FC Honka 0 FC Haka 2
Veikkausliiga (Finnish Premier Division)
Wednesday 25th July 2007

The contrast could not have been greater as the next stop on the whirlwind tour of the Finnish Veikkausliiga brought your humble scribe to Tapiolan urheilupuisto, the Tapiola Sportsfield, home of the Honka, a team famous for as much for its lack of achievement in more than half a century of existence. The faint waft of pine on the breeze, the forest air of Lahti had given way to Tapiola, a stark modernist outpost of Helsinki. The vast bowl of Lahti’s home replaced by the Tapiolan urheilupuisto’s temporary stands arrayed around the playing field in front of the commune’s main attraction, LänsiAuto Areena, home of the Espoo Blues ice hockey team. Still the club’s owners are ambitious; two years previous they easily climbed out of the Ykkönen (First Division), their new moneyed proprietors having financed the construction of a squad to do just that. Haka’s pedigree is much richer; nine championships, a dozen Finnish Cups and regular European competition for the past decade.
If the setting was somewhat ramshackle, the welcome was far from that. A willowy blond Finnish lass on the turnstiles in impeccable English suggested an away supporter’s entrance fee, apt as your correspondent had travelled much further than the gaggle of FC Haka followers tucked away in a corner behind the far goal. Perhaps they should have been joined for in a game that was never dull, but never exhilarating; they were to be the happier. By 13 minutes the scoring was over. Toni Lehtinen gave Haka the lead in the 9th minute courtesy of Valeri Popovitch assist, returning the favour four minutes later as he set up Popovitch to add a second four minutes later as the defence went missing in action. Honka dominated, the roar of a passionate 4,000+ crowd ringing in their ears but found the Haka defence resilient, barely testing the visitors’ Russian ‘keeper Alexander Dovbnya, who was more troubled in fending off the taunts of the Honka “ultras”, proud of their team’s purebred Finnish heritage.
Honka assaults, both footballing and verbal, failed to break the resistance of the Haka defence and so I bade farewell to Finnish football for the moment with defeat for this evening’s adopted team. Should you pass this way groundhopping do it soon for if Honka’s ambitions of European endeavour come to fruit the delightfully make-do-and-mend urheilupuisto of Tapiola will revert once more to a green sward in front of the ice hockey arena or become the bed from which a new home of the Honka will arise?

Honka: Tuomas Peltonen; Ville Jalasto, Tuomo Turunen, Hannu Patronen, Janne Saarinen (59 Hannu Haarala); Rami Hakanpää (65 Joel Perovuo), Roni Porokara, Nicholas Otaru (78 Vesa Vasara), Tero Koskela; Peke Huuhtanen, Aleksandr Kokko.

Haka: Alexander Dovbnya; Juuso Kangaskorpi; Jarkko Okkonen; Pietari Holopainen; Cheyne Fowler; Jani Kauppila; Mikko Manninen (Sebastian Strandvall 73); Kalle Parviainen; Toni Lehtinen (Janne Mahlakaarto 89); Valeri Popovitch; Mikko Innanen (Jarno Mattila 84)

Goalscoring:
FC Haka 1-0 Toni Lehtinen 9th minute
FC Haka 2-0 Valeri Popovitch 13th minute

Attendance: 4211