Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around HIFK they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at HIFK this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Joel Valdemarín is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
A month is long enough that nobody gets in by accident. Junior Paredes is in the division's best eleven for it, which is a quieter compliment than an award and a more reliable one.
Ninety minutes, no goals, and the argument started before the car park emptied: a point gained, or two thrown away against KTP? Both sides of it will still be going on Thursday.
5 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at HIFK this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Two or more conceded in each of the last 4 matches. It is not one mistake repeating itself, which would be the easier thing to fix; it is a different one every week.
Successful dribbles: 15. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad31 Aug 2026
5 new faces, and HIFK are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
There is no complaint available here and everybody involved knows it, which does not make the walk to the bench any shorter. Form is the only currency in football that cannot be borrowed against.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at HIFK is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
There is no worse way to lose a footballer. Niilo Pirttinen has pre-agreed a move away, which means every appearance between now and June is made by a man the club can no longer sell, and somebody upstairs will be asked why the contract was allowed to get here.
Thanasis Papadoudis was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
FF Jaro left with the points after a 1‑3 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
Squad24 Aug 2026
Rico Finnäs falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
8 attempts, none of them in. He got into the right places all afternoon, which is the hard part, and did the easy part badly — and that is the version of a bad day a manager can live with.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at HIFK is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
He will play here until the summer and then walk out of the door for free, having already signed elsewhere. Supporters will manage the first part of that sentence; it is the second they will struggle with.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at HIFK this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The paperwork is done long before the player is. Miska Ylitolva has agreed terms to come here when his current deal runs out, which means HIFK have spent a summer's transfer budget on a phone call.
At 21 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
48 months left and silence from upstairs — no offer, no talks, nothing for his people to answer. Clubs that let a calendar do their negotiating usually end up negotiating with the calendar.
Nobody will confirm this and nothing else explains the last month of selections. A costly error buys a player a period of being second choice that is always longer than the error was.