INTERVIEWING FOOTBALL PEOPLE as a DISTRACTION from the INEVITABILITY OF DEATH pt 4: JARMO MATIKAINEN

Jarmo Matikainen is in his early sixties. He is amiable and chatty, but he also has the faint demeanour of a history teacher about him, which might just be because he was one, in a previous life, before he embarked on a full time football coaching career. He speaks in an almost perpetually calm monotone, yet his unabashed love for football still radiates through his words. 

In the 21st century, Finland is considered something close to a model of how to run a country. It's a comfortable and relatively harmonious nation, internationally renowned for the quality of its education system, its robust welfare state, and more recently its radical approach to tackling social issues like homelessness and incarceration. But the nation Matikainen grew up in was quite different, still recovering from the traumas of the Second World War, where the country fought against the Soviet Union on one side, and Germany on the other. "When I was born, it was only 15 years after the war, so there was a lot of rebuilding going on. You could see that Finland was built during that time…  for Finland in particular, the war was very tough on us, and what we have now, we are proud of it, but we shouldn't take it for granted."

Finland may not be an international footballing powerhouse, but in recent decades its production of players like Sami Hyypia and Jari Litmanen, as well as, of course, its qualification for Euro 2020, proves that it's still a footballing nation worthy of attention. Unsurprisingly, Matikainen's grasp of the country's deeper football history is much better than mine. "The Finnish Football Federation was founded in 1907, and Finland participated in the Olympics in 1912," he tells me, "so there is history. A lot of the clubs have a history and a tradition. Maybe because of my interest in history, or maybe it's just a funny coincidence, but I actually started my playing career at the oldest club in Finland. It was founded in 1887 as a sports club, and they started playing football in the early 1900s, so in the capital region where we lived, there were a lot of those clubs with a history, and a firm support."

Still, Matikainen's earliest memories of football were beamed to him from abroad. "I was born in 1960, and I remember clearly that you got the bug in the late 1960s by watching the English league football on black and white TV. And then seeing the first European Championship tournaments, and I remember the big kick off for me was the 1970 World Cup in Mexico." As joyous as it must have been to watch Brazil sweep through that tournament as an impressionable ten year old, progressing from watching the game to playing it yourself was not so straightforward. "Back then you had to be proactive in finding yourself a club. It's not like today when parents are taking you to clubs. Sometimes you need direction from an adult person saying 'why don't you try there?' That's what happened for me. The first club I joined was about 4 or 5km from where I lived, and I got the information from an adult player kicking the ball in the same football pitch I was as a kid. He just asked 'have you played for a club?' And I said no, and he just told me to go there. And that's where I started. The club was named BK35, and it's still active. They had their own sort of internal league, and then they selected the best players to represent them. Then I met someone who said 'you look like a promising player,' and said I should train with a club in the city centre that organised training through the winter time. That was something special because ice hockey was the winter sport, or bandy. That's where I got to the club where I played most of my football. We lived in a suburban area, and I had to take a bus into the city centre to go and train. It was obviously different to how it is nowadays, and it meant you really had to have the desire to play. It was your choice, your decision. You made the effort to be there. So that was how I got involved in football."

One of the things that I really wanted to understand in my conversation with Matikainen was how a lifelong passion for football was stimulated in a culture where, as he alludes to, merely being able to train in the winter was a remarkable novelty, and the despicable siren song of ice hockey was constantly ringing in his ears. Finland's national football team had won a grand total of three World Cup qualifiers in their entire history by the time Matikainen turned 18, and absolutely none in the European Championships. It wasn't a footballing backwater, but neither was it a hotbed. And yet, ultimately, Jarmo Matikainen has just always loved football, and he loved Finnish football in the 1970s, for all its shortcomings. "Going to the city centre to watch HJK, which is still the biggest club in Finland… if you think about, for example, the UK, every Saturday we were watching their league football, that was a part of the program. The full crowds, tens thousands of people… in those days in Finland, you could get 5-6000 people for top level games, 2-3000 for the second level. Actually in the 1960s and 1970s, the audiences were probably higher than they are nowadays… I think in those days it was the perfect time to watch. The atmosphere was good, the football was good in many ways, there were good characters, there were good rivalries, and also the first Finnish players were going abroad to play. You had all those ingredients that makes football attractive to somebody who responds to it, and I'm certain you would have enjoyed it."

Consciously or otherwise, Matikainen was also, during this period, acquiring bits and pieces of knowledge that would prove influential to his eventual success as a manager. "When I was a young kid, I read a lot. I went to the library and got a lot of books, and a lot of them were about football. I also played ice hockey and read a lot about ice hockey, because it's a very popular sport in Finland. I read a lot about football, and also a little bit about the coaches and how footballers learned, and how they were taught and coached. Even if you were not doing it consciously, subconsciously you took influences. Obviously everybody is interested in successful football. Like I say, I really remember the 1968 Euros and 1970 World Cup, where Brazil won with players like Pele and Jairzinho and Rivellino. And also back then the TV showed how teams like the Brazilians prepared. So you got the first part of coaching, 'how do you learn football?'"

That independent streak, playing a high value on personal responsibility, continued to manifest itself during his playing career. "I think it's a process where if a player plays seriously - you can play at international level, you can play at club level, but you can always play seriously. You pay attention to what you're doing. You learn your trade as a player, but you also have an opportunity to learn your trade as a coach. As players, we all have experiences of good coaches and not so good coaches, so it's about learning what you want to put into practice. As a player, I was also captain of teams, and you start to think of a bigger picture than yourself. I took my first coaching courses while I was still playing, and you got your influences. Again, I'm coming back to when football started, I read a lot, and I was a semi professional footballer, because there weren't professional opportunities, so I needed to study. And I was also interested in different studies about football. I worked as a history and politics teacher while playing football, and from there I got influences. And, you know how it is, every period has its most popular trends in football. We had the German influence when they were very successful in the 70s and 80s. And in Scandinavia, we had the zonal defending, the 4-4-2 - man marking vs. zonal marking was the big thing at the time I was playing, and also the Germans were taking football that way and the Scandinavians were taking football that way, and the big influence was English league football from the 1960s onwards. You knew the names of the successful coaches that were there already. But when you made the transition from player to coach, then you started to dig in deep. You started to think 'if I had to plan a training session, what would I do, if I had to plan a training week, what would I do? What if I had to plan physical preparation or athletic development?' There were a lot of influences available even if it was a time of no internet.” 

…

Unsurprisingly, Matikainen's coaching career had begun before his playing career was fully over. "When I was first offered a coaching job, it was with my fourth division club who I was still playing for at the time, and I became a player-coach. And I actually wanted to coach at a lower division club, because there you also had to be the goalkeeping coach, you had to do a lot of things, but it was very useful to learn."

That fourth division club were called Vuosaaren Viikingit, and Jarmo was a considerable success there, leading them to two promotions in five years and the lofty heights of the second tier. At this point, he wasn't really thinking of coaching in a particularly careerist way. "I got results with the club (Viikingit) and got promoted to the second division. So of course you begin to get recognised. Of course you have to get results, but… results are one thing. You have to love what you do. Even though it can be tough - I had teaching work, and was working as a player coach, and it really is tough, I can tell you. I knew I had to do something, and stopped my teaching work. Then after I took my club up to the second division, I was 38, and I started to think 'maybe I'll take a little break,' and that's when I got the call from the Finnish Football Association saying 'would you like to come in and coach the U19s and U17s Women's teams?'"

Famously, Finland was only the second country in the world to grant universal suffrage to its populace, all the way back in 1906. However, during Matikainen's adolescence, attitudes in the country towards women's football weren't much more enlightened than anywhere else. There were, he recalls, honourable exceptions. "Women's football in a competitive sense started to develop in Finland in the 1970s. I remember when the women's league started, all those barriers that society puts in place were definitely there. But there were some successful male players coaching there. One of them, Aulis Rytkönen, a great player who played for Toulouse in France, ended up coaching the HJK Women's team. He was great… outspoken for women's football in the early stages, when you really needed those types of people to help break the barriers." Still, Matikainen confesses that "when I was still a player, I had never even thought about becoming a coach in women's football. I started coaching men's and youth teams, but we were training in an area by the Olympic Stadium which lots of different teams used, and so we saw some of the top women's teams training… and they were good players, really well organised. There was a professional respect, and we'd discuss ideas with their coaches. But the main development of women's football took place in the 1970s and 1980s, and I didn't get involved until the 1990s.".

It was hardly considered a given that Matikainen would want to get involved with the women's set up. He still recalls the phone call he got from the Head of Coaching at the Football Association, Jyrki Heliskoski, proposing the role to him - "I still remember the first thing he said was 'don't say no straight away!'" Obviously, though, the job would turn out to be the perfect fit for him, and begin a career path that would make him one of the most respected voices in the women's game. "It was so rewarding working with players who wanted to develop and improve and had ambitions," Matikainen says. "Wherever you're working, if you've got motivated people around you who want to improve and who are passionate, your career is not the point. You don't think about your career, you think about the work, and what the people around you are giving to you. And that's exactly what happened."

It would be reductive to judge Matikainen's success working with youth brackets solely on results, but at the same time, it should be acknowledged he oversaw some fine on field achievements as his influence on women's football in Finland grew. There were appearances at the U19 Euros, and a trip across the border to Russia to compete in the FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup in 2006. He also served as assistant manager to Michael Käld for Finland's senior women's team in 2005, when they made their historic bow at the finals of the European Championships, in England.

Those Championships were a different beast to the comparatively glamorous and sophisticated women's tournaments of today, as Jarmo reflects. "I can only say that 15 years feels like a lifetime, in that respect, if you consider the difference. With Finland, in qualifying, none of the games were shown live, and I remember when we played those two play off games against Russia, from which we eventually qualified, we played in Moscow in a not very good stadium. There was a little bit of an audience, but… everything after this 2004-05 breakthrough changed in Finland. For me as the technical director, it was much easier for me to talk about 'we need a TV contract, we need to use the momentum.' Media interest in Finland went through the roof. Then we went to England to play, and you could see that the ingredients were there, but if you consider it now, and 15 years ago, it feels like a lifetime. From the overall structure perspective, there was a huge, huge difference. I mean, how the game has grown in England in that time. I remember the first game we played, at the City of Manchester stadium, against England. Even then, with a huge effort, I think it was 32,000 or 28,000, a record in a finals tournament. If you consider that now, it was a finals tournament, opening game, with its new capacity of 60,000, it would be a full house. And the media coverage… maybe it's just nostalgia, but I think that game was covered more in Finnish and Scandinavian newspapers than it was in the UK. That was a big deal in Finland, and we were in the same group, England, Finland, Sweden and Denmark. Now, knowing how in 15 years things have gone through the roof, the difference is massive. And then, if you put that in perspective, that was 2005. The women's league was still a bit of a mirror image of the men's league. There was no Super League, and every now and then, at the first sign of a financial crisis, the men's team would abandon the women's team. Things like that happened. If you consider the situation now, like I said, it's like a lifetime."

Finland managed to qualify from that extremely tricky group, beating Denmark 2-1 in front of a meagre 2,500 fans at Bloomfield Road in Blackpool to go through with 4 points. They were then thrashed 4-1 at a similarly empty Deepdale in Preston by eventual winners Germany, to bow out as semi finalists. Still, Matikainen's track record as head coach and technical director for Finland's women's teams, punching above their weight in European competition, meant he would soon be offered the chance to try his hand further afield.

…

Like everyone I try and feature on this blog, Jarmo Matikainen has an innate curiosity about the world, which transcends football and embraces unique cultures and challenges. This clearly inspired his decision, in August 2010, to accept the position of Wales women's national team manager. "I started to feel that I'd like to go abroad, and was thinking about how I'd do that. When the opportunity arose, I thought Wales might not be at the top in Europe, but as part of the UK, they represented huge potential. When that job started to look like it was realistic, then I began to dig deeper and realised there were a lot of similarities from a development perspective to Finland. I know Finland sounds like an exotic place to many people, but I thought Wales seemed very interesting for a lot of reasons, as well as the 'potential' perspective, in player development and coaching terms. I think Wales was perceived, at least in Finland and by myself, as a football country. Knowing as well that Wales had had famous male players, and a lot of potential, but probably not the easiest path to break through in terms of England's shadow, and maybe even Scotland's shadow and the Republic of Ireland's shadow. From my historian background, I also thought the history was really interesting, and the culture and the language. I thought it was a really interesting place in footballing terms and also in other terms too. If you're gonna go abroad, you should be interested in that country and its people. In a more holistic sense I thought that was a really interesting part of it. And after spending years there I still think it's interesting, there's so much potential with the men's game and the women's game."

Within the UK itself, Wales is largely regarded as a rugby nation, and this would have been particularly true back in 2010, before the men's senior football team went on their eye catching run to the semi finals of Euro 2016. Matikainen was hardly incorrect in seeing immense potential in the national team, but it might have been a stretch to say they represented a football country, and there had been times in its recent history when women's football had been treated as an inconvenience by the Welsh FA. "When I went to Wales, back in 2010, there were a lot of issues," Matikainen recalls. I think there was one time they couldn't go to the qualifiers because the board decided they didn't want to spend money on that. That was a few years before I went there, and it was still a sore point to a lot of the players and a lot of the people working in women's football."

Tasked with dragging Welsh women's football forward, Matikainen was handed the vast job title of 'Head of National Teams,' which meant he would manage not just the senior side, but also the U19s and U17s. He was unable to qualify Wales for their first major tournament during his four year reign, though they came tantalizingly close to making the play-offs for the 2015 World Cup, denied by a 1-0 defeat to Ukraine in their final group game. They also climbed 15 places in the FIFA rankings over the course of his tenure. As you would hope from someone given such a broad remit to shape Welsh women's football, his impact has been felt even after leaving the country in 2014. "He brought in a professionalism on and off the pitch," remembered veteran international Sophie Ingle in an interview with the BBC. "It was about standards, it was about training right, eating well; all those things he brought into this women's team nine or ten years ago were amazing back then, and we can't thank him enough because he did start that for us as a senior team."

After leaving Wales, Matikainen joined the backroom staff of Canada's women's team to assist with preparations for the 2015 World Cup. It would not be long, however, before he returned to the hot seat of international management, with a position that he remains in to this day.

…

Estonia is an excellent country. It is safe, efficient, has high levels of civil liberties and economic freedom, universal health care… lots of good stuff. What it lacks, with apologies to former Derby, Sunderland and Arsenal keeper Mart Poom, is much in terms of footballing history. When Matikainen took the job of Estonian women's manager, back in 2017, he was thus faced with a unique challenge - a developed and competitive European nation with seemingly little standing in the way of its footballing progress, other than its size and its complete absence of meaningful footballing achievement. 

And yet, Estonia's recent history continues to linger on in its football culture, as Matikainen explains. "We consider Estonia to be a modern, Western country, let's say, a liberated and equal place. But you always get surprises when you move in and you start to live in a society, then you actually get to know how things really actually are. And these things are reflected in the football world. In Estonia, there have been surprises for me in that there are cultural barriers. Estonia, unfortunately, was part of the Soviet Union until 1991. And during that time, football was not necessarily an Estonian sport. Most of the football was played by the Russian speaking part of the populace. Of course there were Estonians playing football, but it was not Estonian football, it was Soviet football. Then, when independence was regained in 1991, there were still divisions, and it's still a process, even if it's 30 years now, of integrating the 40% of Russian speakers, and of course to get full nationality you have to do the Estonian language part. It's very very strong, that cultural division. And the Russian speaking part, then, when we talk about women's football, how it's perceived by the families, there are a lot of stories I could tell of how it's really still an issue."

The chief frustration Matikainen has is the size of the talent pool he has to work with, which begins shallow and then gets shallower still over time. "If we talk about one age group, girls born in 2006, so around 15 years old. How many registered players do we have in that age group? The population is around 1.4 million. We're talking about 100 players. And then, if when the players are 15 years old we have 100 players, what would you say the number of players we still have from that age group when they get to 19? In football we talk about dropouts, and it's a bad word because people make choices, and those choices might be that a player just wants to study. But if we have 100 players at 15, at the age of 19 we have 25 or 30 left. That's 70% of the age group or talent pool gone. And you don't really know what could have become of those players. That basically tells you the core of the challenge in a place like Estonia, and Estonia's not alone in that, but we also have that language, cultural thing. And when you actually start working seriously to become a senior football player, you've already lost 60-70% of the whole age group. I'm the head coach of the women's national team, but I'm also technically the head of development. From the development perspective, the drop out of the talent pool is the major, major thing you want to improve and take the next steps. And dropout is an issue in the boys game, the women's game, everywhere in Europe, because people make decisions and that's OK. But starting from such a low level of registered players in general, it's actually making every other development aspect of football… it puts it in perspective. When I consider the situation in Estonia, it's clearly different to the one I saw in Wales, with some of the players playing in England, and then in Finland where the growth in players is continuous and the dropout rate is not as bad, and then Estonia, the dropout is the real issue, before you can talk about competitive football."

Despite these roadblocks, however, it is clear that Matikainen regards the three years he's so far spent in the job as another deeply rewarding experience football has given to him. And he's cautiously optimistic as to what the future holds for Estonian women's football. "One of the things I said when I came over here was that there's a lot of potential in Estonia. There's a lot of potential, in many ways because there's still a culture of sports and athleticism in general. How much of that is convertible to football specifically… as you mentioned, (Estonia) also lacks that real breakthrough in final tournaments which also brings resources. And still, taking all those things into consideration, I still think there's a lot of potential. Of course it requires, also, a vision from the Football Association that this is where we want to place women's football. It was a similar process in Finland - after a lot of wrestling, a lot of twisting the arms and dialogue, you got a lot of things through in Finland… I think in Estonia we're still in a similar process, where we really need to decide what we want women's football to look like in ten years time. There's a vision where we want to have an equal approach with the male and female players. So when they come into the sport, these are the possibilities that they have. If they decide they want to proceed along the player pathway towards the top, become a women's league player or international player, these are the possibilities that they have. If you're a player who wants to do their studies but still play football seriously, these are the possibilities. I think it requires that we make a roadmap, that we want this to be the picture of women's football in 2030. I think it requires a lot of dialogue, a lot of good decisions, and in a way, also, a lot of honesty, with the situation what it is now. Not trying to say that we don't have these issues when we clearly do. And that's the way I see… I see there's a lot of potential and a lot of possibilities. And it requires also a lot of open dialogue and good decisions."

…

More important to this blog than what occurs on the pitch is how football can enrich your life off it, by providing an accessible introduction to different cultures and viewpoints. Matikainen is effusive about his spells in Wales and Estonia, and is open to venturing even further afield as his career progresses. "I think it's been so eye opening and rewarding, and also challenging, to coach in different countries. I love working with people from different countries. People are the best. Every place that you're lucky enough to work in and visit, it gives you a different layer. And I would love to work in another country or another continent or in another culture, because it just gives you the opportunity to grow as a person, and appreciate the football people around the world who are there. There are fantastic people who I've met here in Estonia, I've learned the language which is another bonus, and I even learned a little bit of Welsh when I was there, which is a really difficult language as I'm sure you know. But in terms of a career move, at this stage, you just want to make the best of all the possibilities that you have, and try and help the people you're working with as much as you can and in the best way that you can. I think there's still a lot of work to do."

I then gave Jarmo the incredibly awkward task of reflecting on his legacy. At 61, Matikainen still has a decade or more of coaching in him, but even if his career were to end tomorrow, his contributions to women's football in Finland and Wales would make him a key figure in the history of the sport in those countries. I was curious as to whether he took particular pride in having given so much to women's football, and whether he felt he had done something particularly important in helping to advance opportunities for female footballers in the countries he'd worked in; alternatively, was carving out a career in football always the most important thing to him, with the women's game just happening to be where he'd built enough of a reputation to keep getting jobs?

"I think this is a fundamental question; why do you work in what you work in? I made a huge change in my life when I gave up being a history and politics teacher to work full time as a football coach. And then everything changed again for me when I started working with the women's U19 and U17 teams. Because we had to fight for everything. I've always believed in equality, and that comes from my background as a history and politics teacher, where you learn about so many people who had to fight for equality. I think you will find lots of good people working in the women's game, because they know they are working to level the playing field for people who didn't have an equal start. And I think when I look back… we talk about coincidences, 20 years ago I got that phone call from the Head of Coaching at the Football Association, and I have never regretted that decision not to continue down my path in the men's game, become a League coach or whatever. I've always felt it has been so good to work with people who are so passionate about what they're doing."

Since I am now working full time in my day job, and am also a fundamentally lazy person, it has taken me bloody ages to put this article together. I spoke to Matikainen in May of 2021, at which point excitement was building for Euro 2020, and his native Finland's first ever appearance at a major tournament finals. What intrigued me then was whether years as an international coach himself, including for other nations, had led to him feeling an emotional disconnect from the fortunes of the men's side. Would it be possible to switch your brain off and enjoy, or would you be perpetually consumed by tactical analysis and a sea of tiny frustrations with your team's performance? Would you suspect that you could coach them better? Happily, in Matikainen's case, the answer is entirely uncynical. "I think that… I hope I never lose that, being a football fan, because it was a dream of generations for the men's team to go through to a finals tournament. In a way, it was good that the women did it first, and then the U21s did it in 2012 if I remember right, and now the men's team. But it's not a problem at all. In a way, it makes it personal that I worked with the men's national team for three years when I was technical director, working on the logistics and the support for the coaching staff. The current coach, Markku Kanerva, was one of the people I had the pleasure of recruiting to be an U21 coach. I think it was 2006 when he came in for the first time. Most of the staff, the athletic coaches, the medical staff, came in during that time, and I know how hard they've been working, and seeing ups and downs, and it's so, in a way, easy to relate to them. Every Finn knows the history of the men's national team. The terrible defeat to Hungary in 1997, and other setbacks. So… not a problem! The problem is that I can't be there when they first kick the ball, watching in Copenhagen or St. Petersburg. But you don't want to lose that."

Finally, on a non footballing note, I was curious to discover how far Jarmo's cultural hinterland extended beyond football. It had already come up that he was a history teacher before going full time in football, but it turned out there's something else that he turns to when he wants to actually unwind. "I must say I have another passion as well, which is music. I love music, and I play a little bit, so if I want to relax I pick up my guitar and make a little bit of noise to annoy the neighbours. So that's my way of relaxing." Naturally, at this point I attempted to encourage him to perform a musical team talk for his players at the next available opportunity. He demurred. "I have done it when I coached men's teams, when we had an evening meeting, but that was over 20 years ago, so… it's a possibility, but I don't see it happening now because they probably wouldn't recognise the songs! I've got to say I listen to all types of music, but I'm a huge Neil Young fan, and overall of folk music and country. I've followed the music from the U.S. and obviously the U.K. as well, but I've got to say in Finland there are a lot, a lot, of good artists. The problem is the younger generation won't recognise - maybe some will recognise Neil Young, but I have experience of talking about him in the office and… "who?" So I think music is really important, and either you listen to it or you play it or you sing it, it puts things into perspective, and like I say helps you relax and switch off when you need to." 

…

I suspect that the best and most interesting people to talk to about football are those who have made a living out of it when circumstances would indicate they shouldn't have been able to. Jarmo Matikainen is not a particularly glamorous man, and even within the context of women's football, with its dearth of money and glitz compared to the men's game, he has not taken on particularly glamorous roles.

But Jarmo Matikainen loves football, and he can communicate that love to his players. Whether in Finland, Wales or Estonia, he has raised standards, taken his role deadly seriously, and left a strong legacy behind him. He is one of the most respected voices in the women's game, and he comes from a background where he could easily have ended up playing ice hockey for fun and working full time as a history teacher. Matikainen defied his fate, and his work as a coach will have helped numerous players defy theirs. On the whole, not a bad way to spend your existence.