The Finnish women’s volleyball team has recently been in quite a bit.
The team currently has no head coach because Nikolas Buser Didn’t want to continue in the job. In the European Championship qualifiers, Finland has only succeeded in reaching one point, and in order to remove the place in the next European Championship, a small miracle would be needed. Also, Finland has no place in the Golden League for the summer, as Portugal won the silver league championship in Tampere after the Golden round.
Chairman of the Finnish Cup Women’s Finals on Sunday Lauri Inna Shed light on where the women’s national team is going at the moment.
-A few “accidents at work” were last year: against Portugal, the final units in the silver league, and against Switzerland and Germany difficult games in the European Championship qualifiers. Should have done better. It’s an honest fact, Inna admitted.
Buser was selected as women’s head coach in January 2023. In 18 matches, Finland won 9 matches.
The Board of the Volleyball Association gathered in connection with the Finnish Cup, which also discussed the women’s national team. The search for a new head coach started on Monday and the application deadline is two weeks. The union is looking for a head coach with a 2+2 year contract. The union already has potential options known, but Inna says she looks at the list of sports director Tapio Kangasniemi With the rest of the month.
– The train goes very determined. My message is that this really won’t be any intermediate space, but now we are starting to invest in this, Inna said.
– Although we have challenging August games against Switzerland and Germany, we start working hard to work for 2027. 2028 Let’s go to the race.
The collection of the national team’s background was started in January. At that time the team’s General Manager was named Ari-Matti Riverwhose job description includes, among other things, working with players, coaches and clubs, and to support the development of girls and women’s flight.
Participation alone is no longer enough
Finnish women have played five times in the European Championships five times, three times in a row, and the team has ranked twice in 12th place. In the previous 2023 European Championships, Finland was fifth in its opening round, winning only the sixth Estonia 3-2.
According to Inna, just participating in the value races is no longer enough.
-I will never accept that we are just somewhere at the 2028 European Championships. There must be the goal of going to the semi -finals and moving forward.
Inna reminded that Finland currently has 12 top players and promising young players on the national team. Both under-20s and under-18 teams played last summer at the European Championships.
– The message is now that women are invested. That result does not come a year, it does not come in two, but by no means allowed to give the female volleyball the message that there would be some time of breath, Inna said.
– Then we would deceive our own promise. Now we are moving forward.
Sports Expert Riikka Lehtonen agrees with Lauri Inna. It was important for Finland to get to the European Championships at first, but now that it has been there several times, we have to look ahead.
– This is how it has to go that not satisfying. Let’s go all the time let’s move on. Even the players want to play abroad, and more and more have gone there. This will rise, Lehtonen said.
Lehtonen considers the goal of Ina to be realistic. He reminds players that they want to improve their performance all the time, but at the same time the level of the world is also improving. Lehtonen thinks it is important to come up with how to respond to it.
“Now can be invested”
One of the volleyball association’s investments that has produced results in recent years has been the men’s national team. The World Global Ball Football World Cup has not been seen very often, but next fall, Finland will play in the Men’s Volleyball World Cup in the Philippines.
“This is a great opportunity, even though it is known that we are in a very freezing group,” Inna said.
– We’re going to play top games, that’s sure. Olli (head coach Kingdom)) has shown its coaching ability and we have hard material coming to the moms. The target must be high.
A few years ago, the Volleyball Association’s finances were badly overwhelmed, but the movement and Kulukuri have helped. Now the union is doing about half a million positive results.
“For four years, we have done a good result, and now we can invest,” Inna said, but you couldn’t tell you what the money will be spent in the future.
– I look forward to “Tasen” (Kangasniemi) and Karrin (managing director Virtanen) Openings. We have been moderate, but it does become work on clubs and juniors. It will also be important to solve the issues of women, top sports and national teams.