to compete with TamU. I suppose from a neutral point of view the disappearance of TamU made this the natural decision. However, looking from a Tampere United perspective, it felt sneaky.

At least the fact that Tampere United lives on prevents Ilves from claiming our championships and other achievements as their own. They do not have a lot anyway, and even though they like to claim to be a club with long traditions, the truth is that they weren’t a name in Finnish football before 1974. The fact that they have only seven more seasons in the top flight than TamU has surprised many who would have thought otherwise.

Today Ilves plays in Ykkönen (second division), but their second team plays in Nelonen. Tomorrow’s match between TamU-K and Ilves 2 is the first ever competitive meeting of the two clubs. It is kind of hard to really call it a derby at this point. There’s a lot of history there, but none of it is on the field. And even tomorrow, it won’t be their first team.

Regardless, it will be interesting to see if Ilves has any vocal support at the match. Even though some of their leading members said otherwise in a recent radio interview, there isn’t any love lost between the two groups. In fact, quite a few of the people behind their group are defectors from Sinikaarti. This alone creates some tension. The fact that Ilves supporters have a hard time coming up with something original that they did not learn from us is another such thing.

As far as the match itself goes, TamU-K is the clear favorite in this match. Ahead of the season a lot of people even talked about Ilves 2 maybe having a hard time avoiding relegation, but they have started the season a bit better than that, having five points after five matches. On Saturday they were beaten 3-1 by Sastamalan Woima, who had lost all four of their previous matches. On the other hand, they squeezed draws out of VaKP and TP-49, who are both expected to be in the top half of the table when the season ends. Looks like Ilves 2 can beat or be beaten by just about anybody.

TamU-K goes into the match with a full eighteen-man lineup. The most notable absence is Mika Kytöviita, the goal-scorer from our previous match, but Eero Sointu is back to take his place – unless it is Jacin Dakkaki who gets the nod. Andrea Milanti is back too, but a spot in the starting eleven seems unlikely when both Jan Riikonen and Petri Vadén, who have played very well in recent matches, are available.

The match starts at 6.15 pm at Pyynikki Stadium. It is nominally an away match, but in terms of support we won’t really have away matches anytime soon – and in our home at Pyynikki it is more certain than anywhere else.