Finnish "managerial skills" to the fore at Euro 2008

18,000 Finns taking part in UEFA fantasy football game

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Finland’s national football team may not be present at the Euro 2008 tournament in Austria and Switzerland, but at least two Finns have made a kind of impression there. Step forward Jukka Kuisma and Tomi Ristola.
      You have probably never heard of either of them, but assume they are referees or officials of some kind. Or maybe they were rowdy fans arrested and deported for upsetting the Swiss or Austrian authorities.
      Wrong on both counts.
     
Admittedly neither Jukka nor Tomi is actually kicking a ball in anger at the European Championships, but both are in the top ten in UEFA’s Fantasy Football competition after the group stages of the real tournament have been completed.
      Kuisma is lying 2nd overall with a heady 225 points, and Ristola is five points behind in sixth place.
      This is no mean feat, since at the latest count, upwards of 370,000 people all over the world are taking part, including a mind-boggling 18,000 and more from Finland itself.
     
The Finnish contingent of fantasy footballers is larger than that from Spain or Portugal, and smaller only than the fans from Ireland and England (neither of whom have national teams represented, either).
      A mere 1,500 Swedish fans are listed as taking part, even though their team is playing - or was playing until the Russians sent them packing last night.
     
Apart from normal Finnish geekiness and fascination with all things Net-related, one reason for the strong local interest may be the decision by the Finnish Broadcasting Company YLE to put the game on its Euro 2008 online portal, and to advertise it in its nightly TV coverage of the tournament.
      Sadly, in spite of the best efforts of Kuisma and Ristola, we are as a country quite far down the national rankings.
     
The idea of the game is to pick your own dream-team before matches, with a view to selecting players who will net you a maximum of points, for instance by scoring or creating goals, keeping a clean sheet in defence or in goal, or being voted man of the match.
      Yellow and red cards spell points deducted, and there are restrictions on the number of players that can be picked from any one national team, and on the total value of the squad.
     
The third round of the group stages proved the undoing of many Fantasy Football competitors, as they watched in horror when coaches of teams that had already qualified decided pragmatically to rest their best players for the later stages of the tournament, and not to waste them on "irrelevant" matches. Those who had, for instance, picked the ever-popular Christiano Ronaldo of Portugal or Wesley Sneijder of The Netherlands (these two have been chosen by 57% and 48% of contestants respectively) were probably furious that they were given the night off and scored “null points” for them this week.
     
Kuisma’s second-place finish in the group stages has won him a team shirt, and Ristola got an official match ball for coming sixth.
      Ristola also only just missed out on winning a computer game by finishing just outside the top ten in the third round of matches - he presumably did manage to get rid of the non-playing stars from his team.
      Both of these Fantasy Football enthusiasts are still in with a serious chance of collecting the main prize, which is a handsome home cinema system.
     
One can never tell with the Internet, so we can’t be sure if the “Stuart Baxter” taking part is really the head coach of the Finnish national team, but he’s not doing too badly - 144 points, and only 30,503 competitors have bettered his score.
      Let’s hope he can pick the players for his own team accurately when the World Cup qualifiers start in September.
      Since Finland have to play Germany and Russia, both of whom have qualified for the quarter-finals at Euro 2008, he will need all the skills he can muster.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Kicking on: Russian football recovers from the post-Soviet doldrums (10.6.2008)

Links:
  Euro 2008 Fantasy Football
  YLE Fantasy Football portal (in Finnish, links to UEFA site)

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