Archive | July 1st, 2009
Veikkausliiga round 12 preview
Full rounds are for losers, so instead, Veikkausliiga continues with Wednesday’s three games, all of which kick off at 6:30 PM.
Tampere United (11th) – FC Inter (7th)
Inter are a good team on their day, but they can also be a bad team, like last Sunday at HJK. To aggravate the problem, Patrick Bantamoi is suspended for this game because he has apparently been watching too much hockey. He brought down a HJK player with what would have been an impressive body check if it took place in the rink, but because the game was played on grass, he was awarded a Christmas card and a suspension. He is replaced by David Monsalve, who makes his Veikkausliiga debut.
Finland’s Under 21 Euros: no humiliation, but is that enough?
1. July 2009
STUART BAXTER is a polite and eloquent man, but at a Finnish FA press lunch given on Finland’s final day at the UEFA under-21 championships he found it difficult to express his feelings without recourse to an expletive. He had watched Finland’s previous two matches from the enclosure reserved for scouts, and their constant queries about the relatively unknown Finns had exasperated him.
“I had to do this at one point,” Baxter explained, putting his hands over his ears. “There were three or four people all asking ‘who does he play for?’, ‘how much might he cost?’, and so on, while I was watching the game and thinking ‘f*ck! come on lads’.”
Probably without realising it, Baxter had shown the two schools of thought on Finland’s tournament. On the one hand, they played quite well in patches and were not outclassed as some had feared, changing the perceptions of opinion formers and decision makers in bigger footballing countries than Finland.
1. July 2009
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