Tommi Nieminen asks in his column how HJK has used the fact that it has had two globally speaking football players in its communications, marketing, building team culture and social responsibility.
Tommi Nieminen
I am supported the Helsinki Football Club at the age of five, Kalevi Sorsa II, ie the red soil government of the late 1970s.
For the information of young people: yes, it sounds moldy to my ear too.
However, this column is not a nostalgia for the history of HJK. It is not even an emotional outburst of Finnish domestic politics during Sorsa’s time.
This is the long-term supporter’s view of HJK’s present, from the time of stagnation. It is not so much about the species itself now – about how HJK plays football -, but about the social relations of the mighty team.
An immeasurably valuable social treasure has been brought before the nose of HJK’s leadership, but they have no idea what they would do with it.
HJK Group is a business with a turnover of approximately eight million euros, which includes HJK’s Representative Teams and the Bolt Arena. The operation has been moderately profitable in recent years.
It is therefore an SME whose economic significance is not enormous for Finland. Instead, HJK is vital in terms of its sports culture.
HJK has had two icons in its ring since July 2021: the national team captain Tim Sparv and a former national team striker Riku Riskiwith a long career in Europe.
They are excellent players but only mediocre in a relentless international comparison. Far from the superstars of the species.
Yet it is Risk and Sparv that are far more interesting to the global public than many high-profile star players. I’m trying to explain.
I woke up to Riku Risk’s worldview in January 2019. He was surprised by the public refusal of the national team’s winter camp in Qatar. He justified his decision with “ethical reasons and values”.
Many people who follow football understood what it was all about. Qatar has built its stadium for next summer’s World Cup with migrant workers whose working conditions are comparable to modern slavery. The Guardian estimates that up to 6,500 workers have died in construction work. The international football federation Fifa has quietly blessed what happened.
Chairman of the Finnish Football Association Ari Lahti there were those football bosses who did not fully understand the wider significance of taking a risk. Lahti considered the act “funny”.
The political activism of top athletes is still so rare that the boycott of the internationally unknown Risk became official news, spread by The Guardian, Die Welt, Der Spiegel, Aftonbladet, Al Arabiya, Aftenposten, Repubblica and NDTV India, among others.
Captain Tim Sparv began to pursue a policy of equality and human rights at the same time. The most so far he has taken it so far was in September 2021, when he wrote an open letter to The Player’s Tribune about Qatar’s working conditions.
The letter was not a fast-paced bait but a long and earnestly constructed text for which Sparv had interviewed Qatari migrant workers on the spot.
The text spread like wild white. Sparv was awarded the Player Voice Award in November by the international players’ association FIFPro, which represents 65,000 professional footballers.
As a supporter, I have appreciated both: Riska, who is foxed in her quiet Zen, and Sparv, who is banging on a barricade drum.
Such is the 2020s. If in the past the world was changed under the pressure of parties, interest groups and the force, now it is being changed in publicity networks. Even Qatari Emirates fear online protests. If you are on the wrong side of history, you could lose billions of euros in assets in an instant.
Treasure it is sometimes difficult to see even if it is brought on a gold plate. Sparv and Riski have stood before the eyes of HJK’s leadership like the Grail Cup and the Ark of the Covenant, with their immeasurable values.
How has HJK used the fact that it has had two globally speaking football players in its ranks in its communications, marketing, building team culture and social responsibility?
In no way. Of course.
The whole thing has been silenced. A fraternal eye has been struck and a moldy story has been maintained that politics is not a top sport.
When the International Players Association awarded Sparv in November 2021 for his human rights work, HJK did not publicly quote the matter. Instead, the team signaled the same day that the Veikkausliiga championship trophy had visited the office of HJK’s partner, whose “people were airing the championship together with the Frendi mascot”.
Don’t yawn.
In fact top sports have always been linked to politics. Especially strongly when the connection is most severely denied.
It is possible that the leadership of the HJK considers the risks of human rights activism to be too great. Uefa, which controls European football, is undoubtedly full of politicized fascination, which is unacceptable to the social activism of the players.
Still, HJK’s silence is astounding.
When the team hired an expensive Sparv in Finnish in the summer of 2021, it seems to have hired a 34-year-old chronically knee-injured veteran.
Is it worth paying for the last of the watering joints?
Personally, I would pay for the team to have a global role model, an intelligent athlete brand that bangs the drum on barricades.
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