On Sunday night TamU-K played a training match against Tampereen Palloilijat or TaPa for short. It wasn’t a great performance from either team, but we showed again that it is very hard to score on us, and this time it was good for a 2-1 victory. Our goals were scored by a TaPa defender about 25 minutes into the first half, and by Mika Kytöviita at about the 87th minute.

TaPa will play in the same subdivision of Vitonen with us this upcoming season, so this was an interesting match-up. Of course it is way too early to even make guesses on how strong different teams might be when the competitive season starts, but it was still nice to see that we matched up very well against a team that finished just two points shy of the second place and a spot in the promotion playoff in last year’s Vitonen.

One peculiar thing about the match was that we saw an unusual red card. Unusual for a training match that is, because referees tend to be a little lenient in training matches as neither team benefits from one of the teams getting reduced to ten men. The TaPa player in question actually lost his cool a couple of times. The first one was a run-in with our left back Alaa Adeeb at about the 60 minute mark, and both players got

bookings for their shoves on each other. Had this been a competitive match, we might have seen two red cards at this point already. Just ten minutes later Mika Suonsyrjä committed a tactical foul worthy of a yellow card (which was never shown) on the same TaPa player, who responded with a full on punch in the neck. This time there was no choice for the referee: the player needed to be removed from the field. The supporters got a little agitated as well.

Otherwise the match was played in good spirits in front of a crowd of about 70 people. As I already said, our defense is very solid, but our low scoring is a little bit frustrating right now. Common sense tells me that it will get better later on when the team moves the focus to offense in training, but as a supporter you want to see goals. On the other hand, last season our weakness coming into the season was defense, and we got very close to losing the promotion battle by dropping too many points early on. The current approach to the season is obviously much better.

One interesting aspect last night was that two players that have played very well as center backs, Juha Kumara and Timo Kauppinen, now started in the midfield. Their performances were okay, but if they are to move up the field to this position, they need to work on that in training. We are stacked at center back, so looking at options is very wise from the coaches, and the experiment definitely did not fail. Moving Kumara up might result in a few spectacular goals too, as he is one of those players that can produce moments of pure magic when it is least expected.

There were also three trialists with the team. Antti Eijamo played the entire 90 minutes except for a few minutes on the bench mid second half, Anssi Saiha played the entire second half, and Tero Lepola played about 30 minutes in the second half. All looked like players who will be able to contribute to this team, but Eijamo and Saiha need to be mentioned separately because they were two of the best players in the team altogether.

Saiha had in fact convinced the coaches even earlier in training as well as with a very solid 45 minute performance in the away match in Pori about two weeks ago, and after the match he was finally given an opportunity to sign his contract. He is just the kind of player that the team needed: a classic number 10 playmaker who can also play on the wing if needed. Yesterday a few of our players got to enjoy great through balls and opening passes onto the wing from Saiha. The only caveat is that Saiha has been suffering from some problems with his knee, and isn’t currently able to fully participate in team training. We can just cross our fingers in the hope that all goes well.

With Saiha signed the club now has 23 players under contract, and Eijamo looks like a very likely 24th signing. This means that the team is pretty close to being ready. Of course if exceptional players fall into our lap, I’m sure the coaches will consider them even midseason, but it seems like we are just about at the sweet spot with regard to the number of players and their distribution into different positions and roles.

Next up we have a training match away against FC Rauma on Friday March 8th, and then another one in Jyväskylä against Blue Eyes Team on Saturday March 23rd. These are both played outdoors on heated artificial turfs. The team has to look for winter opponents in other cities because it is very difficult to find a field for a match in Tampere. In fact, there isn’t even a single heated outdoors field in Tampere, which is quite amazing for a city of this size. On the positive side, touring Finland in the pre-season isn’t so bad for a supporter.