Heading Finland onto the world map!

Time to capitalise on the success of women's football

print this

By Riku Siivonen
     
      Ten seconds before full-time, and the girls of Malmi FC's 1994/95 juniors are 1-0 up against near-neighbours Puistola Sport.
      It has been an evenly-balanced match. In the first half, Eve Peltola in the Malmi goal pulled off a string of tremendous saves to keep her side in the game and in front.
     
But the Puistola girls are not to be denied, and they get a last-ditch equaliser. It does not seem to have any dramatic effect on the Malmi players. There are no tearful meltdowns on the pitch. Mind you, the pain of two points lost is etched on the face of their team manager Frank Johansson.
      Johansson, who is also known as the Director of the Finnish branch of Amnesty International, is a broad-minded chap, but in his role as mentor to the girls he draws the line at allowing left- and right-wingers alike the chance to cause trouble in the Malmi defence.
      This was not a performance that was going to take the team to the top. And that is where Finnish women's football is aiming. Or is it?
     
Women have played in the Premier League for the Finnish club championship since 1971. But few punters have gone to watch any games - on average the attendance at Premier League matches is around a hundred or so, with relatives and boyfriends well represented.
      Finnish women's football has been stuck in the same vicious circle as any other minority sport. With no spectators to speak of, there is no publicity. With no publicity to speak of, there are no sponsors.
      When there are no sponsors, there is no money to dole out. And without cash on the barrelhead, the sport cannot market itself, develop the activities, or coax more bottoms onto seats at matches.
     
But now there may just be an emergency exit out of this all-too-familiar blind alley.
      The fact that the Finnish women's national team made it into the finals of the European Championships, which kicked off in England on Sunday, has generated an unprecedented level of interest in football for women.
      The sports pages speculate on the team's chances of qualifying from their group, and in the women's magazines the young players beam and pose in jolly pictures. And when there is publicity, there will surely be sponsors...
      But let's not get ahead of ourselves.
     
It was not a matter of mere luck or chance that Finland made it into the European Finals. The team is currently ranked 16th out of 121 countries on the FIFA lists. Looking ahead, the step up to the Olympic tournament, say, which has national teams from eight nations, does not seem too tough an obstacle.
      And at the Olympics there would be visibility galore. It may be that women's matches do not yet attract as many spectators as men's basketball or the 100 metres at the athletics stadium, but sure as hell the women would have no trouble competing for viewers against some of the traditionally strong "Finnish" disciplines like Greco-Roman wrestling or skeet shooting.
      And look at it another way: a Finnish sprinter who has made it to the Olympics flashes past the cameras for a couple of seconds in the morning qualifying heats and then vanishes, whereas the footballers play three 90-minute matches, and that is only the qualifying round. If the Finns were paired up against one of the big nations like the United States, Brazil, or Germany, the media exposure would be enormous.
     
And yet... Thus far the Finnish Olympic Committee has not provided a single euro in support of women's football. Do they have trouble with maths at the FOC?
      "Oh yes, we certainly understand that it would make for good exposure for Finland if we were to get to the games in the ball sports", answers the FOC's head of coaching Kari Niemi-Nikkola.
      Wait for it.
      Here comes the "But".
      "According to our new strategy, money is invested where success can be anticipated. For example in men's volleyball. They should have a realistic chance of making it to the games."
     
To be fair, women's football IS on the FOC's short-list. The final decisions on distributing funds will be made after the European Championships are done.
      In recent years, ball-sports have increased in popularity hereabouts at the expense of individual events like athletics or cross-country skiing. This has been duly noted at the Ministry of Education, which has contacted the Finnish FA to sketch out ways of improving the prospects for success.
      Women's football would now be offering good things on the cheap!
      "Right now we are still at the discussion stage. There is a will there, and women's football is one of the most important areas for development ", confirms Timo Haukilahti, a senior advisor at the ministry's Sports Division.
      Haukilahti is reluctant to talk about precise numbers, at least before the government publishes its budget proposals for next year, due out this coming August.
     
We are now back on the touchline at the gravel pitch in Tapanila. It is at modest places like this that the girls who will lead Finland to success in international competitions are playing the game today.
      Ten years hence, the footballing juniors of 2015 may say their idols and role models are the likes of Eila Güzel, Heidi Hiltunen, Netta Laukkanen, Vilja Johansson, Tuuli Savolainen, Maria Happonen, Veera Pulkkanen, or Suvi Karhula, all dressed in their yellow and black Malmi FC strips.
      The Malmi girls will be watching Sunday's opening EURO 2005 match between Finland and England on a big screen at a primary school in Vihti, where the team is on a training camp.
      "One purpose is to offer up something by way of example", says team manager Johansson.
      As it happens, the team already have one role-model close at hand: their coach Anna-Liisa Laukkanen is not just a parent, but also a former topflight player.
     
As always, the Swedes are at least one generation ahead of the Finns.
      In 1999, the Swedish football authorities launched a three-year project with a budget in excess of EUR 1 million. It was geared to developing players, coaches, and club activities, and was set up in the hope of attracting more enthusiasts into the sport.
      One of the objectives set at the time was to get women's matches on television regularly and to bring the average league attendance up over 750.
     
Many scoffed and said these were completely insane dreams - pure la-la-land.
      What actually happened went a good deal further. There are now 130,000 registered female players in Sweden. The average number of spectators at Swedish Allsvenskan (Premiership) matches last season was 1,127, and games are regularly televised.
      Last year, when Sweden met Germany in the final of the FIFA Women's World Cup, the time difference from the venue in Los Angeles did not prevent 3.8 million Swedes and 13 million Germans getting around their television sets to watch. Germany won 2-1 after extra time.
     
"There is nothing wrong with the product as such, but the greatest resistance comes from inside football itself. This is a male-dominated world, and respect for women's football is only just starting to get off the ground", says
Erkki Alaja.
      He is a seasoned expert on sports sponsorship, a promoter, and also incidentally handles the affairs of star Finnish striker Mikael Forssell, who is currently still on the Chelsea books but is being pursued by Everton and others.
      Alaja has been following women's matches since the 1970s, and most recently he caught last week's top-of-the-table encounter between Helsinki HJK and KMF Kuopio in the Finnish League.
      "The women's game provides extremely good technical football. Clubs, the FA, and the players themselves should be more active in spreading the word. That way it might be possible to get more spectators in and spark the interest of possible partners."
     
Women's football in Finland could not be said to have had sponsorship as such - only charitable donations.
      The teams have got their few euros in support mainly as a goodwill gesture from local companies. Few firms actually believe they can further their business interests by supporting women's football.
      All the same, the success of the national team may bring about a change in the weather. One home electronics firm has already stuck labels advertising the women's squad on its microwave ovens, and a clothing manufacturer has done the same with its underwear packaging. Fascimile shirts are also on sale with the players' names and numbers printed on the back.
     
These small steps notwithstanding, the old prejudices remain strong.
      "I talked recently to a rep from another clothing firm. The attitude was that the company and some others in the trade do not regard women's football as a sufficiently feminine discipline. Hence they are more eager to back traditional female sports like figure skating or gymnastics", sighs Juha Kuosa, Marketing Director at the Finnish FA.
      Another problem is the fact that Finnish club teams have precious few televised games where a sponsor could get the company logo up on the screen. The national squad's shirts, on the other hand, are completely off-limits to advertisers.
      "YLE [the Finnish Broadcasting Company] and Urheilukanava [a jointly-owned commercial sports channel] have said they are interested, but there is already so much football on the screen that it rather hampers getting the women's matches televised", Kuosa explains.
     
The national team has already played its own part: making history by being the first-ever Finnish team, female or male, to reach the finals of a major UEFA or FIFA tournament.
      Unfortunately, the situation behind this bright facade is a good deal less rosy. Success has been dependent on the input of a small band of excellent players - and most of them play in Sweden these days. If the EURO 2005 achievement is to be turned into a more permanent phenomenon, a lot of work remains to be done.
      The biggest headache is in the national league. The level and profile must be raised. Right now discussions are going on with the clubs over their finances and the grounds where matches are played. Most questions are about relatively small improvements: such things as whether league matches should have a public address system or not.
     
"Women's football tends to get neglected in most clubs. The entire Finnish League rests on the work of a handful of people, and having such a flimsy organisation is not good for continuity, and it does nothing for the credibility of the league", says Jukka Vakkila, who has been involved on behalf of the Finnish FA in the study of the women's game.
      Vakkila also points out that there is not one person on the FA staff whose task is solely related to women's football.
     
If the present looks iffy, then the future seems rather better - provided people do not blow the golden scoring opportunity that is on offer.
      In the past ten years, the number of girls playing football has doubled. There are currently around 20,000 registered junior Finnish players.
      The Finnish clubs expect that the knock-on effect of the European Championships will be to bring a new influx of eager juniors - and they are even a little scared of the potential numbers. The problem is that teams already have a shortage of coaching staff, and in the Greater Helsinki area in particular it is not possible to find a place for all who want to play.
     
Parents are a natural target group for coaching and managing teams, but few of them have their own experience of the game. When you are dealing with kids at the sensitive age of 8 to 10 years, it is important to have coaches who can teach the right skills.
      "The situation at present is that the basic skills are pretty rudimentary, even at the top levels", says Maria Virolainen.
      Virolainen is a former league player who now coaches the Helsinki HJK women. She also led a project that concluded last year to encourage the creation of new girls' teams in the Helsinki area. A good number of new teams came into being, and each of them had a player from the national squad or from the Finnish Women's League attached as a kind of "godmother". The players come every now and then to teach the girls by example.
     
The FA itself has made an effort to bolster club activities. When the Finnish Under-19s got into their own European Championships [held in Finland in 2004], the FA arranged a seminar on girls' football, to which they invited coaches and team managers.
      Finnish players from the Swedish League told the seminar audiences what Finland could learn from its neighbour. Everything is a great deal more organised in Sweden.
      The seminar cannot have done too much harm: the Under-19 side got themselves a berth in this July's European Championships finals in Hungary - on merit rather than as hosts.
     
All agree that now is the time to strike, while women's football is hot.
      "I'd go so far as to claim that nowhere could you get such a good return on investment than by putting money into the national women's team. Or for that matter into ball-sports as a whole, like volleyball or handball", says Erkki Alaja.
      Maria Virolainen, too, would love to see international success. But she notes that everyone has to be got on board first.
      "We have to be sure that all the clubs want the same thing. It could be that for some it is enough to keep women's football as a fun hobby, and there is no need for ambitions of international glory."
      It is to be hoped that this is not the case. That would trip up any dreams of the Olympics and a place in the spotlight.
     
What about the girls of Malmi FC 1994/95? We can rely on them, surely? Their goals are set high enough?
      "We intend to play until we're grown-ups. And then we'll go to play in Sweden. Or England!" the girls shout with one voice, and with huge winning grins on their faces.
      Wow! So young and such media skills! That feisty attitude! These girls must have been inspired by their elders in the national squad, playing across the water in Sweden and waving the flag at the Championships in Manchester.
      So, girls, who are your footballing idols, then?
      "Sami Hyypiä! Ronaldo!"
      Huh? Men.
      But maybe not for so much longer.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 5.6.2005
     
Finland play Sweden in Blackpool on Wednesday night in their second EURO 2005 fixture. The match kicks off at 22.00 Finnish time, and will be televised on YLE TV2 (partly recorded, after the men's Finland-Holland World Cup qualifier in Helsinki) and also probably live on Eurosport. The Swedes are footballing heavyweights: they were runners-up in the last Women's World Cup. Many of the Finnish team will nevertheless be relishing playing against team-mates from Swedish league sides. Finland's third qualifying round match is against Denmark on Saturday. The Danes and the Swedes drew 1-1 in their opening encounter, while Finland went down 3-2 against hosts England (see linked article).


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Bitter last-minute defeat for Finnish women in European Championships (6.6.2005)
  Finnish women secure place in 2005 UEFA European Championships (21.10.2004)

Links:
  UEFA EURO 2005
  UEFA: Finnish Player Profiles

RIKU SIIVONEN / Helsingin Sanomat
riku.siivonen@hs.fi