The match this afternoon was a huge success on and off the field. The very beginning of the match was a little bit tentative from both teams and by the time Heikki Wilen’s shot from distance hit the cross bar at about 10 minutes into the match, I started to get flashbacks from the TaPa match, where we dominated large portions of the match, but failed to score the winning goal.

The Kutonen season continues on Saturday afternoon with a match against Pispalan Ponnistus, or PiPo-79 for short. This is our home opener, and as such an important match. Moreover, PiPo being a team that got relegated from Vitonen at the end of last season, they are one of the favorites in our subdivision this year. Given that a week from now we will meet Pelikassit, which is another team that is projected to be a promotion contender this season, it is crucial to get points tomorrow. And of course the supporters are thirsty for the club’s first win in an official match.

The club has announced the complete fixture list for Kutonen. It can be seen in English here.

At this level of football a supporter cannot be too picky about the schedule, but that wont prevent me from commenting on it. The most obvious positive is that five of the eight new matches announced today are on a Friday or Saturday. Only one of them is an early match, and that one is very early with a noon kickoff in the Saturday August 11 match against Pelikassit. The three weeknight matches fall to the end of the season at the end of August and September, which does not surprise me, because after the summer weekend time slots on the fields in Tampere become much more popular, and being at the bottom of the barrel we apparently could not get any of those. The season will end at Virelä against Ikurin Vire on Saturday September 22. With the previous match on the Monday of the previous week, so if the last match proves to be an important one, there is almost two weeks of nervous preparation for it.

All in all it is a very positive schedule. I also like the fact that all our matches are either in Kaukajärvi or in Ikuri (Virelä), and the fact the matches are spread out quite evenly without any further fixture congestion towards the end of the season.

The club announced earlier today that we will face FC Tribe on the first round of Piiricup. From a supporter point of view this is a nice one. It will be an away match, presumably in Sastamala, where Tribe typically play their home matches. At a bit over 50 km this will be our longest away trip of the season.

The club announced today that Youcef Chemlal’s ankle injury is looking bad, and he might be out for the rest of the season. This would be a serious blow, and would require the rest of the offensive players to really step up. In addition to losing Chemlal, Henri Rantama tweaked his calf, and his absence in Saturday’s match against PiPo-79 would cause further issues in the defensive end. On the other hand, center back Lauri Heittola is expected to be available, which is a huge help. Yesterday Joonas Niemelä ended up taking the center back position next to Ahmed Lakra, and though he did very well, it would be favorable to use him in his more familiar position in the midfield. Still, there are lot of players unavailable due to injury right now and besides Heittola none are expected to be available next weekend, and so the board of the club is going to discuss the situation on Wednesday.

There is still hope that Chemlal’s injury turns out to not be as serious as it seems and there will probably be word about that in the next few days. Regardless, we will have to assume that he will be out for at least a few weeks, so any news we get will not have an effect on the short term future of the team.

Today’s match against TaPa/2 ended in a 2-2 draw. In the end it was a disappointing result because we had plenty of chances of scoring the winning goal in the second half and barely gave TaPa a chance to move the ball over the 50 yard line. On the other hand we achieved the minimum goal of scoring goals and not losing the match. When I wrote earlier that we needed a result, I intentionally left open the idea that a draw might be a result. It does not feel that way right now, but rationally thinking we got the season to a decent start, and I’m sure that this still built confidence within the team. We can definitely win matches at this level. I expect that next week we will see a highly motivated TamU-K team that wants to make it a reality.

The regular season starts on Sunday with an ”away” match against the second team of Tampereen Palloilijat, or TaPa for short. Being founded in 1921, this is a club with long traditions. They were third in the Finnish first division in 1962, and their youth team were Finnish champions in 1957. Now their first team is in the sixth division (Vitonen), one level above TamU-K. On the hockey side they were Finnish champions in 1931, the first championship for a Tampere-based club, which is no small piece of history in a hockey town where other clubs have since gone on to win 32 additional Finnish championships.

The latest player profile on the club website is that of Mika Suonsyrjä, a 35-year old player with vast experience in the lower divisions of Finnish football. His highest level was with Sääksjärven Loiske several years ago in Kolmonen, the fourth division of Finnish football. He has celebrated promotion with four different teams, and if TamU-K is going to be his fifth one, it seems certain that Mika will play a big role in that. He adds experience and leadership to the team, and will even play an important role in coaching the team.

The training match against LaPro on Sunday ended up being a 4-1 victory for TamU-K. I was unable to attend the match as I have been traveling abroad in the past few days, but I got a brief report on my cell phone straight from the manager. Personally I’m happy about scoring four goals in a 60 minute match, especially since three of the goals came from the run of play. Indeed, my prediction for the season is that our chances of promotion depend on goal-scoring. I have a high confidence in that our defencive end will give us a chance to win almost all matches by putting in the chances that we get. In fact, even the Regionp Cup fixture would have been winnable with 100 per cent finishing. And even if we had scored just one goal for 1-0 in that match, I think we would not have given up three goals like we did.

Looks like the club has announced more confirmed fixtures in Kutonen. You can see the full list in the fixtures page on this site. This covers the first half of the season, where we meet each team in our subdivision once either home or away. After that there’s going to be a break of about three weeks in July, after which in the second half we play each team again, with home and away designations reversed obviously.