In terms of climate Finland is not an ideal place for football. In the long winter we get by with full-size indoors fields as well as heated artificial turfs outdoors, but sometimes nature does its best to throw a wrench in your plans. We had already had an away match against FC Rauma canceled in January, and on Sunday we played a training match outdoors in Valkeakoski in conditions that probably left everybody wondering if there was any sense in playing the match. It was slippery, it was too damn cold, the ball kept getting stopped in piles of snow, and markings on the pitch were not visible for the most part (see the official match report for a few photos). The result was a 1-1 (1-1) draw, Risto Niskanen scoring the equalizer for us at about the 30 minute mark, but the result hardly mattered even if tweets from the homebound head coach and team captain might have suggested otherwise.

The result of the wintry challenges is that we are going to the Finnish Cup second round fixture on Monday next week a bit less prepared than we could have been. In essence the recent match against FC Jazz/2 is the one and only really good training match we’ve had this winter. On the bright side, reports from training have been all positive so far. Also, I doubt our opponent LeKi-futis has had a very different winter, even if they already opened their competitive season in January with a first round Finnish Cup match, which they obviously ended up winning.

The surprise announcement that Antti Eijamo will not play for TamU-K this season is another setback. He had quickly become a favorite among supporters, and also seemed to be held in high regard in the team locker room, but unfortunately he will be moving out from Tampere due to personal reasons. He will be missed in more ways than one.

At the same time everybody is expecting a few more player announcements ahead of the Finnish Cup fixture. There are a few players who have been playing regularly in our offseason matches but have not yet been announced as signed players, so it is not difficult to connect the dots here. Despite the challenges and setbacks that we’ve had, I remain confident that we will field a very competitive team on Monday. Individually speaking we have a greatly improved group of players, and it is all about getting to know each other and playing as a team at this point.