4 the Hard Way

I told you all that this would happen.  I fucking told you!  I said months ago when I heard about the forfeit that there was a 100% chance that we finish 0,1,2 or 3 points ahead of MIFK and what do you know?  Karma’s a bitch.

Mariehamn played a great season but now has no chance at Europe next season and literally it’s only because their front office didn’t do the most basic of tasks, registering its players.  An asshole might feel it necessary to note that this stupid front office mistake essentially cost MIFK upwards of 100,000€, but I’m not an asshole! 

I scored another goal this month (keeping my essentially spotless “one a month” goal streak intact).  That can only mean one thing…………

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DANCING BEARS!!!!!!!!!!!  One for each goal this season.

 I just typed "dancing bear" into google.  DON'T do that search if you are at work as it might get you fired.  Apparently "dancing bear" is a term my blog shares in common with a porn site lol.

If you’re reading this then I’m sure you already know that we improbably finished 4^th place in the league.  We were as low as 9^th just two and a half months ago.  Hell, we were something like 8 points behind Mariehamn going into the international break in September.  For the first time all season though we were healthy and in the last nine games we didn’t lose a single time.  We also only conceded six goals I think, three of which were in one game.  Of that nine game unbeaten streak, six of them were shutouts.  It’s kind of dumb to dwell on it now, especially if we qualify for Europe, but you have to wonder how good we could have been if we hadn’t gotten any major injuries.  I mean, Steven scored an amazing hat trick two weeks before he broke his arm.  I was sure that he would score 20 this year.  Timi Lahti missed like15 games and Antti Uimaniemi missed the entire season.  Antti is a top-3 Veikkausliiga left back.  Henkka is the best goalie in Finland and he missed like 1/3 of the season.  Cheyne didn’t play at all until the summertime and he’s probably our most important field player.  It’s just frustrating to know how good our team could have been if we had better luck with our health.  If you add in players from last year who could have been brought back and helped us, you get a squad that looks like this:

GK:

Henkka

Fille

Janne

LB:
Antti

Jesper

CB:
Koskima

Lahti

Karsten Smith

Brown

RB:
Keithy

Hoge

DM:
Cheyne

Dafaa

CM:
Kula

Grant Kerr

Pablo

Barsa

RW:
Seba

Corni

LW:
Seabrook

Nganbe Nganbe

ST:

Steven

Jarno

moLASSEs

This is off the top of my head so I may have missed a few guys, but that 22 plus our young guys Miika, Ilary, Artu, Samu and Jontoo give us easily the second best squad in Finland behind HJK.  That squad could easily deal with 6/7 games a month.  We made 48 points this year but with that squad and better luck we could have made 65 like Honka did last year.  Like I said I don’t want to dwell on it, but I want people who haven’t thought about it to realize how close this team was to being the best VPS team in a generation, maybe ever.  In that sense, 4^th place is disappointing.

It’s been a long season, and in a way it doesn’t feel like it’s over.  This year doesn’t have that same satisfaction as we got last year, when we got medals after the last game and partied on the boat coming home.  Instead the year is just over.  Not much fanfare, no records or history being made.  It’s weird because in America we have playoffs so every season has a more climactic finish.  Either you miss the playoffs and there’s that moment of anguish after the last game you had a chance to qualify, or you make the playoffs and lose depressingly or win triumphantly.  Europe is obviously different than that.  I didn’t feel this way the last two years because both times we essentially had a playoff feeling.  Haka had to fight until the very last minute and VPS had a game that felt like a cup final against Jaro last October.  Just the daytime kickoff and full stadium reminded me of like a small country FA Cup final.  I guess it will sink in soon enough that the season’s over (I’ll be in Asia for vacation in 10 days) but it has lacked that finality and that’s a bit strange for me.

I’ve written a lot of words here but haven’t really said much.  Still though that’s all for now.  I’m going to post one more time a bit later this week.  It will be a reflection of how accurate my preseason  predictions were (hint: very accurate, obviously J) and I’m going to post my personal Veikkausliiga XI, or really 18 because I feel no need to be bounded to 11 picks.  Come back later this week to see that!  For those who want a sneak peek into my gift of seeing the future, consider this from my blog post from August.  Keep in mind that we were on a 5 game losing streak when I wrote this:

“ Pretty much all of our last 9 games are winnable, and if we were to win 7 of the last 9 (like we did last year) then we’d end up with the same number of points as last season.  This might sound crazy, but these are games we still have to play: Inter (who have nothing to play for) at home, TPS at home, Honka away, HJK home after they will have won the league and played a Europa League group game, Jaro home.  To win all of those games is too much to ask, but we will feel that we are favorites in all of the games I just listed.  My point is that we are poised to get on a roll similar to how we did last year.  Last year after 24 games we had 32 or 33 points - this year we have 29.  So for all the doomsday fans remember...we’ve been here before.”