A couple important things have happened since my last blog post. On Saturday we played a training match against PP-70, and after a roller-coaster of events ended up in a 4-4 draw. On Monday the club announced the 24th signing for the 2013 season. With full back Antti Eijamo now officially included in the team, it seems that the team-building phase of the offseason is over, and from now on it will be all about getting ready for the start of the competitive season in late April or early May.

Saturday’s match was a bit of an odd one. Firstly, from a supporter point of view even the venue was kind of weird, because the air dome at Ahvenisjärvi barely has room for spectators on the sidelines. Only about 10-15 supporters showed up for the match, but under the circumstances it was just as well. It is a good thing we didn’t play any Finnish Cup matches at this venue, because that would have really diminished those occasions.

Some of the events on the field were unusual too. The half time score was 2-1 to the hosting PP-70, and all goals had been scored within less than 5 minutes early on. PP-70 was in control early on, but as the half progressed, we were playing better and better, and it seemed everybody expected us to take care of things in the second half. Quite the opposite happened early on: we did not play very well and before 60 minutes were up, we were down 4-1. I have to admit that at that point I was fearing that the score might get really ugly.

But somehow we were able to regain control of the match, and when Mika Kytöviita scored the 4-2 goal at about the 70th minute, I immediately sensed a glimmer of hope within myself. The team kept pressing on, and when Nawar Karikuss earner a penalty just 5 minutes after Kytöviita’s goal, I started believing again. Karikuss took the penalty himself, and put it in with confidence. And then just a couple minutes later Petri Vadén put the ball in directly from a corner, and the score was even at 4-4. That was his first goal for TamU-K, by the way, and a spectacular one at that.

Antti Eijamo played his second match for TamU-K, and even though his performance was a bit tentative, it was again clear that he will be a very good player for this level. I heard that Eijamo had not touched a football for several months before these two matches he has played now, so it is not surprising that he has stuff to work on in training. He looks like he will be a beast running up and down the line, and once he gets his positioning right, he’ll be an offensive force for us.

For me it was always clear that a reinforcement in the full back position was much needed. Of course one would not have been necessary if we could be sure that Alaa Adeeb and Ahmed Lakra are able to play all matches, but this is of course never the case. Now we have three players whose primary position is full back, and in addition we have several players who can play there in a pinch. Eijamo has already shown that he can play on both sides too.

We now have 24 players under contract, and all positions are well covered. Our starting eleven is going to be very strong, and there is going to be excellent players coming in from the bench in every match. The team seems to be very well balanced too: all positions have at least two options with which I would be very comfortable, but we are not overly stacked in any position.

At this point it is of course unclear what that starting eleven is going to be. There are many moving parts here, because many players can play multiple positions, and it is not clear what the optimal combination is. The good thing is that coaches have been thinking about this the whole winter, and they still have several weeks to figure this out before the competitive season starts. This is in big contrast to last year, when we used the early part of the season to figure these things out, and dropped several points because of it.

And talking about the beginning of last season, it is quite interesting to see that only eight players from the team that started the season then are still on the team. These are Mika Oksanen, Mika Suonsyrjä, Ahmed Lakra, Retu Harju, Kemal Dedic, Lauri Heittola, Mohammed El-Harrak, and Adnan Omerovic. Of course five players that were added during the season are also still with the team: Ilkka Innola, Sami Kriikkula, Alaa Adeeb, Nawar Karikuss, and Henry Friman. Still, this means that the team has eleven new players. This is of course a good thing in the sense that all these eleven should be better players than the ones that they replaced, but it also means that it is a very good thing that we have started preparing for the season much earlier than any of our opponents.

Next up we have a training match against FC Rauma on Friday. This match is played outdoors at the Äijänsuo Stadium in Rauma, about 140 km (90 miles) from Tampere. It is again a nice away trip for the hardcore supporters. It looks like about 15 of us will be there, which of course is much better than we would have had for a winter training match when Tampere United played in the first tier league. And talking about that, I don’t think Tampere United has played in Rauma ever before, and it will be nice to check out something new. And of course, watching a match outdoors is always better

than any event indoors. The forecast has a nice sunny day with -3 C (27 F), so the conditions for a winter football match could not be better.