RE: Around the Leagues #2 - Finnish Veikkausliiga (Too busy driving like maniacs to bother with their balls!)
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lolol--- Malfoy lookalike :D @fredrikaa (He is in Norway btw) and I am pretty sure @eveuncovered still gets her kit off on occasion.
I don't follow football at all, and Finnish Football even less, but in the coming years it is likely to grow internationally. Finalnd is an expensive country and playing pretty much any sport comes with costs froma a young age. As you probably realize, hockey dominates and requires a similar body type to Football, so the pool of players is small (plus the country is anyway). However, the cost of hockey keeps going up and is squeezing many kids out of the junior leagues and into football instead, as it is far cheaper for both equipment, insurance, coaches and of course, it doesn't require renting ice time from a rink. The next decade will likely be more formational, but I think in the coming years, more quality players will be pushed out from Finland.
Thanks for the corrections ! At least I was right about you being an immigrant lol ;-)
You're spot on about the hockey. As I was reading up, from a participation point if view as opposed to a spectator point of view, football has rocketed in popularity to the top of the sporting charts , especially amongst the young .
Hockey still holds up well as a spectator sport though.
As I mentioned in jest in the Norwegian post, there is also no money in the game for the pros hence their desire to move to the more affluent leagues. The figure I came across was from 2014 when the average annual salary for a pro player in Finland was just 28k Euros, that's below the weekly average for a Premiership player.
I was just a little surprised that with such a well established grass roots game, there weren't more top players leaving and I guess the national team will only become stronger in the future .
Girls game is particularly progressing well there.
Best wishes to you and the family, thanks for dropping by and have a great weekend :-)