Sunday night’s match against TahVe turned out to be as heated as anticipated. In the end TamU-K was victorious in front of 219 people in attendance at Pyynikki Stadium, a season high for us, as predicted. All three goals were scored in the first half, and after 90 minutes of play the result was a 3-0 victory for the boys in blue. In the spring of course the result was the same, only then we did not need even a minute of play to achieve that.

Back in the spring TahVe’s J-P Mäkinen took a central role by faking an injury right after kick-off, thereby causing the match to be abandoned by the referee, since TahVe had shown up with just seven players. Clearly they did not have any plans to play the match back then. Last night he took a central role again. As expected, there were a few comments from the supporters towards him early on, encouraging him to stay up this time and such. Pretty mellow stuff, really, mostly funny and never vicious. Later on he started to respond to supporters as he was standing by the team bench, and a couple times it got heated enough that the stewards had to go talk to him in an attempt to calm him down.

Finally in the second half Mäkinen lost the plot completely. Somehow he thought it would be a good idea to enter the supporters section to try to instigate something. He used the guise of taking a group photo with us, but obviously the intention was to start a scuffle and take photo evidence. He was quickly shown the way out, and the stewards took care of the rest. Amazingly, the referee did not react to his antics in any way. Thinking back to it almost 24 hours later, it all just seems absurd. Did all of that actually happen? Can somebody be that stupid?

And all this from a former Tampere United player. For those of us who cheered for him in 2001 when he was part of the team that sensationally won the Finnish Championship, the whole thing was particularly disappointing. Many had remembered him as a symathetic veteran player who got to finish his career in a Finnish championship. It is amazing to see how low a person can go in a mere decade. Nothing sympathetic about this man now that he has revealed his true colors.

Otherwise the night was a great success. Chanting at a proper stadium with a wooden roof above us keeping all the noise in was brilliant after many matches on open fields, too often without any spectator stands. We were as loud as we have ever been, and the players seemed to feed off of our energy. We on the other hand were fed by great gourmet hot dogs. A massive, massive thank you goes to Restaurant 4 Vuodenaikaa, once again.

On the field everything started to go towards the right direction from the get go. For the first time in a while the players came out very sharp, and the first ten minutes was our total domination. We should have scored then, but that did not happen in spite of numerous chances. A more mellow phase followed, but it was broken up by a penalty call when Juha Kumara broke into the box in the middle and was fouled. Apparently Mika Kytöviita had been assigned to take our penalties, but since he was not on the field, after a bit of confusion it was finally Jan Irjala who took the shot. A confident shot out of the reach of the keeper, 1-0 for TamU-K.

The match was effectively killed by two late first-half goals, first scored by Timo Kauppinen and then by Jan Irjala for the brace. The pass for the 2-0 goal came from Juha Kumara, and the 3-0 was headed back from an attempted clearance by a defender. After these the second half was mostly a formality. The only thing TahVe got going for them offensively was long balls to Lassi Vänttinen. He has speed, some skills, and a nasty way of pushing defenders in the gray area between legal and illegal, but left almost completely on his own even he could not do much. Our

best chance to score was a header by Jesse Kupiainen that was saved by the crossbar.

Nobody in a blue shirt had a bad match, and many had a great one. For the first time I was part of the group

that decided on the three best players on the home team, and it was a tough choice indeed. In the end we decided to give the three stars designation to Antti Eijamo (nobody got passed him on his wing), two stars to Jan Irjala (a brace cannot be ignored), and one star to Juha Kumara (a dominating performance in the midfield). If we could have chosen more players, at least Timo Kauppinen and Jesse Kupiainen would have been chosen. Kauppinen was his usual self at center back, and Jesse took his older brother’s position in the bottom of the midfield in a way that suddenly makes our 4-3-3 look just as strong as it is with Joonas Kupiainen on the field.

Jan Irjala’s play needs a few more comments though. Not only did he score twice, but he looked like a man reborn. It is clear that he has been frustrated with his own play in recent matches, and it is no secret that a lot of the supporters have had the same sentiment. However, last night we were talking about how this is the Jan Irjala we were promised when he signed, and that was well before his goals too. Irjala’s start was very sharp, and already during the first ten minutes Irjala had won a lot of one-to-one battles in the offensive third. Maybe the smaller field and shorter distances between players works for him, or maybe it was all in mental preparation. Either way, everybody enjoyed what they saw.

On the 90th minute there was an unfortunate collision between Mika Suonsyrjä and TahVe’s Petri Tavilampi. It happened on the far side of the field so I did not see what happened too clearly, but apparently Suonsyrjä’s arm hit Tavilampi’s jaw with enough force to cause real damage. An ejection was the only right choice, even if for everybody who knows Mika it is clear there was no intention in what happened. For us this means that our player-coach will not be on the bench in the next couple matches, but I’m sure that assistant coach Mika Kanerva can handle those duties, as he indeed has done already this season in our victorious away match in Lammi.

At the final whistle we were singing our version of the famous Gate 13 song Horto Magiko, as we often do when we win. When the players came over to us, it felt a tiny bit like when we were celebrating promotion in the same place last fall. For many of our players it was their first ever match in front of more than 200 people in attendance, and I don’t think before the match any of them had remembered how loud the supporters are in Pyynikki. We are back home now for the remainder of the season, and I do think the players love it as much as the supporters do.

TamU-K – TahVe 3-0 (3-0)
22 min 1-0 Jan Irjala (pk)
38 min 2-0 Timo Kauppinen
41 min 3-0 Jan Irjala

Discipline:
27 min Joona Nieminen, TahVe (caution)
90 min Mika Suonsyrjä, TamU-K (ejection)

Attendance:
219