The regular season starts in less than two weeks on Sunday May 6th with a match against TaPa/2, the second team of Tampereen Palloilijat. All indications are that TamU-K is taking the preparations for this match very seriously. Indeed, not only is getting a positive start to the regular season very important for the team’s goal of getting promoted at the end of the season, but almost as importantly the supporters are craving for something to celebrate after the disappointment against KaVo in the Regions Cup fixture.

One of the more interesting players in this year’s team is Ahmed Lakra. I saw him play for the first time in the practice tournament in Virelä just over a week ago. I was immediately convinced that he was a great addition to the team. Playing at the crucial center back position, his size and ability to read the game are exceptional for this level. He made no mistakes in that tournament, playing the full 150 minutes that the team played there, and even in Saturday’s loss against the clearly superior KaVo team he was one of the best players on the field.

Here’s an excellent match highlight reel as well as some photos from Saturdays’s match against KaVo. The highlights are by Petteri Tyni, who has published a lot of videos on local football on his YouTube channel. In addition to the match itself, the choreo by Sinikaarti is also shown on his video. It is a sad statement on the state of the supporter scene in Finland right now that the biggest and best choreo of the season so far was made by supporters of a team in the seventh level of Finnish football.

Yesterday was one of the best days of my life. Not because of the result on the field, but because of everything surrounding the events on the field. Indeed, we ended up losing the match 0-3. We had our chances and should have scored the 1-0 goal, which would have changed the match I bet. We also had our chances for the 1-1 equalizer, especially in the early part of the second half when we were really pushing for that goal. But as it often is when you play a team from a higher division, Kangasalan Voitto finished their chances with a higher accuracy, and in the end deserved to win.

Tomorrow is the day that supporters of Tampere United have been waiting for almost exactly a year now. The return of Tampere United to competitive football, now as TamU-K, takes place almost exactly on the same date as Tampere United’s last match was played in 2011 before the Finnish FA banned us from competitive football for the rest of the season. That match was the final of the Finnish League Cup, so it seems only fitting that the return takes place in another ”lesser” cup competition, namely the Finnish Regions Cup, the Finnish equivalent to the FA Trophy in England.