Comment|The election of a new sports director would give Lyytikäinen and Riihilahti the opportunity to wash their hands of the unpleasant task, writes sports journalist Ari Virtanen.
HJK’s the season will be the worst underperformance since the 2019 season, when the club finished fifth in the Veikkausliiga. The championship went out of reach at the weekend before the final round of the season. At the end of the season, HJK gets medals, but they don’t satisfy anyone in the club that won four consecutive championships.
The story of the disaster period has already been told many times this year, and there is no reason to go back to it more deeply now. In short: the club management made many wrong decisions from the middle of last season.
Since the end of last May, CEO Aki Riihilahten on the job list has been the search for a new sports director since Vesa Mäki got fired. Riihilahti thought they would get Mäe a creator, but instead they got an adjuster, whose mistakes will be corrected for a long time. If Riihilahti had done the background work better before Mäki’s election, HJK would not have drifted into a mire of mistakes.
August in the middle, the chairman of HJK Oy Olli-Pekka Lyytikäinen said that the search for a new sports director has begun. Now, two months later, it’s almost over. According to three sources, HJK has found the person it wants for the position.
According to the editorial information, HJK has made a contract offer to Vaasa Palloseura’s director of sports a few weeks ago Petri Vuorinen52.
Petri Vuorinen, Vaasa Palloseura’s director of sports, has previously worked as head coach of VPS and FC Honga’s director of sports, among other things.
Voorinen is an easy choice. He is the best of the available Finnish options for HJK’s sports director. Naturally, the director of sports who moved from HJK to Ilves last fall Miika Takkula would be another excellent option, but he certainly doesn’t want to end up back under Riihilahti. Takkula looks healthy in Ilves colors these days.
Vuorinen was FC Honga’s sporting director for three years before moving to VPS last December. He has now only been in the VPS for the season, but that shouldn’t be a problem in terms of drawing up a contract. The position of HJK’s director of sports is such an attractive job that you practically have to accept it.
But is Vuorinen ready to accept the job on any terms? It is well known from the recent past how much CEO Aki Riihilahti has wanted to participate in everything in the management of sports activities.
If and when Vuorinen reaches an agreement with HJK, HJK gets a director who knows Finnish football very well. None of the foreign candidates that HJK was ready to consider this time would have similar information.
Probably the first task of the new athletic director is to identify the new head coach. At the same time, it is also the most fatal task of the new sports director.
Vesa Mäki stumbled upon the head coach selection after proposing an old acquaintance for the position Ferran Sibilawho lacked a Uefa pro coaching license. Sibila might have been a good coach, but it didn’t matter that she was transferred to head coach instead of Sibila Ossi Virta.
Virta didn’t understand that he was only supposed to be the head coach in appearance. According to the news, the team is still wondering how Sibila was fired, but Virta was allowed to stay.
In May, he was called back as an emergency head coach for the second time Toni Korkeakunnas achieved only the second of the season’s goals.
The team made it to the conference league, but the championship escaped. In terms of the future of Korkeakunnas, the bigger problem might be how badly the team has played in the fall. Sunday’s Haka loss at home was the fifth consecutive winless match for HJK. HJK has not won any of the four matches in the Veikkausliiga upper end series.
It it must be said in the name of truth that Korkeakunnas came back to HJK at the most difficult time. This time, Korkeakunnas inherited a team that was hastily put together in Mäki’s footsteps. The team could have been built much better.
According to the editorial information, Olli-Pekka Lyytikäinen wanted Korkeakunnas, who won the championship last season, back to the club in May. Lyytikäinen probably wouldn’t be too happy to cancel Korkeakunnas’ contract, which continues until the end of next season.
The selection of a new sports director would give Lyytikäinen and Riihilahti the opportunity to wash their hands of the unpleasant task if it is decided to abandon Korkeakunnakis in December after the Conference League games. It can be said with great certainty that there is no further place for HJK in the Conference League after the first six games.
HJK has an opportunity to clean the table properly after the season.
This year, Aki Riihilahti will not be able to celebrate the championship for the first time since 2019.
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