IFK Mariehamn made Finnish football history on Sunday afternoon, when they took a 2-1 victory over Ilves to win the Veikkausliiga championship. The Ålanders beat off competition from Finland’s richest club, HJK Helsinki, and last year’s champions SJK, who finished first and second respectively.
It’s IFK’s first-ever Veikkausliiga title, and goes alongside last season’s Finnish Cup trophy in the islanders’ trophy cabinet.
Until last season, IFK had one of the longest-serving coaches in Europe in Pekka Lyyski, who took the reins in 2003. He resigned at the end of the 2015 season to be replaced by Peter Lundberg and Kari Virtanen, who according to many observers have now turned the club into “Finland’s Leicester”, in honour of the surprise champions of last season’s English Premier League.
Bumper crowd
The Wiiklöf Holding Arena - named after local businessman Anders Wiklöf, who helped pay for it - was packed to the rafters for the game with 4,335 people in attendance.
That’s more than a third of the town’s population of some 11,000 people. Any early nerves among the outsized crowd were settled when Swedish player Bobbie Friberg da Cruz set IFK on the road to victory in the very first minute with a header from a corner.
Although they were pegged back via a Tuure Siira equaliser, IFK’s Brazilian Diego Assis scored the winner to complete the win and set the celebrations in motion.
The province is home to just 29,000, and has been in the headlines on mainland Finland recently after Defence Minister Jussi Niinistö said he’d like to reconsider the province’s demilitarised status to ensure it’s defended against possible covert action by Russia.
The province has been demilitarised and autonomous since the 1920s, when great powers decided that the Swedish-speaking province should belong to Finland, but not host any military forces.
Champions League football
That meant residents are not conscripted like men on mainland Finland, have a great degree of autonomy in budget matters, but sports teams tend to play in Finnish leagues.
Now the smallest town in Veikkausliiga has Champions League qualifiers to look forward to next summer. IFK have played in the Europa League twice before, in 2013-14 and 2016-17, losing both times in the first qualifying round.
At the bottom of the table PK-35 Vantaa were relegated and will be replaced by JJK Jyväskylä, who won Ykkönen, the first divison.
Inter Turku, who are now coached by former Ipswich striker Shefki Kuqi, finished in the relegation play-off spot after losing to Kuqi’s former club PK35-Vantaa. They will now play a two-legged tie against crosstown rivals TPS Turku, who were Ykkönen runners-up, to decide the final spot in Veikkausliiga.