A lot has happened since the last time I wrote in this blog: two important signings were announced, a match was played in Pori against FC Jazz/2, the team captains for 2014 were chosen, and perhaps most importantly, the date of our first Finnish Cup fixture was finally announced.

The blue and green faithful had been waiting patiently for a long time, and when the new player signings were finally announced at the end of last week and earlier this week, there was definite excitement in the air. We now have 15 players under contract for next year, so obviously there’ll be more announcements during the winter. However, the four announcements made recently will satisfy the supporters’ appetite for a while.

It has been quiet on the blog for a while so I thought I’d break the silence now that the first team has returned to the training field after the Christmas and New Year break. Coach Mika Suonsyrjä recently wrote on the club’s web page that the upcoming season will be the most challenging so far, and it would be difficult to argue with that. In the past two seasons we competed with less than a handful of teams that had real competitive goals, but now more or less every team in Nelonen are well-managed teams that train together regularly. This is not to say that every team has promotion as their goal; however, there are no teams that take the competition lightly.

Today was a huge day for the club as our first youth team played their first official match in futsal. I was one of the few non-parents in attendance, and watching the pure joy on the boys’ faces gave me a great feeling. Add the pride I felt about our club growing, and you’ll probably understand how I’m almost at a loss of words.

It was more than six weeks ago when we celebrated promotion in Viiala, yet the season somehow stretched all the way to last Friday. This

was when we had our end of season party and gave awards to some of the best players of the year. It was a great party with local bands performing at Vastavirta-Klubi. Voimaryhmä was certainly the headliner, but for many Vala’s performance was the highlight. After all, it is a band made up of Tampere United supporters, and one of the songs in their new album is a subtle reference to that fact. ”Whatever you say, this city is ours!”

Just as a reminder, the views expressed in this blog are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Tampere Unitedin kannattajat (TamU-K).

Today we finally got the news that hardly came as a surprise: the club is getting fined for the pyro and pitch invasion at the ViiPV – TamU-K match that sealed our promotion. The shocker is the amount: 600 euros is a lot of money for a club that played in the sixth tier this season.

Pictures of the banner displayed at Royal Brougham Park (aka CenturyLink Field for the more corporate minded) by the Emerald City Supporters (ECS) have started to emerge. It says ”TamU-K up to Nelon! Onnea!” where the last word of course is the Finnish word for ”congratulations”. Somehow the ”en” got dropped at the end of ”Nelonen”, but as many have said, it’s the thought that counts. And indeed, based on some of the first comments and the numbers of likes on these pictures on Facebook, I’m not the only one who was truly taken by the gesture.

Yesterday’s match was the worst 90 minutes of football I’ve seen this season. Such a pity really that the great season that we have had needed to end in such a disheartening fashion. FC Melody certainly deserved their victory and the Vitonen title, but I’m sure that neither team was very happy with their performance. As it was, TamU-K was the worse of the two bad ones, and the result was exactly what we deserved.

The long season is finally coming to an end. Thinking back to when the season started almost seems like ancient history now, whether that point in time is the start of Regions’ Cup against ViiPV in April, our two Finnish Cup matches in February, or the first training matches in January. But here we are at the eve of the final match of the season. And that match is against FC Melody for the Vitonen title in the Tampere region.

The club has not yet made an official announcement, but since it is already being talked about on different forums and on social media, I thought I might as well add my comments here on the blog, and thereby allow our international friends to get in on the good news as well. To put it as simply as I can, for the first time in history, there will be a youth team carrying Tampere United colors.