When you take into account football’s global competition, the Bundesliga’s institutional status and Lukas Hradecky’s performances, we have the best Finnish team sport of all time, writes Pekka Holopainen.
Pekka Holopainen Sports journalist
18:00•Updated 18:05
Worked as press manager of the national football team since 1996 Timo Walden knew last October 17 at the Olympic Stadium that soon not many hands would go up when he asked the players to tell the media how the Huuhkajat managed to lose to Kazakhstan.
The guests’ winning goal had left the captain, the star goalkeeper, stinging Lukas Hradeckya violently, but he immediately raised his hand.
– Tells everything about him, Walden recalls.
In different moods
Almost to the day, seven months later, the referee decides the Bundesliga match between Bayer 04 Leverkusen and FC Augsburg, after which visiting captain Hradecky gets to express his feelings and quench his thirst in a very different atmosphere than in October in Helsinki.
Statistics are statistics, but no team in the history of the Bundesliga has lost a 10-point series lead during the nine final rounds. Nothing in the look of the game and in the action suggests that Leverkusen would begin to shake in front of their historic opportunity, i.e. their first championship.
On May 18, Hradecky will become the first Finnish footballer to win the championship of a major European league – England, Germany, Spain, Italy, France – in such a big role and even as a foreign captain. Werder Bremen Pekka from Lagerblom it succeeded in a much more modest role in 2003–2004.
And Germany’s world-famous goalkeeping traditions do not make Hradecky’s work any less.
Great trauma
Bayer Leverkusen is a club that is associated with a great trauma 22 years ago, when the championships that seemed almost within reach, one by one, slipped out of hand in the league, the Cup and the Champions League. The grim memory will soon fly towards oblivion along the Rhine that cuts through the city.
When Hradecky, who always remembers his background and starting point, raises the “Meisterschale” or championship plate towards the spring sky, it is appropriate to list what kind of players in the pharmaceutical club have tried this feat in the past: Toni Kroos, Michael Ballack, Ze Roberto, Paulo Sergio, Rudi Völler, Probably Havertz, Oliver Neuville, Jens Nowotny, Bernd Schuster, Lucio, Bernd Schneider, Arturo Vidal – and sure sami Hyypiäwho tried to become the champion of Germany both as an experienced player and as an inexperienced head coach.
The litany only scratches the surface, but it does tell the fans of the sport the essentials.
A few key tackles
16 balls have been scored behind Hradecky in 23 league matches, which is five less than advanced statistics should have shown. There is a big explanation for why Bayern Munich, which has won 11 championships in a row, is very soon going to straighten its back from the point of the league championship. Out of a total of 65 saves, Hradecky modestly counts only a few as directly worth series points.
He is a great example of an athlete who proves that the head-squeezing hoop and 24/7 mentality of elite sports rarely produces the best results.
During the approximately 5.5-year broadcast history of the Urheiluhullut radio program, there was never as much laughter as during Hradecky’s remote visit on October 30, 2023. How can you not like a man whose comment on his own team’s current goal average (about three) is like this?
– Damn good! I can always let two easy ones!
Next match: Hoffenheim–Leverkusen 2–3, another comeback goal against Hradecky.
Lots of demands
The captain’s position in a league and club of this size is not a free lunch, but the captain is subject to a lot of demands from the club management, coaching management, other players, fans, sponsors, media and the club’s own communication. A problem for many, not Hradecky.
If and when Hradecky and Leverkusen get the job done, all credit to all Finnish team athletes who have won big things.
However, the best Finnish team sports performance of all time is Runosmäki’s verbal Bundesliga season 2023–2024.
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