It's not exactly "Fortress Helsinki" - put the blame on the Stadium
COLUMN
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By Ilkka Ahtiainen
Generations of players have come and gone, coaches have been given their marching orders, and the shrill-voiced juniors screaming in the stands have grown to be fathers who now turn up at football matches with their own kids in tow.
Only one thing remains resulutely unchanged, regardless of the passage of the years: Finland can't win an important football international match on its home turf in Helsinki's Olympic Stadium.
Where's the problem?
We armchair fans cannot bring ourselves to blame the players, who from one year to the next become more professional and give their all on the pitch.
We are also reluctant to throw the blame on the succession of Finnish and foreign coaches who analyse the weaknesses of the team's opponents to the very best of their abilities and draw up tactics for the national squad.
And it stands to reason that under no circumstances are we going to point the finger at ourselves, the fans, who faithfully turn out in the second or even the third generation to fill the Stadium seating - only to go home disillusioned time and again.
The great compendium of defeats and bitterly-disappointing "draws we should have won" compiled by our national team on its home ground is so dinningly depressing in both its length and sheer monotony that it has long since taken the edge off the standard sarcastic remarks that one is prone to hear from fans in accompaniment to sporting setbacks.
Who does not recall the splendid but ultimately quite useless 1-1 draws at home to England and Romania in the World Cup qualifiers of 1985, when Martti Kuusela was at the helm?
The 6-0 hammering we took at the hands of Russia in August 1995 in the qualifiers for Euro 1996 has possibly been mercifully consigned to the waste-basket of the memory.
However, this is only because just a couple of years later something much much worse was to come in the final game of the World Cup qualifying campaign: the 1-1 draw in Helsinki against Hungary, and particularly the horrors of the pinball-table own goal scored in the 91st minute of a must-win match, is indelibly etched in slowmotion film on the minds of all who were in the Stadium on that rainy October night.
The home draw against superior opposition who were there for the taking: it is like a bur clinging doggedly to the shirt of the national team.
A managerless England in 2000 (0-0), Germany in 2001 (2-2 after we led 2-0 at halftime), and then Portugal in 2006 (1-1 again).
It feels churlish to add last week's 2-0 defeat to The Netherlands to the list of disappointments, for Finland now has a team in transition as old stalwarts hang up their boots, a coach who is new (Mixu Paatelainen only took over in April), and the Dutch are after all currently the world's No.1 side according to FIFA.
All the same: Finland tripped up again at home - and now it was not even an "honourable" draw.
This is all the fault of the Olympic Stadium.
The arena is too large by half for Finnish football. It fills up only on rare occasions, and only when it is packed out does the place generate any atmosphere.
The eight lanes of running track and the uncovered North and South Banks blunt the cutting edge of support for one's own and for scaring the living daylights out of the opposition.
For football, the Olympic Stadium represents much the same as Finlandia Hall for classical music.
Yes, it's good to go bombing round the 400-metre track at the Stadium and it's nice to arrange conferences and congresses in the white marble palace of Finlandia.
But just as classical music dies an ugly death in the acoustic desert of Finlandia Hall, so the ball does not bounce kindly on the Stadium turf - at least not for Finland.
Both buildings are handsome national monuments designed by well-known architects, but what is the point of a sporting monument if your team always get stuffed in it?
It took the musical fraternity forty years to find a replacement for the tragically-flawed Finlandia Hall, in the shape of a decent auditorium in the new Music Centre.
This is a long time, but the sporting contingent's wait has lasted a good deal longer.
The Olympic Stadium was completed and opened in 1938.* The Finnish football fans have kept their temper in check for more than seven decades.
A news item from the past week reported that the Stadium Foundation, which cherishes and administers the venerable venue, has forbidden the holding of another "Winter Classic" ice hockey match there next winter.
The reason given is that an ice hockey game played on a rink set up in the middle of the arena may damage the grass underneath.
The decision is a daft one. The Olympic Stadium might just as well be given over to the ice hockey players, to rock concert promoters, or even to the green fingered members of an allotment society.
The grass there has certainly never done Finnish football any good.
Finland's national team and its supporters need a new football arena that is similar to but bigger than the neighbouring Sonera Stadium (capacity 10,770).
The sort of venue where success can be built without the burden of the Olympic Stadium's history.
One where all other sports are strictly forbidden.
One where the opposition is not protected by 20 metres of Mondo Super X Performance running-track but feels the hot breath of the Finnish fans on its neck.
On a ground such as this we the fans can become the 12th man that can lift Finland from a miserable 1-1 draw to a glorious 2-1 win.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 10.9.2011
Note: Most people outside Finland assume the venue was built for the 1952 Summer Olympics, but Helsinki had made an unsuccessful bid to stage the 1940 games, with the stadium being built as a part of this project. Japan and Tokyo won the contest, but Tokyo was stripped of its host status by the IOC in 1938 (on the outbreak of the 2nd Sino-Japanese War), and Helsinki - the runner-up - gallantly offered to step into the breach.
Another larger war intervened to cause the complete cancellation of the 1940 Olympics, and Finland had to wait until one of the victorious Allied Powers (London 1948) had had a bite at the cherry before Helsinki got its chance.
One curiosity is that although the decision to pass the 1940 Summer Olympics on to Helsinki was made in 1938, in June 1939 when the time came to bid on the 1944 Summer Games (which also naturally fell foul of World War II), Helsinki AGAIN threw its hat into the ring. Hardly surprisingly, it did not win (London did).
Helsinki's 12-year wait was in any event only half the time it took before Tokyo finally succeeded in snagging the Summer Olympics in 1964.
ILKKA AHTIAINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
ilkka.ahtiainen@hs.fi
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| 13.9.2011 - THIS WEEK |
 It's not exactly "Fortress Helsinki" - put the blame on the Stadium |
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