The match against NoPS 3 turned out to be as easy as it was supposed to be. It took less than 7 minutes to score the 1-0 goal, and about three minutes later Youcef Chemlal had scored his second goal to make it 2-0. Done. Eventually the match ended at 14-1. We got the three points that we needed, and also improved our position if anything is decided by goal differential at the end of the season. Not a lot else mattered.

One of those things that did matter was the 3-0 goal scored by Jussi Vihonen. It was significant as he became the 18th goal scorer for TamU-K this season. Indeed, it says a lot about our team that we have only seven players who have received playing time as a field player but have not scored. And of course most of those are defenders. It says even more about our team that Vihonen went on to score a hat trick. He is a very capable striker for this level, but such is the quality of our team that he has a hard time getting playing time. Vihonen is also a supporter’s favorite, so some excitement that the match otherwise failed to provide was obtained from following his attempts to finalize his hat trick. He got his second goal early enough at the 62nd minute, but the third one had already started to seem elusive before he finally got it on the 80th minute.

The rest of the match is really not worth going through goal by goal. Suffice to say that we could have scored far more than 14 as at least a dozen other chances were wasted by mistakes that were probably caused by a lack of concentration. Understandably in a match like this it is hard to remain sharp, but it is kind of awkward to watch. There were a lot of sloppy offsides and other wasted opportunities. Sami Kriikkula tried to do his best to remind the team about keeping focus, but there’s only so much you can do in a match like this one.

Still, it was nice to see a lot of players who have not received a lot of playing time get a lot of minutes today. Indeed, quite a few players who have played a lot this season were given a day off, including Mika Suonsyrjä, Ilkka Innola, Mika Oksanen, Alaa Adeeb, and Kemal Dedic. A few others like Youcef Chemlal, Isaac Gbehan, Adnan Omerovic, and Mohamed El Harrak went back to the dressing room or to the supporters side of the field well before 90 minutes were up, and the last 30 minutes or so featured a lot of supporters’ favorites in the offensive end. As such it was nice to see, but I cannot wait to get back to matches that are not quite as one-sided as this one.

Scoring:
1-0 Youcef Chemlal, 7 min
2-0 Youcef Chemlal, 10 min
3-0 Jussi Vihonen, 26 min
4-0 Mohamed El Harrak, 37 min
5-0 Mohamed El Harrak, 47 min
6-0 Nawar Karikuss, 50 min
7-0 Adnan Omerovic, 57 min
8-0 Jussi Vihonen, 62 min
8-1 Pasi Viitala, 66 min
9-1 Ahmed Lakra, 67 min
10-1 Tomi Lahtinen, 74 min
11-1 Joonas Niemelä, 77 min
12-1 Jussi Vihonen, 80 min
13-1 Sami Kriikkula, 82 min
14-1 Martti Pelttari, 84 min

Discipline:
15 min, Silver Kubu, NoPS 3 (caution)
40 min, Juha Kortelahti, NoPS 3 (caution)
40 min, Juha Kortelahti, NoPS 3 (caution)
40 min, Juha Kortelahti, NoPS 3 (ejection)
66 min, Pasi Viitala, NoPS 3 (caution)