The Finnish women’s national football team’s opening match of the European Championship qualifiers against Norway was gloomy for Finns.
Norway defeated Helmarit 4–0, and Finland did not show much of what it can do at its best in the game.
Finland’s head coach Marko Saloranta summed up his knowledge very nicely in the post-match interview.
– The result is terrible, because we believed that we would be able to take points from this match right away. This result causes physical pain. This is such a big disappointment for all of us, Saloranta commented to Urheilu in the sleet at the Ullevaal stadium.
Looking ahead, Norway was the early favorite for the match, but showed it even stronger in the game itself. Even though the home team lacked star players, it didn’t leave the Helmarei any chance of winning. In the beginning, Finland kept up well with its opponent, but two goals in the opening period let the home team free.
– Similar two centering goals, where we still had the upper hand in the box. The quality with which those were vaccinated had to be frozen, Saloranta described.
Watch the entire interview with Saloranta in the video below.
Opening the game slowed down
Urheilu’s football expert Hanna Ruohomaa also saw that Finland played the first twenty minutes of the match well. Norway fumbled at the beginning and Finland was able to keep the ball.
Especially the playmaking in the attack and trying to build through the center grew into problems.
– Finland’s most dangerous situations arose at the beginning of the game, after which it was quite unarmed. Right from the start, it was clear that structuring the attacks presented a lot of challenges for the Helmarii, he sums up.
The Norwegian press also caused a headache for Finland in the quarterbacking. Ruohomaa says that both the success of Norway’s press and Finland’s poor opening of the game led to possession of the ball.
– Finland forced their opening game. Helmarit got the ball past the pressing attackers Olga Ahtinen and Eveliina Summanen, who were in the game a lot on the ball. However, it did not at all extend to the areas where Finland could have been dangerous. If opening the game doesn’t create a threat, I think it’s a failure.
Defensively, Ruohomaa would have especially needed toughness and dueling ability to defend in front of their own goal. The captain also brought up the same point in the interviews Tinja-Riikka Korpela and midfielder Ria Öling.
– There were some nasty and unlucky bounces in the goals, but that’s already a problem if the Norwegian attackers got to the shooting positions facing the goal, and they weren’t shaken at all. At that point, you have already failed, Ruohomaa points out.
The Finnish defense left the Norwegians free shooting space in the 1–0 and 3–0 goals. See the goals below.
Finland’s all-time goalscorer was out of the game
In the attacking direction, one of the players wandered quite outside the game. Finland’s best goal scorer of all time, living off vertical runs Linda Sällström did not get to use its strengths against Norway. Sällström, who played 85 minutes in the match, was taken out of the game by the Norwegians’ defensive style.
– Already at the beginning of the match, it was noticed that there is no space for him to run behind the line. In one example situation, Norway’s defensive line ran as if running away from Finland’s first offensive line, that there was no space behind the line.
Made an excellent result in Real Sociedad in Spain San Francisco didn’t get to the field until the last minutes of the match. In Ruohomaa’s opinion, Franssi, who is used to playing in front of the defenders, could have brought a different option to the attacking game.
– When Sällström was unable to create a threat, the responsibility shifted a lot Talk to Rantala. He then had to get the ball really deep, which created big gaps in the attack. Even with that, no progress was made to attack.
– That’s why I thought during the match that Franssi would have been a good player to bring a scoring threat by playing in front of the line.
“It can’t be that there are only two ways to attack”
Finland will next face Italy in Helsinki next week on Tuesday in the EC qualifiers. According to Ruohomaa, it is necessary to find alternatives to the attack, if Helmarit wants to challenge the ground.
– There have to be variations on that. It cannot be that Finland only has two ways to attack: Katariina Kosola through challenges from the wing or try to break through the middle and aim for long shots.
Ruohomaa emphasizes that Finland was able to keep the ball with quality in its own half. Now the same should be transferred to the last third of the field in attack.
– It is already fixable that Finland gets more players in the opponent’s penalty area. Now, when there were challenges from Kosola’s side, for example, Jutta Rantala had to fall so low to build the game that there were no players there. When Finland got three players in the box, Norway already had five players there.
Finland returns from Norway to face tough challenges. The Italy match will be played at the Töölö football stadium on Tuesday evening, starting at 19:15.