COMMENT: Lose to a top team, and you have to beat one
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By Tommi Hannula in Moscow
“I don’t believe it.”
This was almost certainly the expression on the lips of many Finns, burying their head in their hands, as Petri Pasanen put Russia 1-0 in front with an own goal just before the half-hour was up.
Few guessed, however, that they would have to repeat themselves not long afterwards.
Veli Lampi’s error was more lamentable, for he was not under the pressure that Pasanen was when he knocked the ball into an empty net on 65 minutes.
But there is no sense in blaming the players whose names appear ingloriously on the scoresheet.
There is absolutely no way Finland would have deserved to get even a point from Wednesday’s game with the way they played in Moscow.
The Russians left their visitors completely without a chance.
It seemed hard to credit the fact that Russia had actually lost last Saturday to Germany - a team that Finland had by contrast given a very thorough examination, in a match that left the home side annoyed they only claimed a 3-3 draw.
Of course home advantage does count for a great deal, particularly in the din of a packed Lokomotiv Stadium.
It will be interesting to see how much Finland and its own home crowd can even up the scales when the two teams meet again in Helsinki in June.
Defeat away to Russia means in practice that the Finns must beat their eastern neighbours at home.
Equally, they cannot allow themselves to lose away to Germany, let alone to Wales.
And so on, and so on.
It all sounds so very familiar, but that is how these qualifying campaigns are.
If you lose to one of the “big” nations, then in practice you have to beat the same outfit in the reverse fixture.
At the same time, one has to hope that those top countries drop points here and there against teams that are expected in advance to be weaker than Finland.
In this particular group it unfortunately seems a bit of a forlorn hope to imagine that Russia would slip on a banana skin of Azerbaijan’s or Liechtenstein’s making.
The 1-0 defeat to Azerbaijan in March 2007 was more embarrassing than going down 3-0 to Russia, but in the final analysis it was not such a serious setback.
The hard fact is that if you lose three points to a side like Azerbaijan, the points do not simultaneously swell the coffers of anyone who is seriously vying for a place in the finals.
Helsingin Sanomat / Edited from an article first published on 16.10.2008
More on this subject:
 Russia 3 Finland 0: On their knees in Moscow
TOMMI HANNULA / Helsingin Sanomat
tommi.hannula@hs.fi
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