Finnish legend Mika Kohonen is involved in media speculation as the next head coach of the Swedish men’s floorball team.
The Men’s World Floorball Championships will be held in Malmö, Sweden, from 7 to 15. december shows all matches in Finland on its channels. The broadcast of the match between Finland and Sweden starts on Tuesday, December 10 on TV2 at 19:45.
In front of the home crowd in Malmö, Sweden is looking for its third consecutive floorball men’s world championship.
In the matches of the first group of the weekend, the competition host reached double figures in both, when first Slovakia fell 12–4 and a day later Latvia 13–2.
However, the competition host’s preparation has been overshadowed by the coach’s commotion, when The Swedish Floorball Association announced in mid-Novemberthat successful duo Thomas Brottman and Niklas Nordén can step down from the position of head coach after the World Cup home games.
The decision – or rather the union’s reasoning – made the players angry.
– I’m ashamed to play this sport, Niklas Ramirez gusted and announced his retirement from the national team after the World Cup.
The removal of players is primarily related to the reasons of the Swedish Floorball Association: the association justified its decision by wanting to offer more and more people the opportunity to become part of the national team’s activities.
– Our sport has worked hard to be accepted, and then there are exits like this. I see a problem if even national team activities are not considered elite sports, Robin Nilsberth thundered to SVT.
Niklas Nordén added water to the mill by explaining how the coaching duo could not come up with any proper justifications for the decision. According to Nordén, the decision came completely out of the blue, even though the head coaches had hoped that the decision on the head coach of the men’s national team would be made and announced before the Games.
We against them
This is by no means the first time that the coaching duo, and Nordén in particular, has caused confusion.
Brottman accused Finland of breaking the gentlemen’s agreement of the four biggest floorball countrieswhen the team gathered at the World Cup camp at the beginning of November on the weekend scheduled for the international games of the International Floorball Association IFF.
– This has been part of their operations before. The purpose is to arouse contradiction and energize oneself with it, Urheilu’s expert Perttu Kytöhonka comment.
– Now that they are the best in the world and there is no resistance on the field, let’s look for it elsewhere. There has been an attempt to create a certain kind of non-Swedish geek culture, an us-versus-others spirit, another expert Toni Lötjönen comp.
Kytöhonka and Lötjönen don’t believe the Swedish coaches’ explanation that the decision has come to them out of the blue.
– The reasons in the announcement were really quite non-existent. It could be concluded that there are things on the union’s side that they can’t say out loud yet. The coaching duo, on the other hand, know how to use it to their advantage and seem to have got the Swedish floorball team on their side quite well, Kytöhonka sees.
There has been an uproar in the media even during the opening weekend of the Games, and Nordén has asked the union for peace of mind for the team during the Games. He admitted on Monday in an interview with Urheilu that the commotion has also affected the team.
– I have worked all my life for floorball to grow as big as possible and become as important as possible. Some of the players have said that they refuse to play in the national team, but it’s not just about that (changing the coach), but about top sports and national team activities in general.
– The national team is not just something that exists. I also wouldn’t want to be part of a national team that doesn’t aim for the world championship or that doesn’t have high goals for its activities, Nordén commented.
Finnish name optional
After the announcement, speculation about the next head coach started. The name of the Finnish coach has also come to the fore: a sport legend who won four World Cup golds and was chosen as the world’s best player five times Mika Kohonen has coached Uppsala’s Storvreta twice now to Swedish champion.
SVT expert Mattias Samuelsson hoped seeing Kohonen in the tasklike many who responded to Innebandymagazinet’s survey Even the coaches of the Swedish major leagues.
– In addition to Kohonen, (the former head coach of Switzerland) has come to the fore by David Jansson name, but knowing Swedes, they can pull a really unknown name out of a hat. And we will probably also see a Swedish-divided head coach, Lötjönen acknowledges.
Kytöhonka also sees Kohonen as an excellent alternative.
– He has made his actual career in Sweden and lived here for a large part of his life. He is a legend here, even bigger than Finland. There is certainly no problem with being Finnish.