“This mutual dream that we all had – fans, staff members, players – was that we would one day get into a major tournament. It feels so good that we finally made it,” Finland’s captain Tim Sparv, sporting an immaculately coiffed beard, tells i via zoom before the country’s European Championship debut against Denmark. “We have a new dream: to qualify for the next round.”
Uefa’s decision to increase the number of teams at the Euros from 16 to 24 has ensured that smaller nations can have historic nights to savour. Like on 15 November 2019, when Finland qualified for their first major finals by beating Liechtenstein 3-0.
“It’s a special occasion for everyone,” Sparv, 34, admits. “It’s really fun now because we’ve had so much success over the last few years but there have been some dark moments as well, it’s been a rollercoaster ride. We had a couple of years when we hardly won a game.
“Representing Finland has been a big part of my identity ever since I was a young kid. I’ve had the chance to play for every age group and today I’m the captain of the national side so it means a great deal to me. This is the culmination of a really long journey.”
According to Fifa’s latest rankings, Finland are the 54th best team in the world, making them, on paper, the second-weakest at Euro 2020, only ahead of 62nd place North Macedonia. As recently as July 2017, though, they were in their lowest-ever position of 110th, sandwiched between Nicaragua and North Korea.
In a blog post this week, Sparv explained how the team plotted its escape route from rock bottom. “A Finnish team should always be ultra-competitive, resilient, and tough. There’s a particular Finnish word for it: Sisu,” reads the post which featured in German magazine 11Freunde. “After a bit of soul searching amongst ourselves, we finally found the sisu within us.”
As well as helping the squad rediscover its Sisu, coach Markku Kanerva – a former schoolteacher who has been in charge since 2016 – has made the team more tactically flexible and as Sparv puts it “deadly” in “offensive transitions” – a trait that has played to the counter-attacking strengths of the team’s star striker, Norwich City’s Teemu Pukki.
The 26-man squad is comprised of players from 23 different clubs ranging from Brescia to Brentford and Montreal to MTK in Budapest, across 16 different countries. Sparv himself plays for AEL in Greece, following spells in Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland and England, where he started out at Southampton, in the same youth team as Gareth Bale, Theo Walcott and Adam Lallana amongst others.
A lack of club allegiances might be seen as a weakness, but Finland’s team spirit is one of its main strengths. But there is individual quality in their ranks too.
Aside from Pukki, who scored 10 of Finland’s 16 goals in qualifying, Sparv namechecks Bayer Leverkusen goalkeeper Lukas Hradecky and Minnesota United playmaker Robin Lod, as key men to watch. Hradecky is the “next one on the throne” of elite Finnish shot-stoppers, following on from Antti Niemi and Jussi Jaaskelainen, while Lod is described as a “very technically gifted, modern Finnish footballer”.
On Pukki he adds: “Teemu symbolises our team somehow because you think of him about his goals but for me he’s the perfect teammate because he works incredibly hard.”
Little is expected of Sparv and co this summer given they face Denmark, Russia and world No 1 Belgium in Group B. “Being an underdog fits us and suits us,” Sparv insists. “We’re just going to go there and play as well as we can while staying true to our values. Hopefully, the fans at home can be proud of our performances.”
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/3zjmLVn
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