The Huhkaji defender wanted to apologize to the Finnish people – Lukas Hradecky can’t remember a worse performance: “Catastrophe failure”

Huuhkajat lost an important EC qualifying match in Ljubljana to Slovenia 0–3. The European Championship place is no longer in Finland’s own hands.

The head coach Markku Kanerva you could expect that the Finnish men’s national football team will have a sweaty job in Ljubljana, but the opposing team Slovenia turned out to be a really difficult opponent. Huuhkajat lost the extremely important EC qualifying match 0–3.

– Bad first period, and we didn’t reach our level. In the second episode, a facelift. We were able to create a threat and few scoring chances. Goals are easier to concede when the opposition is simply better. This cheers us all up, Kanerva said disappointedly.

The home team immunized Finland from mistakes, while the Huuhkajat were not allowed to create sufficiently dangerous situations. Sports expert Toni Koskela stated at halftime that he has not seen “such a bad Finland in a long time”.

The goalkeeper was on the same lines Lukas Hradecky, who described Finland’s performance as “the worst in human memory”. The experienced captain could not name the reason for Finland’s underperformance.

– This was a collective catastrophic failure. Especially when it comes to a place like this, it was one of the biggest games in Finnish history and we played so naively.

A hard blow to EC dreams

The loss is a bad blow to Finland’s European Championship dreams, because now access to next summer’s European Championship final tournament in Germany is no longer completely in the Huuhkajie’s own hands. Now Denmark and Slovenia are locked in the two direct competition places in the initial group H. Denmark will face Kazakhstan late this evening, which in turn is tied with Finland, which is third in the group.

Finland’s only appearance in the men’s EC final tournament is in the summer of 2021.

– The situation is now in itself difficult, because it is no longer in one’s own hands. All you can do is win the next three games. There is enough of a challenge in that. Hope still lives, Kanerva said.

It was particularly difficult for Huuhkaj to hold on, having scored two goals in the opening period Benjamin Sesko. The match had been played for a quarter of an hour, when Leo Vaisänen poured Andraz Sporar in the penalty area, after which Šeško shot from the spot into the lower left corner. Lukas Hradecky guessed correctly, but did not have time to stop the accurate shot.

Moments later, Šeško hurt his head, but neither the bloody wound nor the “cap” that protected it slowed him down. The Slovenian hero ran through and completed the 2-0 readings at less than half an hour.

The Finnish topper who arrived at the interview point with his head down Robert Ivanov blamed himself for the goals in the opening period.

– I want to apologize to all of Finland for my performance today. I feel that the first two goals were directly due to my personal mistakes. All I can say is that we learn from these. Of course, it’s sad that such mistakes were made in such a place, Ivanov said.

Joel Pohjanpalon and By Daniel Håkans the entrance to the second half stimulated Finland’s attacking game, but the much-needed narrowing goal did not come. Instead, Slovenia managed to put the final nail in Finland’s coffin in extra time. Erik Janza scored a 3–0 final score after a corner kick.