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M I L E S T o N E<br />
The Glamour of<br />
Football<br />
The UEFA Champions League qual-<br />
ifying round in 1998 pitted HJK<br />
against Yerevan with just two weeks’<br />
noti<strong>ce</strong>, and in many ways that trip<br />
to Armenia has stayed in my memory. There were no direct<br />
scheduled flights, and the tight calendar meant that in the end<br />
we had to organise a privately chartered plane from Tallinn,<br />
then used by Estonia’s President, Lennart Meri.<br />
You might have thought the aircraft would have met states-<br />
manlike standards but it turned out to be such a shabby pro-<br />
peller plane that Finnish airports refused it permission to<br />
land. So we began our journey to Yerevan by ferry across the<br />
Gulf of Finland to Estonia.<br />
The game was very important, but we didn’t really know<br />
what to expect, so we even took along our own food and<br />
drink. Although we travel almost a hundred days a year, this<br />
cramped, windowless aircraft was perhaps the scariest expe-<br />
rien<strong>ce</strong> we had ever had, and one of our players with a fear of<br />
flying had to be given a sleeping drug.<br />
At the end of the millennium Armenia might have been<br />
poor but they loved their football. FC Yerevan fans were pas-<br />
sionate and home team supporters soon laid siege to our ho-<br />
tel, yelling long into the night and hurling stones at the win-<br />
dows. I was still quite a young lad, unused to the threats of<br />
football fans.<br />
Even the local stadium was in danger of collapsing but<br />
the game went well for us. We won 0–3. This <strong>vi</strong>tal <strong>vi</strong>ctory in<br />
difficult circumstan<strong>ce</strong>s meant that HJK was the first Finn-<br />
ish team to qualify for the 1998–1999 Champions League.<br />
The return trip was as eventful as the journey out. Fanci-<br />
ful documentation charges delayed our departure, with our<br />
aircraft captain and an airport official finally striking a deal.<br />
38 V I A HELSINKI<br />
MAArIT SEELING PHOTO SUSA jUNNoLA<br />
But we had to wait for four hours in an aeroplane with no<br />
air-conditioning. As the temperature rose our shirts were the<br />
first to come off. By the time it had got to about 50 Celsius<br />
in the cabin we were all in our underpants. Our delay also<br />
ob<strong>vi</strong>ously meant that we missed our onward connections to<br />
Finland, and we had to spend part of the night at the airport.<br />
The Champions League rounds had gone well, which<br />
boosted our status as players. When I got home after that<br />
gruelling journey I was surprised to find messages on my<br />
answerphone from professional teams in Norway and Scot-<br />
land. In the end I opted for Norway’s Oslo team, Våleren-<br />
ga. Mikael Forssell was snapped up by Chelsea. Following<br />
Helsinki’s suc<strong>ce</strong>ss in the Champions League, six HJK play-<br />
ers went on to play abroad.<br />
The arduous trip welded us together as a team. After-<br />
wards I played with many who had been in the Finnish na-<br />
tional team. Our biggest strengths were definitely our keen<br />
spirit and close friendship. I learnt then that, whatever the<br />
conditions, on the pitch you must focus only on the game.<br />
AKi RiiHiLAHTi<br />
aki riihilahti (b.1974) is a finnish midfielder who<br />
has carved an international career in football. he<br />
started with hJk (helsinki football club), and went<br />
on to play for Vålerenga, crystal Pala<strong>ce</strong>, kaisers-<br />
lautern and djurgården. the highlight of his career<br />
in england was when crystal Pala<strong>ce</strong> climbed to<br />
the Premier league for the 2004–2005 season.<br />
riihilahti has been a regular with the finnish<br />
national team and played in several world cup<br />
and european championship qualifiers. he has<br />
played a total of 69 caps, scoring 11 goals.