What a dramatic night that was. TamU-K played in front of a record attendance of 441, and when Jose Chemlal scored the 2-0 goal on the 60th minute, you could feel how the whole stadium was certain of victory. And then suddenly they weren’t anymore. Just about ten minutes later the match was 2-2, and surely everybody was imagining how promotion could slip away in the most painful way possible. And then our Bosnian Ox came to the rescue. The two goals scored by Adnan Omerovic sealed the deal. World class finishing by him and world class celebrations by the supporters.


Supporters marching towards Pyynikki Stadium. The march was the biggest seen in Tampere in a long, long time.

The other match hero was, once again, Jose Chemlal who scored the first two goals. The 1-0 goal on the 32nd minute came from a rebound off a powerful shot by Lauri Heittola. When Jose took the ball you could feel the anticipation in the stand, and it felt like it took forever for him to go around the keeper and put the ball in the net. The stadium exploded. I bet that Pyynikki Stadium has not been as loud in a while.

The 2-0 goal 15 minutes into the second half was one of Jose’s special moments, as he put the ball into the net straight from the corner. I suppose a TahVe defender got a touch on it, under pressure from Tomi Lahtinen. Regardless, Jose was credited with the goal. That was his 19th of the season in all competitions, more than one goal per match. What a season for him.

A post-sunset kick-off time works to enhance a supporters’ march somehow, doesn’t it?

Beautiful. Almost as beautiful as getting promoted.

In football very little things often change the course of a match. This is exactly what happened on Sunday. About ten minutes after the 2-0 goal our right back Alaa Adeeb got a knock on his foot that caused his shoe lace to snap right off. He had to come off the game for a couple minutes, and Heikki Wilen had the ungrateful task of stepping onto the field with no time to warm up. TahVe was able to take advantage as former Tampere United player J-P Mäkinen was able to get through on the left flank and crossed beautifully to Lassi Vänttinen on the right hand side. The two-time floorball world champion did not make a mistake, and TahVe was back into the match. The 2-2 equalizer came just five minutes later from a play where a free kick was played high into the box. Ilkka Innola saved the first header on goal brilliantly, but couldn’t do anything about the second shot. Things were looking very bad at this point. TahVe was controlling the match, and TamU-K was not creating a lot offensively.

But of course all this made the eventual victory even sweeter. The winning goal came almost out of nowhere. Lauri Heittola won a header in the midifield off a TahVe clearance and played it on to Adnan Omerovic up front. Ado needed just one simple touch and a quick change of pace to turn a simple one-on-one situation into a breakaway. With only the goalie to beat, Ado put the ball in the corner. Easy as pie. Or that’s what he made it look like anyway. Sheer class.

The road was painted red.

The 4-2 goal that cemented the victory was a result of four great individual plays. First goalie Ilkka Innola sent a long ball to Tomi Lahtinen in the middle of the pitch with pinpoint accuracy. Tomi won the ball 100 % and headed it to Mohammed El Harrak on the left side. Moha then put a perfect pass to the wide open Ado, who did not hesitate with his shot. It was 4-2 with three minutes to go. The party was set.

Oi Tampere, oi Tampere, oi Taaampere, sulle laulamme, kotona, vieraissa, ainiaan.

Oh Tampere, oh Tampere, oh Taaampere, for you we sing, home, away, forever.

And oh boy did we party. The final whistle from the referee triggered a traditional pitch invasion from the Sinikaarti section. Soon the team and the supporters were one huge ball bouncing around on the field, with a few flags sticking out from the mass. This moment embodied the spirit of our club. We are in this together. We are United.

After a while the supporters cleared out from the field to allow the two teams and the referees take care of post-match formalities. But the party didn’t stop of course. Next it was the players’ turn to come to the supporters. I’ll let the video describe what happened then. The song we are singing is to the tune of If You’re Happy and You Know It. We had practiced it a few times during the match. The lyrics go like this:

TamUn kanssa me noustaan Vitoseen
TamUn kanssa me noustaan Vitoseen
Ei voi mitään Palloliitto
Ei voi mitään Palloliitto
TamUn kanssa me noustaan Vitoseen

Translated, it says that we are getting promoted to Vitonen with TamU, and that the Finnish FA cannot do anything about it. Not that we are bitter at them or anything. Hmph.

The party continued at the stadium for a while, and then moved over to a nearby bar on Pyynikintori. It worked out surprisingly well considering that, due to obvious reasons, the bar had not been forewarned. The bar was packed on a Sunday night and chants were going all over. Players and supporters celebrated as one. From there the party moved to another bar downtown, and then to one more. And I’m not exactly sure what all went down, but I’m sure I wouldn’t write about a lot of that even if I was.

Results, promotion, and the post match partying aside, Sunday’s match was something that is difficult to understand. It was tough to understand that it was a match on the lowest level of Finnish football pyramid. It is not often that a seventh tier match in this country gets a sizable crowd. Getting a few hundred has, at least so far, been a once in a lifetime kind of thing. But on Sunday it felt like it was almost normal. After all, it was Tampere United who were playing, so a crowd like that is normal. Or was anyway. And even with TamU-K, it felt like the whole season had been building up to this moment. It just felt right.

And still the morning after thinking back to what had transpired was tough to comprehend. More than 400 people watching a bottom division football match in Finland. Surely such things cannot happen, right?

Sinikaarti and a full Pyynikki Stadium.

So many little things added up to make an already special night even more special. One of these came as a total surprise, as a small group of away supporters showed up with their flags and brass instruments. They even had a couple of songs that they sang a lot, and were loud enough that nobody could have missed their presence. I do not know who these people were, but they deserve huge props for their support. Tahmelan Vesa is a club with a near hundred-year history, so it is not surprising that there are people who care about it, but I don’t think anybody expected any form of organized support.

Another such little thing was the knowledge that people all the way in Seattle in the northwest corner of the United States were following the match from a live stream. Kick-off was at nine in the morning their time, and some of them had gathered in a bar in downtown Seattle to watch the match together. It was a big day for the Emerald City Supporters too, as their beloved Sounders played their biggest match of the season, the derby against Portland Timbers nine hours later. The prematch block party was set to begin at noon, but for some there was a pre-prematch with TamU-K. And yes, they won their derby too. It was 3-0, a total obliteration of the bitter rival.

This is one of the messages I received from Seattle during the match, from a friend watching the match in the bar:

Contrast couldn’t be clearer. One TV: a gritty feed of a lower division match. No audio, no commentary, and I’m living and dying with every kick, heart in my throat every time the feed glitches. Next to it, a tv showing some ManUre game. Elegant image, professional commentary and camera… and I couldn’t care less. This is me, my ECS brethren, our brothers a world away in Tampere, living the axiom: Football/Soccer is about substance, not style. Hail the ECS! Hail our Finnish brothers in Sinikaarti! Hail the Sounders, hail Tampere!

Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. This is what football is about. Or should be. For me it is. Huge props to Petteri Tyni from Styntty Channel as well as Manu Haapalainen from Vastapallo who enabled this.

This banner was displayed by Emerald City Supporters in the Brougham End in Seattle about seven hours after TamU-K had earned promotion. Translation: ”Sinikaarti: he who endures, conquers.” Indeed.

Oh and the French style gourmet hot dogs. Wow. They were delicious. There was a constant line for them for the entire 30 minutes before the match. Actually I’m not sure the line died during the first half either. I heard 150 hot dogs were sold, and they ran out before halftime was over. Huge props to Yoni Ichtertz and his Restaurant 4 Vuodenaikaa. Our sponsor really came through for us when we most needed help.

The line for the gourmet hot dogs served by Restaurant 4 Vuodenaikaa.

But most of all, it was great to see Sinikaarti at its biggest since the League Cup final in 2011, the last official match of the previous incarnation of Tampere United. I met many people who I have not met in a while or had met only a few times over this season. Many do not live in Tampere anymore, and cannot make it to all matches. It is great to see that so many had made it a priority to be there on the most important night in club history. It made for the biggest prematch of the season. The march to the match was simply epic.

When I call this the most important match in club history, I’m not just talking about the recent TamU-K history, but all our history since the founding of the club in 1998. We have played matches with the Finnish Championship on the line, we have played cup finals, and we have played big UEFA Champions League qualifiers. As big as those matches were, none of them were as important in terms of the very existence and future of the club. I’m sure that we would have survived another season in Kutonen. Probably even a few more. But we are not here to merely survive. We are here to move up, and we are here to grow. We have tremendous momentum right now, and promotion not only keeps that momentum alive, it also feeds it.

It was actually very interesting how the whole week leading up to the match as well as match day itself felt exactly like those other big matches in our previous history. The buzz around the club was exactly the same. New people coming out of the woodworks to talk about the club, increased media attention, and most importantly, the feeling that I had inside of me was exactly the same. The anticipation. The fear. The excitement. The match was all I could think of the whole week.

So what changes now? Well, the quality of teams in Vitonen is of course slightly higher, so we get to enjoy slightly better football next year. This also means that we have to get some new players. We do have many, many players who will be great players even in Vitonen, but if we are to fight for promotion in Vitonen too, we do have to get reinforcements as well. It will be an interesting off-season. In Vitonen we will also have linesmen in every match, which is great as it means that offside calls wont be as random as they are with just one referee.

For the supporters one great thing is better away trips. Depending on how the two subdivisions are set, we might have a lot of trips in the 30-100 kilometer (20-60 miles) range. As a comparison, our longest trip this season was 25 kilometers (15 miles) to Siuro for the NoPS match. Which, by the way, was one of the most fun matches for a supporter this season. Away travel brings out the best out of all supporters, just like promotion and championship matches do.

One thing is certain though: we just got ourselves a lot of more work to do. I’m sure that everybody in the club will be very happy to take on the new challenges. I’m also sure that the club will welcome anybody who is interested in taking a more active role in the club and start volunteering their time to get things done. The goal now has to be to build a team that can fight for promotion again next season. It is a tall order. All help will be needed.

Scoring:
1-0 Youcef Chemlal, 32 min
2-0 Youcef Chemlal, 60 min
2-1 Lassi Vänttinen, 71 min
2-2 Joona Nieminen, 76 min
3-2 Adnan Omerovic, 82 min
4-2 Adnan Omerovic, 87 min

Discipline:
Sami Kriikkula, 78 min, TamU-K (caution)
Jami Maunuksela 84 min, TahVe (caution)