The final round of the National Football League will be played on Friday, October 18. follows the events on its channels from 18:00. The match will be between HJK and Åland United.
An era in domestic football ends when Heidi Kivelä (formerly Pihlaja) will leave his position at Pallloliito at the turn of the year.
Kivelä started in the new team, as development manager of women’s football, in June 2019 and had time to work for the association for five and a half years. He says that he will leave his home with a longing.
– It is not about any single event, but the result of long consideration. Five and a half years is a relatively long time. I see that now was a good moment to get some new energy and wind for the development of girls’ and women’s football and the development of the women’s premier league.
– I have studied social psychology in addition to work, and I had a strong desire to be able to use these skills in practice as well, Kivelä commented to Urheilu.
When Kivelä started his new laundry, he literally started all over again.
– I got the laptop and sat down at the table. I was wished well, that you will then start creating. There was practically nothing, Kivelä laughs.
He founded a strategy group whose task was to consider how the women’s main series could be developed.
– We set out to renew the entire brand, because we found that the Women’s League at the time did not serve the purposes, willpower and values that we wanted to represent and bring out.
As the league’s development director, he also got to do things at the grassroots level. When you couldn’t count on the delivery of the mails, during pride week he pedaled his bike through the clubs in the capital region and took rainbow-colored shoelaces to the teams, five hundred of which had been ordered for the office.
In the 50th anniversary of the main series, a campaign was organized in which hijabs were donated to all girls in need.
– Our theme was that the game is open to everyone, but at the same time we knew that it wasn’t actually for everyone. It’s about small gestures, which nevertheless have a big meaning.
The capture received international attention, including from CNN and the Guardian – as did the name change of the main series at the time. Since then, for example, the women’s ice hockey league has also decided to drop the suffix “woman” from its name. The league is now known as the Aurora League.
– My vision has always been that there is only one football that women and men play. Previously, there was a strong division into football and women’s football. Here we still have work to do in Finland and it is very important to continue it.
A new entity
And what does Kivelä think about the state of the National League he has built?
According to the strategy published at the end of 2019, the goal of the reformed league was to head towards modern top sport in 2023. This season has shown that it is not there yet.
– I have been wrestling with license and circumstances issues for these five years. There are probably two different schools of thought here. Some think that it should be possible to play the main series almost anywhere and under any conditions, and exceptions will then be granted.
– Others think that there must be a certain level of requirements for, for example, what the requirements should be at the major league level, for example regarding stadiums. I personally represent the latter school. We cannot give out exemptions every year, Kivelä states.
Kivelä is happy about the complete renewal of the series, which will take effect from next season. At the end of this season, three teams will be relegated from the national league to the First.
Starting next season, the National League and Ykkönen will form the National League, with eight teams playing in the league and ten in Ykkönen.
Kivelä believes that the change will develop the pace of the league closer to international intensity.
– I believe that the reform offers more and more clubs the opportunity to develop their own operations and creates an even more interesting commercial product from top women’s football.
“Role models are just as important as top players”
Sports expert Hanna Ruohomaa describes Kivelä’s work for Finnish women’s football as enormous.
– It is difficult to describe in words how much he has accomplished. Heidi was already a hard worker when she was playing, and that didn’t change when she moved to off-field jobs with soccer.
– Thanks to Heidi, the media visibility of the series has improved significantly. The dust of the old Women’s League has been well shaken off, Ruohomaa starts.
Ruohomaa describes that the brand renewal of the series has brought a certain pride to the operation.
– Heidi has made it easier to be proud of playing in the women’s main league in Finland. Many things Heidi organized have also gone down in the history books: for example, women were allowed to build the new Olympic Stadium.
– It is really important that women are also seen in such leading roles and positions. I think they are as important role models in football as the top players.
Kivelä is moving beyond sports to the development of organizations and work communities – the same topics that he used to jump into the sports side. However, he does not intend to leave football and sports completely.
– I don’t have a very clear picture: as an expert, in a position of trust or even as a coach. Football is still absolutely important to me, and I want to spend my free time with it as well, comments Kivelä.
And would you be interested in a position as the first female chairman of the board of the Finnish Football Federation?
Kivelä laughs.
– We’re not going to paint it yet.
The final round of the National Football League will be played on Friday, October 18. follows the events on its channels from 18:00. The match will be between HJK and Åland United. Before the match, the situation in the National League is discussed in the studio, with development manager Minna Kauppinen (born Meriluoto) as a guest.