Well that was one roller coaster of a match against Ylöjärven Ryhti. We ended up winning 4-5, but after being 0-3 up at the half and scoring 0-4 early in the second half, it simply should not be this difficult. But again, it was all our own doing.

In my understanding the biggest reason why the match turned during the last half hour was that our line started playing too high. In particular, this seemed to expose the limitations that Nawar Karikuss has defensively. He was again excellent offensively, and I can see the argument for using him as a right back from that point of view. However, when goals started coming from his side during the second half, I was expecting a change that in the end never happened. I thought there were many options that would have retained the excellent offensive service that Karikuss was giving while locking down the right side of the pitch. For example, switching Karikuss with Jyri Helenius who was playing above him seemed like an obvious option, and even Joonas Niemelä, who has played the full back position well in previous matches, was a choice available for the manager. I also want to say that Heikki Wilen played well for his first match as a center back. Perhaps his inexperience was a factor in the line ending up playing too high, but that is a coachable issue. His individual skill with the ball and decision making with the ball was better than most of what I’ve seen in the ”second” center back position this season.

The nicest goal of the match came in the 65th minute when Kemal Dedic scored with a nice shot near the penalty mark after a nice combination of passes. Everybody thought that the match was surely over now. But no. The defensive problems continued, and after 10 minutes it was a one-goal match. Luckily we held on for the remaining 15 minutes, and got to celebrate the victory. Interestingly, even in the last 15 minutes there was a short while we were playing really well again, moving the ball around like the opponents were traffic cones, but the very end of the match was a bit of a panic with a couple of dangerous free kicks and corners conceded.

Still, the thing to take away from this besides the obvious three points is that we are very capable of winning top teams in our subdivision right now. This was indeed our first victory against the four other teams besides ourselves that are currently in the top five in the table. Next week we have our last match before the break against Ikurin Vire, another of those four teams. A good result from that match puts us in a very good position when play resumes at the end of July.

When we played our best, we gave Ryhti no chance in this match. We were completely dominating possession, and Ryhti’s players looked like little boys chasing the ball. And then in our bad stretches, well, I don’t even want to use a figure of speech out of respect to our own players. When we play like we showed we can, there isn’t a team in this level that can stop us. Here’s hoping that we’ll do exactly that going forward.

Scoring:
0-1 Youcef Chemlal, 8 min
0-2 Heikki Wilen, 40 min, pk
0-3 Youcef Chemlal, 41 min
0-4 Jyri Helenius, 53 min
1-4 Jarno Majamaa, 56 min
2-4 Jarno Majamaa, 57 min
2-5 Kemal Dedic, 65 min
3-5 Jarno Majamaa, 72 min
4-5 Juhani Parkkali, 75 min

Discipline:
Kemal Dedic, 66 min, TamU-K (caution)
Alaa Adeeb, 89 min, TamU-K (caution)