Aki Riihilahti hangs up his boots

One of Finland's most popular and best-known footballers, midfielder Aki Riihilahti, announced on Tuesday that he was retiring from the game at the age of 35.
      Riihilahti's professional career saw him start out with HJK Helsinki, with whom he took the Finnish Championship title in 1997, and he was also a member of the HJK side that took part in the group stages of the European Champions League in the 1998-99 season.
     
He then moved to Norway to play with Vålerenga, but by 2001 he was at Selhurst Park and on the roster of the English Championship side Crystal Palace. He soon found a firm following with the fans, and was voted Player of the Year at the club in 2003.
      During the 2004-2005 season, Palace played in the English Premiership, but the club were relegated after just one campaign in the top flight. Riihilahti himself missed the end of the season through injury.
      He had one more year in London, eventually making a total of 181 league and cup appearances with Crystal Palace (15 goals), before decamping to Kaiserslautern in the German 2nd Bundesliga, and from there he went to Djurgården in Sweden.
     
In 2009 he made a return to the ranks of HJK, and collected three Finnish Championships in succession, as well as a league and cup double in 2011.
      Riihilahti also represented Finland on 69 occasions between 1998 and 2007, scoring 11 goals in the process, including the shock opener against England at Anfield in a 2-1 World Cup qualifier defeat in 2001.
     
Though sometimes described as a scrapping defensive midfielder, Riihilahti scored a commendable number of goals for club and country, and his popularity was certainly not dimmed by his writing - the player become something of a cult-figure in England during his spell with Crystal Palace through his blog pieces and regular columns for The Times newspaper.
      He has also written for Helsingin Sanomat and the late-edition tabloid Iltalehti, and is often seen on television as an articulate and amusing studio pundit in connection with European club matches and internationals.
     
During his last spell at HJK, Riihilahti also branched out into adminstrative tasks, and he is currently the Managing Director of the Sonera Stadium, the home ground of HJK Helsinki.
      He stressed that the decision to quit the game was a very difficult one, but in recent seasons he has been plagued with niggling injuries, and at 35 the body does not recover in the same way or at the same speed as at 25.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  COLUMN: Confessions of a sporting workaholic (13.12.2011)
  Veikkausliiga podium places settled on last day (31.10.2011)
  HJK predictably wrap up Veikkausliiga title with five games to spare (3.10.2011)

See also:
  Aki Riihilahti and the motivational miracle-workers at Crystal Palace (15.3.2005)

Links:
  Aki Riihilahti website and blog
  Aki Riihilahti (Wikipedia)