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 Finland’s quarter-final against Norway starts on Friday the 13th at 8 p.m.
The Finnish men’s floorball team succeeded in a historic trick on Tuesday evening, when Sweden fell 5-2 in Malmö. Never before had Sweden lost a match in the men’s World Cup at home.
The historic performance was received coolly in the Finnish camp, which had a well-deserved day off on Wednesday.
– Of course it’s a tough thing, but I think our gang has always had the feeling that there is nothing miraculous about this. Internal self-confidence has been strong all along. Of course we will win this, Aaro Astala comment.
Selected as the best player of the Sweden match Miska Mäkinen was on the same lines.
– After the slightly tighter preliminary series matches, it was certainly a confidence boost for everyone, at least, that we were able to knock down Sweden with a good performance, but I don’t see anything bigger than that here. We have always known that we can topple Sweden at any time, Mäkinen nodded.
Emotions ran high in the match against Sweden, especially in the final set, and the Swedes fell into stupid freezes. After the match, the Swedes criticized the line of referees.
Mäkinen did not buy the Swedes’ criticism.
– It’s only good that we intervene in such after-the-fact games and yelling, they can very well be given cake. On the other hand, we probably didn’t get a single free kick in the last set, so I think the line turned in Sweden’s favor when they were down.
– It is quite normal that when Sweden loses, it goes behind someone other than its own performance. We don’t pay attention to it.
The Swedes boasted in the media before the match that they had learned at least one curse word beginning with v in Finnish.
A self-confessed poor English speaker Sakarias Ulriksson regretted the lack of a common language for Expressen, but claimed that Finnish gamblers also avoid speaking English.
– They run around and just shout f*ttu. That’s what everyone does! Ulriksson claimed.
Mäki’s claim is laughable.
– Well, probably in the heat of the moment, he sometimes says what the spit brings to his mouth, and I’m sure it goes like this for many people. It may be that sometimes there are swear words flying around.
Level up
Finland’s Saturday opener against Latvia was even named as the worst World Cup match in Finland’s history. In the end, the narrow victory came out with a score of 4–3.
On Sunday, Slovakia fell 7–1, but at least ‘s experts were not convinced by the performance.
On Tuesday, however, a different kind of Finland was seen in the Malmö Arena. According to Aaro Astala, the background of the team’s performance was a turning point with the coaching staff.
– Self-confidence was sharpened there. We have sufficient skill level and fitness. Everything starts from inside the head.
– There was a certain kind of anger among many people, when the first two matches had gone quite poorly. We were then able to unload it in the best possible place for the big arena.
According to Miska Mäkinen, who is playing in the first World Cup tournament of his career, there is still better to come.
– We have had a good pitch and I feel that the performance has been positive, like the whole team. I believe the best games are yet to come.
A common past
Aaro Astalan and Otto Lehkosuo the connection has been talked about a lot in public as well. The cousins told Helsingin Sanomat that they are also best friends and that they grew up in Pakila, representing the local club Pakilan Visa.
In addition to Astala and Lehkosuo, the PakVi past can also be found in Mäkisi.
Mäkinen started his floorball journey at Tiikkurila Tiikerei, but when he was a little over ten years old, he moved to Pakilan Visa, which had a very tough team in the age group of those born in 1996.
– Miska was always our worst opponent when we played against the Tigers! I was a little nervous at first when he arrived in the team, because I only knew him from the playing fields. But he was the same boisterous self as he is today, Astala, who was the captain of the team, recalls with a laugh.
Mäkinen, who previously played as a forward, was the best scorer of his junior team. No one wanted to keep up with the fast and skilled attacker, so Astala was happy that Mäkinen moved to their side.
But how on earth could so many skilled players from a small club in Helsinki make it to the national team?
– I don’t know if there was a strong yard game culture in Pakila. We played a lot of yard games with our gang members and it slowly started to spin. The coaching was also very close to what the boys needed, Astala recalls.
Astala and Lehkosuo lived in the same apartment building, and often the games took place in their yard.
– It had good asphalt, garage walls that you could bounce off of and a mailbox that blocked a bit. The conditions were good, we played there for many hours and then the groups shouted from the door to eat.
– Quite often we played until dark, so long that we could no longer see the ball, Astala said.
Mäkinen also got to participate in yard games, but only relatively late, on the threshold of adulthood.
– I didn’t even have a piece in those games! The guys had been throwing balls through the wall. “Ode” (Lehkosuo) swatted any kind of ball out of the air. They had home field advantage!
Even after PakVi’s team disbanded, the connection has remained: both Mäkinen and Astala ended up at Mäkelänrinte sports high school, joined the army at the same time, and from there went to Westend Indians’ training together.
These days, the two see each other less often: Mäkinen moved to Switzerland for this season to join FB Köniz, while Astala represents the Oilers from Espoo.
In the national team, however, it’s nice to get together with an old familiar group of friends: free time is spent at least playing ping pong and poker.
They have nothing but good things to say about each other.
– Aaro is the nicest person in the world. He’s always a friend. Such a dream son-in-law. I bet that anyone who knows Aaro at all has nothing bad to say about him. A really warm, funny and loving person, Mäkinen begins.
– The same could be repeated for Miska, he is one of the most glowing personalities. He always has a twinkle in his eye and brings really good energy to the team. A super nice person who always helps and with whom you can talk about anything, the story never ends.
Astala and Mäkinen have experienced a lot together both on the sports field and in their free time. Many victories and championships have also been celebrated together, but there is one more thing both of them are tired of: World Cup gold.
– The goals are in the coming weekend, there’s no point in denying that, Astala sums up.