The owls reset Montenegro in style at the Olympic Stadium. Sport’s experts Miika Nuutinen and Pekka Lagerblom bought the most important things for the match.
The Finnish men’s national football team beat 2–0 at the Olympic Stadium in Montenegro Joel Pohjanpalon with paint. Sports Experts Miika Nuutinen and Pekka Lagerblom raised three essentials from the sunny summer evening match.
1) A work of football art
The owl plane started slowly on Tuesday night, but it was worth the wait. Pohjanpalo’s 1–0 goal, which was the end result of a great supply chain, was one of the finest team game performances seen in the history of Huuhkajö.
– That was a kind of football artwork. Nuutinen glows with the finest goals that the Owners have ever done.
Attacking on the wings was the choice for free kick, and they were successfully passing the ball from the wing into the middle to get them on. 14 passes later the game was in the end. A total of eight players had time to touch the ball during the attack.
According to Lagerblom and Nuutinen, a significant change in Finland’s gaming was the lifting of the top players at the opening stage. It was from this situation that Finland was able to play the ball into Montenegro’s left-wing top. Richard Jensen through.
– The biggest thing was that the ball started to move faster with fewer touches, and through that Finland was able to attack large spaces. The right input combinations and timings produced a textbook-like goal, Lagerblom says.
– Already a couple of minutes earlier, Jensen was bolder upwards and formed a clear upward route for Finland, which could be used in the attack leading to the goal and thereby operated with the ball next to the Montenegrin block, Nuutinen adds.
The second hit of the Owls was also great. The acrobatic finishing of Pohjanpalo caused the stadium to go wild for a reason.
2) Montenegro Complete resistance to the strengths of the Northern Fire
Pohjanpalo, who hit 16 goals in the Turkish league last season, sat against Bosnia-Herzegovina on Saturday to the surprise of many on the bench, but returned to the opening against Montenegro. The striker thanked and finished with two great goals.
According to experts, Montenegro, which played in the low bloc, was a complete opponent of the strengths of the Northern Fire.
– Pohjanpalo is always the target player on the field. When he is fed the ball into the box, he always brings the threat to score a goal. The tail can be used as if it were a feed wall. As we saw today, Pohjanpalo also brings one more weapon to Finland in special situations, Nuutinen says.
In addition to Saturday’s match, Pohjanpalo started from the bench in the decisive World Cup qualifiers against Bosnia and France last autumn. Bosnia is a good example of a team against which the head coach Markku Kanerva has longed for different traits from another attacker.
– Compared to Montenegro, Bosnia is a more playful team, against which Huuhkaji had more room to attack larger spaces. More agile combo players than Northern Ireland may have been wanted for these games, Lagerblom says.
Nuutinen sees that in the case of Pohjanpalo, the type of defense plan that Finland uses for matches also plays a big role.
– He is not a player who can bring a lot of added value to Finland, for example when pressing. If Finland has to defend a lot in the bloc, the player at the forefront with Pohjanpalo will have to work in front of it as well, Nuutinen opens.
Throughout his career, Pohjanpalo has been known for its efficiency. The great finish of the Turkish league also continued in style in the national team shirt. Now it’s hard to oust him from the opening.
– Is it “Rive” at least much harder at the moment. They play around in the opening line-up, Nuutinen says.
3) The emergence of new players
In the opening lineup, two players were seen for the first time in a competitive match on Tuesday. In the middle Lucas Lingman played hard and focused on Pohjanpalo’s second hit from the free kick. In recent years, owls have been very rare in special situations.
Lingman’s presentation also proved that Finland now has one new name in the list of future responsible players when it comes to midfield players.
– It’s been thought that Rasmus Schüller is invaluable to Finland and certainly will be when the defense is emphasized. Lingman showed his ability to move the ball well and glued together in the middle of the attack, when Finland holds a lot of the ball. This allows Glen Kamara to go a little freer. Excellent performance from Lingman, Nuutinen praised.
Lagerblom was pleased to play Richard Jensen, the top player who played the first A-match. He showed promising signs in the opening game and played an important role in the winning goal. Head coach Kanerva also deservedly praised Jensen in an interview with Sport after the match.
– He sat in Huuhkaji as a very left-footed topper and was active in both directions. Nice to see the new guys come to the field without prejudice, Lagerblom says.
Of the Finnish players in two matches, only the goalkeepers and field players have been left without any playing time. Miro Tenho, Lassi Lappalainen and Mikael Soisalo.
– It’s a big thing for the unity of the team, but also because all the players are 100% inside this process, which is being taken forward, Nuutinen says.
The owl matches will continue on Saturday in Bucharest against Romania. The match can be watched live on TV2 and Arena from 9 pm.