The draw for the first two rounds of the Finnish Cup is in, and TamU-K will host the first round match against Ikurin Vire. The draw is done regionally in the first rounds, but it is still quite a coincidence that we should face one of our main competitors from last season. Vire of course played in the same subdivision with us, and were very disappointed to not get promoted. A bit of history is starting to develop between the two clubs, which adds a certain vibe to the upcoming Finnish Cup fixture. Right now it looks like the match will be played indoors in Pirkkahalli sometime in January.

It is unfortunate that the Finnish Cup is in a sorry state right now. The competition is supposed to be our equivalent of the FA Cup in England, but right now it does not produce anywhere near the same excitement among lower league clubs here as the FA Cup does over in England. This is evidenced by the fact that just four years ago 356 teams participated in the Finnish Cup, but in the upcoming season the number has fallen to just 153. In any respectable organization heads would fall when something like this happens, but of course this is the Finnish FA, so nothing of the sort should be expected.

Looking at the number of clubs that participated in the competition in the past few seasons shows that things have been going in a bad direction for a few years now:

2006:  368
2007:  340
2008:  361
2009:  356
2010:  271
2011:  233
2012:  198
2013:  153

The reasons why this has happened are more complicated than I want to go into in this blog post, but in general it seems that nobody in the Finnish FA cares whether or not clubs in the lower divisions participate in the competition. Rather it seems like they are mostly concerned about creating a system that deals out a UEFA Europa League qualifying spot to one of the top division clubs in a way that causes these clubs as little inconvenience as possible.

The most recent change happened ahead of the 2010 season when the start of the competition was moved to January. The correlation in the numbers above is obvious. Before that the competition started in April when outdoors fields had thawed. In January of course most matches are played indoors, and same goes all the way to the end of March in a typical winter, which means that the first four rounds of the cup are played indoors for the most part. Even indoors matches are mostly played on full size pitches with a reasonably high ceiling, but of course it is still not at all the same thing as playing outdoors. Some matches are played outdoors on heated artificial turfs, but even that is far from ideal for competitive matches. As head coach Mika Suonsyrjä described to me the other day, fetching an out-of-bounds ball waist deep in snow is not ideal.

In the Tampere region only ten teams from lower divisions (fourth tier through seventh tier) participate in the competition. That’s out of more than 80 teams in total, which gives a very good idea of the interest level. Still, the Magic of the Cup is already capturing the imaginations of many TamU-K supporters, as everybody is realizing that by winning just two matches we would get into a situation where we might draw one of the likes of Valkeakosken Haka, Ilves, or TPV in the crucial third round match. Haka of course is the traditional rival of Tampere United from a small city just about 35 km (20 miles) from Tampere. They got relegated from Veikkausliiga (the top division) after last season, and are therefore going to enter the Finnish Cup earlier than before. Ilves and TPV are the two biggest clubs in Tampere, with Ilves now having the edge due to getting promoted to Ykkönen (second tier) at the end of last season. As far as I know, the third round draw will be regional just like the first two rounds, so drawing one of these big regional clubs is reasonably likely.

We played against Ikurin Vire four times last season, and all those matches were tight ones. Both teams ended up winning two matches and the aggregate score was 9-7 to the boys in blue. Of course only one of the matches was a competitive match that had something significant on the line, and in that late June fixture in Kaukajärvi Vire got the better of us with a 1-3 scoreline. In that sense it is payback time for us, but looking at the big picture from last season, Vire players probably have an even stronger sense of getting a chance at payback. This all should make for an exciting match, whatever the circumstances in terms of timing and venue are.

If we make it to the second round, the next opponent is the winner of the first round match between Valkeakosken Koskenpojat and Mäntän Valo. This would be a home match and should be perfectly winnable, since Koskenpojat is just one division higher than us and Valo will play in Vitonen next season just like us. However, as exciting as the prospect of making it to the third round is, we definitely cannot look past Ikurin Vire even if it seems like the easiest draw we could have got. We do not have a very glorious record in cup competitions, and we will have a large number of new players without having too many training sessions together yet. Anything can happen, and that to me is the very appeal of cup competitions.