A midfield playmaker with a strong defensive record at home
During a long footballing career, Jari Litmanen has managed to keep his off-the-ball activities private. At least until last Tuesday.
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By Saska Snellman
For nearly 20 years, a Finnish footballing phenomenon named Jari Litmanen has appeared in newspaper headlines and articles. Litmanen ("Litti" to the locals) has scored crucial goals, suffered career-threatening injuries, been transferred to big-name clubs abroad, and has won trophies - for example the European Champions League with Ajax Amsterdam.
At the age of 34, Litmanen is Finland's best-ever footballing product, the best-known Finnish sports personality in the team sports category, and quite possibly the only Finnish athlete with whom the words artist, maestro, or genius have been associated.
Amidst all the fuss about his on-the-pitch triumphs and travails, Litmanen himself has remained a curiously enigmatic figure, largely out of the tabloid glare.
Litti has never been spotted in tired and emotional condition in nightclubs, like Formula One star Kimi Räikkönen. He has not been involved in a brawl on the street, like his promising young footballer colleague Alexei Eremenko Jr. Nor has he hit the headlines for wreckless driving and collecting colossal fines, like NHL ice hockey star Teemu Selänne.
It is not for lack of effort on the journalists' part. They have followed Litmanen like herring gulls behind a trawler.
But all that they have managed to scrawl in their notebooks are detailed analyses of the attacking style of Ajax Amsterdam or Litmanen's views on the greatest midfield players of all time.
A score of times and more, Finnish reporters who have interviewed Litmanen "in depth" have come away confessing that they do not really have a clue what kind of person they are talking to.
"Litmanen is the Greta Garbo of international football", grunts one sports reporter.
That all changed somewhat last Tuesday, however, when news carried across the Gulf of Finland that Litmanen was to become a father. The mother is the top Estonian fashion model Ly Jürgenson.
It looks as though the sly midfield fox has just split another defence with a clever and unexpected pass.
In the autumn of 1995, hot on the heels of his Champions Leage win with Ajax, the only book thus far written about Litmane appeared. It was written by Hannu Teider and went under the name Kultakenkä (Golden Boot).
Teider had hoped to be able to tell the human story behind a little boy and a great dream. There would be a pinch of motherly love and fatherly example, and... - but then Litmanen grabbed the manuscript and took up his red pen.
Teider found himself face to face with the obstacle met by hundreds of other journalists: Litmanen wants to keep the off-the-field parts of himself to himself. He counts these as family, friends, women, money, and feelings. Everything except what can be done with a football.
A Finnish sportswriter was at an event last winter announcing the transfer of the star midfielder to Germany, to help out struggling Bundesliga side Hansa Rostock.
"The journalists were asking whether Litmanen would be moving to Germany alone or with his family. Litmanen replied that he was moving to Germany in order to save Hansa Rostock from relegation."
A quick series of phone-calls reveals a pattern: others have run up against this stonewall defence.
Even those who regard themselves as Litmanen's friends do not really know the man.
"One of the funniest guys I know. A great joker, always got a twinkle in his eyes. But I wouldn't claim to know him - I don't think anyone has him down 100% like that." (Friend)
"When he is being interviewed or at a press conference, Litti always starts every answer with a shrug and a 'Yeah, well'. Once I bumped into him in the ailses at the supermarket. Litti spoke exactly the same way, but he dropped the 'Yeah, well' intros." (Sports Journalist)
"Jari knows how to party just as much as the next man, and he goes on to after-party events, too, but he never discloses anything about himself. He's probably a bit sensitive or shy, a bit of an odd bird." (Gossip Columnist)
"The image of Litti as a quite hermit-like figure, all those grouchy imitations you sometimes hear, they are completely wrong. In the right company he talks non-stop, though of course it's mostly about football. Litti is a remarkably gifted person, full of secrets." (Coach/Manager)
Litmanen's confidant and agent Harri Kampman says that the player has wanted to prune out from his public image everything that might get in the way of the essential: concentrating on football. Hence Litmanen does not talk about his personal life, and nor does he do underwear advertisements, like a certain Arsenal star from Sweden.
Litmanen is a handsome man with a mop of wavy hair (he used to be a role-model for fans of 80's "mullet" coiffure). With his looks he could be a Finnish version of David Beckham, the bulk of whose EUR 25 million in annual earnings comes from a range of advertising contracts, and the greater part of whose public image derives from non-footballing matters.
But Litmanen does not want that . He has made this fact perfectly clear.
"That sort of thing just doesn't go along with Jari's personality, and Jari only does those things that are in his own image", says Kampman. "And in any case, Jari has made quite enough money just by playing."
Litmanen has not commented in public about the news of his impending fatherhood, so Kampman, too, is reluctant to go confirming the matter.
"But on the general level one could naturally say that these sorts of matters are usually among the happier things in life."
Jari Litmanen interests people, because his very existence seems so totally implausible.
How on earth did someone like him get created up here in the tundra; a player who reads the game and can juggle the ball to his whim like a Brazilian? There is something as weird about this as in those stories of child geniuses being born into inbred redneck families.
Even in Finnish football teams, there are always going to be big-boned defenders and midfield workhorses, but the gods of football are those who rule "in the hole" behind the strikers, the playmakers who unpick defences and release goal-scorers into space with silky-soft weighted passes: men like Diego Maradona, Zinadine Zidane - or Jari Litmanen.
Footballing mythology weaves tales about these kinds of players, not about central defenders. They have eyes in the back of their neck and a computer in their head; they make sport into art. They are the Mozarts and the Einsteins of their chosen discipline.
Perhaps it is for this very reason that Litmanen's reluctance to open up is not considered as the reticence of a person who suffered from speech difficulties as a child but a sign of mystery and enigma, behind which there must be secrets seething away.
But what if Litmanen's secret is that there are no secrets? Just the ball. With the ball at his feet, Litmanen is unique, a bizarre one-off. Without it, he's just an ordinary guy from Lahti.
No sane ordinary guy is likely to be very keen to have the sort of publicity that was in evidence in last week's article in the gossip magazine 7 Päivää (7 Days) about the personal history of his girlfriend Ly Jürgenson: "Wealthy men and strange messy relationships".
According to the paper's editor Eeva-Helena Jokitaipale, every effort had been made to get a comment from Ly and from Jari, but to no avail.
Jokitaipale says that Litmanen's long career has been a good example of how it IS possible for a well-known personality to keep his private life his or her own, if the will is there.
"Sure, in Finland you can stay out of the limelight. At least Jari has managed it, but then again he is a very exceptional figure."
It will soon be exactly ten years since the highest pinnacle of Litmanen's footballing career. In May 1995, the man in the No.10 shirt was instrumental in taking the European Champions League trophy back to Amsterdam.
A year later, and Ajax were again in the ECL final, losing on penalties to Juventus. Since then, there has been a nine-year gap without any Finnish representation in this crowning European match. The sequence will be broken in just over one week's time when Sami Hyypiä turns out in Istanbul in the red colours of Liverpool against AC Milan.
Litmanen's glorious career on the field is inevitably approaching its end. He has won a great deal in his time, but one dream looks unlikely to come to pass. Unless the Dutch can be overcome in their World Cup qualifying match in Helsinki early next month, Finland's players can once again put the lid on their fantasies of appearing in a major international tournament.
Litmanen did not manage to rescue Hansa Rostock from relegation from the Bundesliga, but during the spring he turned in a series of midfield performances that may well mean he finds himself a new club when the European season restarts in the autumn.
And if he does, there will be another press conference, and photo opportunities in a new team shirt, and new journalists, and new questions: "How is Ly getting on? How's the baby doing? Are you already an expert at changing diapers?"
Fear not - we can rely on Litmanen to come through for us: "Yeah, well, I came here to play football."
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 15.5.2005
For nearly 20 years, a Finnish footballing phenomenon named Jari Litmanen has appeared in newspaper headlines and articles. Litmanen ("Litti" to the locals) has scored crucial goals, suffered career-threatening injuries, been transferred to big-name clubs abroad, and has won trophies - for example the European Champions League with Ajax Amsterdam.
At the age of 34, Litmanen is Finland's best-ever footballing product, the best-known Finnish sports personality in the team sports category, and quite possibly the only Finnish athlete with whom the words artist, maestro, or genius have been associated.
Amidst all the fuss about his on-the-pitch triumphs and travails, Litmanen himself has remained a curiously enigmatic figure, largely out of the tabloid glare.
Litti has never been spotted in tired and emotional condition in nightclubs, like Formula One star Kimi Räikkönen. He has not been involved in a brawl on the street, like his promising young footballer colleague Alexei Eremenko Jr. Nor has he hit the headlines for wreckless driving and collecting colossal fines, like NHL ice hockey star Teemu Selänne.
It is not for lack of effort on the journalists' part. They have followed Litmanen like herring gulls behind a trawler.
But all that they have managed to scrawl in their notebooks are detailed analyses of the attacking style of Ajax Amsterdam or Litmanen's views on the greatest midfield players of all time.
A score of times and more, Finnish reporters who have interviewed Litmanen "in depth" have come away confessing that they do not really have a clue what kind of person they are talking to.
"Litmanen is the Greta Garbo of international football", grunts one sports reporter.
That all changed somewhat last Tuesday, however, when news carried across the Gulf of Finland that Litmanen was to become a father. The mother is the top Estonian fashion model Ly Jürgenson.
It looks as though the sly midfield fox has just split another defence with a clever and unexpected pass.
In the autumn of 1995, hot on the heels of his Champions Leage win with Ajax, the only book thus far written about Litmane appeared. It was written by Hannu Teider and went under the name Kultakenkä (Golden Boot).
Teider had hoped to be able to tell the human story behind a little boy and a great dream. There would be a pinch of motherly love and fatherly example, and... - but then Litmanen grabbed the manuscript and took up his red pen.
Teider found himself face to face with the obstacle met by hundreds of other journalists: Litmanen wants to keep the off-the-field parts of himself to himself. He counts these as family, friends, women, money, and feelings. Everything except what can be done with a football.
A Finnish sportswriter was at an event last winter announcing the transfer of the star midfielder to Germany, to help out struggling Bundesliga side Hansa Rostock.
"The journalists were asking whether Litmanen would be moving to Germany alone or with his family. Litmanen replied that he was moving to Germany in order to save Hansa Rostock from relegation."
A quick series of phone-calls reveals a pattern: others have run up against this stonewall defence.
Even those who regard themselves as Litmanen's friends do not really know the man.
"One of the funniest guys I know. A great joker, always got a twinkle in his eyes. But I wouldn't claim to know him - I don't think anyone has him down 100% like that." (Friend)
"When he is being interviewed or at a press conference, Litti always starts every answer with a shrug and a 'Yeah, well'. Once I bumped into him in the ailses at the supermarket. Litti spoke exactly the same way, but he dropped the 'Yeah, well' intros." (Sports Journalist)
"Jari knows how to party just as much as the next man, and he goes on to after-party events, too, but he never discloses anything about himself. He's probably a bit sensitive or shy, a bit of an odd bird." (Gossip Columnist)
"The image of Litti as a quite hermit-like figure, all those grouchy imitations you sometimes hear, they are completely wrong. In the right company he talks non-stop, though of course it's mostly about football. Litti is a remarkably gifted person, full of secrets." (Coach/Manager)
Litmanen's confidant and agent Harri Kampman says that the player has wanted to prune out from his public image everything that might get in the way of the essential: concentrating on football. Hence Litmanen does not talk about his personal life, and nor does he do underwear advertisements, like a certain Arsenal star from Sweden.
Litmanen is a handsome man with a mop of wavy hair (he used to be a role-model for fans of 80's "mullet" coiffure). With his looks he could be a Finnish version of David Beckham, the bulk of whose EUR 25 million in annual earnings comes from a range of advertising contracts, and the greater part of whose public image derives from non-footballing matters.
But Litmanen does not want that . He has made this fact perfectly clear.
"That sort of thing just doesn't go along with Jari's personality, and Jari only does those things that are in his own image", says Kampman. "And in any case, Jari has made quite enough money just by playing."
Litmanen has not commented in public about the news of his impending fatherhood, so Kampman, too, is reluctant to go confirming the matter.
"But on the general level one could naturally say that these sorts of matters are usually among the happier things in life."
Jari Litmanen interests people, because his very existence seems so totally implausible.
How on earth did someone like him get created up here in the tundra; a player who reads the game and can juggle the ball to his whim like a Brazilian? There is something as weird about this as in those stories of child geniuses being born into inbred redneck families.
Even in Finnish football teams, there are always going to be big-boned defenders and midfield workhorses, but the gods of football are those who rule "in the hole" behind the strikers, the playmakers who unpick defences and release goal-scorers into space with silky-soft weighted passes: men like Diego Maradona, Zinadine Zidane - or Jari Litmanen.
Footballing mythology weaves tales about these kinds of players, not about central defenders. They have eyes in the back of their neck and a computer in their head; they make sport into art. They are the Mozarts and the Einsteins of their chosen discipline.
Perhaps it is for this very reason that Litmanen's reluctance to open up is not considered as the reticence of a person who suffered from speech difficulties as a child but a sign of mystery and enigma, behind which there must be secrets seething away.
But what if Litmanen's secret is that there are no secrets? Just the ball. With the ball at his feet, Litmanen is unique, a bizarre one-off. Without it, he's just an ordinary guy from Lahti.
No sane ordinary guy is likely to be very keen to have the sort of publicity that was in evidence in last week's article in the gossip magazine 7 Päivää (7 Days) about the personal history of his girlfriend Ly Jürgenson: "Wealthy men and strange messy relationships".
According to the paper's editor Eeva-Helena Jokitaipale, every effort had been made to get a comment from Ly and from Jari, but to no avail.
Jokitaipale says that Litmanen's long career has been a good example of how it IS possible for a well-known personality to keep his private life his or her own, if the will is there.
"Sure, in Finland you can stay out of the limelight. At least Jari has managed it, but then again he is a very exceptional figure."
It will soon be exactly ten years since the highest pinnacle of Litmanen's footballing career. In May 1995, the man in the No.10 shirt was instrumental in taking the European Champions League trophy back to Amsterdam.
A year later, and Ajax were again in the ECL final, losing on penalties to Juventus. Since then, there has been a nine-year gap without any Finnish representation in this crowning European match. The sequence will be broken in just over one week's time when Sami Hyypiä turns out in Istanbul in the red colours of Liverpool against AC Milan.
Litmanen's glorious career on the field is inevitably approaching its end. He has won a great deal in his time, but one dream looks unlikely to come to pass. Unless the Dutch can be overcome in their World Cup qualifying match in Helsinki early next month, Finland's players can once again put the lid on their fantasies of appearing in a major international tournament.
Litmanen did not manage to rescue Hansa Rostock from relegation from the Bundesliga, but during the spring he turned in a series of midfield performances that may well mean he finds himself a new club when the European season restarts in the autumn.
And if he does, there will be another press conference, and photo opportunities in a new team shirt, and new journalists, and new questions: "How is Ly getting on? How's the baby doing? Are you already an expert at changing diapers?"
Fear not - we can rely on Litmanen to come through for us: "Yeah, well, I came here to play football."
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 15.5.2005
SASKA SAARIKOSKI / Helsingin Sanomat
saska.saarikoski@hs.fi