COMMENTARY: A new start for troubled Finnish football

Sami Hyypiä

print this

By Tero Hakola
     
      After ninety minutes on the turf of the Olympic Stadium in Helsinki last October, Sami Hyypiä walked off a bitterly disappointed man, regardless of the cheers he received from the fans, mixed in with expletives for the national coach Stuart Baxter.
      Finland had just lost its third match in the current series of UEFA European Championships qualifiers.
      The 2-1 home defeat to Hungary, following on from previous losses to Moldova and The Netherlands, effectively put the lid on any hopes Hyypiä might have had of securing a place in the finals of a major tournament in the sunset of his career, and it was a sad end to his long term as a Finnish international.
      A grateful look up to the fans on the North Bank and a few claps in their direction, and that was it.
     
Six or seven months on, things are very different.
      The Finnish footballing community has started the process of rehabilitation and recovery from what was a ghastly autumn all round.
      Faith was restored when the departing Baxter was formally replaced at the beginning of last month by Mika-Matti "Mixu" Paatelainen, a former Finnish international and Premiership player with Bolton Wanderers, who was picked up from the job of managing Kilmarnock in the Scottish Premier League.
     
The change-of-generation became perfect when Hyypiä - the Finnish player who has made the finest career on the world stage - chose to step out of his boots and into a place on the coaches' bench alongside Paatelainen.
      With the arrival of Sami Hyypiä the national squad could be said finally to have entered a new era. Even though the ex-Liverpool and Bayer Leverkusen defender's role as an assistant coach may initially be a small one, the credibility of the "Eagle-Owls" and interest in their doings immediately jumped to a new level.
      There will probably be some bumps in the road ahead, but even mistakes can be tolerated when the leadership includes national heroes in the sport.
      Hyypiä belongs with the likes of Jari Litmanen, Jonatan Johansson, Hannu Tihinen, and goalkeeper Antti Niemi to the so-called golden generation who were supposed to carry Finland through to the finals of the European Championships.
      It did not happen, but now they have an opportunity to build their own dream and that of the long-suffering fans as coaches and members of the backroom team.
     
It says something of Hyypiä's stature as a player and observer of the game that Bayer Leverkusen, currently firmly in the running to qualify automatically for the European Champions League next year, immediately appointed him as their assistant coach from July 2012, after he has collected the necessary coaching qualifications.
      At the same time he became in short order the most highly-ranked Finnish coach plying his trade abroad, alongside Paatelainen and Martti Kuusela (who led Honvéd to the Hungarian championship in 1993 and also coached Aris Thessaloniki F.C. in Greece in 2005) - and all without a single match being played.
     
The Finnish FA, too, deserves some congratulations.
      The FA has come in for plenty of stick recently for its handling of League licences and the match-fixing scandals that have swirled around the sport, and even the lengthy search for someone to replace Stuart Baxter seemed right to the end to have been a piece of rather shoddy administartive workmanship.
      However, the end result is a classy one, and the footballing equivalent of the True Finns' recent ground-shaking election surge.
      Helsingin Sanomat / First publsihed in print 3.5.2011


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Sami Hyypiä retires as player - career in football continues in coaching (3.5.2011)
  Mika-Matti Paatelainen takes over Finnish helm on five-year contract (1.4.2011)

See also:
  Start of Veikkausliiga season may have to be postponed amidst wrangles over clubs´ eligibility (13.4.2011)

Links:
  Finland National Football Team (Wikipedia)

TERO HAKOLA / Helsingin Sanomat
tero.hakola@hs.fi