Helmarit will face Romania in the Nations League on Thursday, November 30. and Slovakia on Tuesday 5.12. will show both matches, the live broadcast of the Romania home match starts on TV2 and Areena at 18:25.
A star defender who has been among the best in the Finnish women’s national football team for years Natalia Kuikka has represented the Portland Thorns in the North American women’s professional soccer league for the last three years. The contract of the 27-year-old Finn, who won the NWSL series championship with the club last year, ended this season.
However, the Helmarit defender is in demand. Kuikka, who has been among the best in the series in recent years, has held negotiations about his future with several different teams.
– I have visited and held negotiations with several teams. It’s still a bit difficult to say where it will end up, but we are thinking about it here. Let’s see where we go after this national team camp, Kuikka tells Urheilu while sitting on a bench in a hotel in Turku.
Kuikka is with Helmarien in the deciding matches of the Nations League this week. In Finland’s shirt, he has been seen several times in the top team’s plot, while in the club team he has played as a fullback. Versatility is indeed a bargaining chip.
– Sometimes jumping between roles is also difficult, depending on the tactics of course. There have been different games in the Yankees as well, because my role there has been clearly more attacking. It doesn’t change that much when you’ve played fut all your life. However, it’s only good that I can play several roles, he himself evaluates.
Would Kuikka like to continue in the United States or return to Europe and play in the top leagues of the old continent?
– Well, I can’t say yet. There have been inquiries from both Europe and the United States. I need to see how my own life adapts to what I want most at the moment. It’s still hard to say definitively, Kuikka spins.
In North America, you can also get by with just physics alone
The NWSL has been considered one of the best women’s soccer leagues in the world. Kuikka has been among the best in the series for a couple of years now. The defender, who is skilled on the ball, already knows after three seasons what kind of difference between North American and European football there is at the club level. Although he hasn’t played in Europe for a while.
– I think the US series is really about counter-attacking counter-attacking counter-attacking. It’s really strong situational change play with little reaction time, Kuikka describes.
Here, a couple of the legalities of American sports stand out: the investment in the players’ superior athleticism and one-on-one playing.
– The players who play there are especially very athletic. Not everyone would necessarily be able to do well in Europe at the footballing level, but then they are such hard athletes that they can do really well at this level. It feels like every game in the United States is a constant one-on-one situation and running, that the game never gives you a chance to catch your breath, Kuikka opens.
– In Europe, on the other hand, we are a little better tactically, we know how to hold the ball and we think about the best way to score. And you don’t always just hang around vertically on the field. That way, the game sometimes has some kind of break, and not just running from one end to the other.
This is where you can use a Finnish game term such as “koohottaning”. Isn’t that “counterattack counterattack counterattack counterattack” kind of exaggeration?
– Well, a little yes. Well, it is. I remember that my first year in the US. I was so out of it after that, I was never used to that before. Before that, there was nothing similar in Sweden. You could keep the ball there and it felt like there was a little more time. Then when I went there, I felt that as soon as I got the ball at my feet, I immediately had someone on my skin.
Men’s MLS shares a style of play
Kuikka himself also mentions that a similar way of playing and culture is also in force in the other North American football league.
Over the years, the North American men’s professional league MLS has gained a reputation as a series where tactics and the players’ personal skills with the ball play a lesser role, and the players’ ability to run hard and fight for the ball builds the way the teams play.
– In my opinion, the men’s series is quite similar there. At times, many of the players playing there are individual athletes, he says about the men’s MLS series.
Among other things, a Finnish goal stick Teemu Pukki and the Argentinian legend Lionel Messi moved to MLS this year. A total of five Finns play in the series.
Read more: This is the series favored by the Huuhkajat players, where Messi will also move to – an expert who played in MLS refutes claims of a cooling series
The series has often been described as a “cooling series” because of the former European stars its clubs have acquired.
– The cooling doesn’t even reflect the football that is played in the series. Many of the players are really athletic and in the series we want to play fast-paced football, let’s go from end to end. From the player’s point of view, it’s the worst league to go to cool off in, described Urheilu’s expert who played for DC United in the series in the summer of 2015-2016 Markus Halsti.
Finland will ensure the victory of its group in the Nations League and promotion to the highest level, the A-league, if it wins against Romania today.
The live broadcast of the Romania home match starts on TV2 and Areena at 18:25. follows the events moment by moment on its website.