Marked for Roberto Ramírez
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad17 Sep 2040
Onni Pukki breaks a bone — 23 days out
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 23 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Squad17 Sep 2040
Roberto Ramírez: that is not what I was promised
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” IFK Mariehamn have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Squad17 Sep 2040
Mykola Kudriavtsev 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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad21 May 2040
Maxim Danilin damages knee ligaments — 59 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 59 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Match16 May 2040
A 3‑0 win over FC Lahti, a place in the next round, and the quiet arithmetic every supporter does on the walk home: how many more until a final?
Player ratings21 May 2040
Two goals and a mark of 9.03 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Market21 May 2040
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what IFK Mariehamn can pretend not to have heard.
Player ratings21 May 2040
Petteri Toivio could not have asked for more on his first appearance — 7.20
Debuts are survived rather than enjoyed. This one was enjoyed: 7.20, 0 goals, and a manager already being asked whether he starts again next week.
Player ratings21 May 2040
Paulus Lam, 19, plays like he has been here for years — 7.66
A mark of 7.66 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 19-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Squad21 May 2040
Mykola Kudriavtsev 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.
Squad21 May 2040
Words at IFK Mariehamn training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ala Eddine Limane 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.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Boardroom5 Dec 2039
What was said behind closed doors has now been said in front of a microphone. Everybody at IFK Mariehamn can do the arithmetic, including the man it is aimed at.
Boardroom5 Dec 2039
The official line will be that it was routine. It was not routine, the timing says so, and every person in that room knows what the next bad result costs.
Squad5 Dec 2039
376 appearances across 15 seasons in these colours. Careers like that are not built any more, and IFK Mariehamn know what they have.
Squad5 Dec 2039
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at IFK Mariehamn this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad5 Dec 2039
Ala Eddine Limane 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.
Boardroom5 Dec 2039
The board have answered with money instead of encouragement, which is the only answer a manager ever wants. Spending it well is now entirely his problem.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad13 Jun 2039
A knee injury of the worst kind for Petteri Valakari
21 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. IFK Mariehamn lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad13 Jun 2039
Mykola Kudriavtsev 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.
Squad13 Jun 2039
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Roberto Ramírez commits to IFK Mariehamn for another 4 years.
Player ratings13 Jun 2039
Marked 7.38 on an afternoon he ran from the first whistle to the last. Whatever else went wrong, IFK Mariehamn had the best player on the pitch.
Squad13 Jun 2039
Yeboah Amankwah has become a man the manager trusts
Nobody at IFK Mariehamn will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
Match11 Jun 2039
Point won or two lost for IFK Mariehamn?
Ninety minutes, no goals, and the argument started before the car park emptied: a point gained, or two thrown away against SJK? Both sides of it will still be going on Thursday.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad31 Jan 2039
A knee injury of the worst kind for Rasmus Tikkanen
30 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. IFK Mariehamn lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad31 Jan 2039
Mykola Kudriavtsev 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.
Squad31 Jan 2039
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.