During the past week my focus has shifted from the first team to other areas in our growing club. I already wrote about the second adult team taking the next step by going to a competitive division this year, but this week has been full of stuff related to our youth teams as well. It might be that my shift of focus has been in part a way to not think about all the losses the first team has suffered in training matches this off-season. The latest loss took place away at Jyväskylä against Palokan Riento last weekend with, a 1-0 loss with a goal at the dying moments. I know that the results do not tell the whole story and I remain very optimistic about the upcoming season in Nelonen, but amidst all the losses it has been better to focus on other stuff.

The F9-boys

ended their futsal season on Friday. Their first match against Apassit was a very easy victory, and the score could have been much higher than 3-0, so big was the difference in quality of these two teams. The second match against FC Kangasala was much tougher, and in fact our boys were down 0-2 after the first fifteen-minute half. They had not lost any matches during the whole season, and the parents and other TamU-K people in attendance started to fear that the dream of a lossless season might not materialize. However, the boys disagreed, fought hard for a couple goals to equalize the match, and at the very end earned a penalty. Tuukka Heiskanen was the one who got fouled, and he was also the one who buried the ball in the top corner. ”What else could I have done there?” he asked after the match. Player.

And yes indeed, this is the first team in club history to play a lossless season. Two draws was all they allowed the other teams to get, otherwise it was all victories. A few of them were ones where they fought back after initially being down by a goal or two. Indeed, this is how the season started in November as well: down by a two goals at the half against an Ilves team, but winning 4-2 in the end. This team looked like Tampere United.

These boys will play football in the summer, and I also keep hearing that there will probably be enough of them to actually split the team into two groups that will play in different divisions of the Tampere District Leagues. In addition, the club announced earlier this week that there will be a team for boys and girls who have their 6th or 7th birthday this year. This team trains in Kaukajärvi and will most likely play matches against similar teams of the two big clubs TPV or Ilves, based in different suburbs within Tampere. This is a significantly lower level than the District Leagues, and the idea indeed is that any boy or girl can join this team, with or without any previous experience with football. There might even be other such TamU-K teams in other Tampere suburbs this year.

The part that makes me extremely happy about this development is that my own niece will join this new team. If I think back to 2011, all these developments feel almost surreal. Back then I was certain for a while that my club would be gone. Now we have three adult teams (first team, second team, recreational team) and several youth teams (the exact number is not even known yet), and even my own niece will dress in a blue Tampere United shirt this year. Incredible. Absolutely incredible.

And about those blue shirts, it was great to see yesterday that our first youth teams finally had their new blue playing gear, complete with their names on the back. Check out photos from the official match report (in Finnish).

Getting back to the first team, while the trip to Jyväskylä was a nice one for the supporters despite of the loss, I’m kind of happy that in March both of the matches in the first team’s calendar will be played in Tampere. The first one is a Nelonen Winter League match against Nekalan Pallo (NePa) on Saturday morning a week from now, and on Sunday March 30 they will face TPV’s U19 team. Both matches will be played in Pirkkahalli, where the surface is less than ideal, but at least we can hopefully maximize the number of players available. It would be nice to have several first team players on the bench for a change. Injuries and flu-like symptoms have plagued us, and as far as I can tell our shortage of players has nothing to do with commitment issues. As an example, on Wednesday prior to the Jyväskylä match the team had a training session where four additional players suffered minor injuries and had to miss that match. There is little the coaches can do when that kind of thing happens.