The deadline has passed and the squad is the squad. 5 arrived, 12 left, and everything else printed about this club last month was a rumour that stayed one.
Rachide Gnanou and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Rotherham United have kept their man, and HJK go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
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.
5 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
Nobody at HJK 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.
Position 4, 36 points, and a run-in that decides whether next season has Thursday nights in it. Nobody is calling it a race yet, which is what people say during one.
A conversation in the manager’s office, and a commitment that came out of it. Promises like that are cheap to make and expensive to break, and Rachide Gnanou has written the date down.
In brief
The dugoutMartin Kirilov asks for a word with the manager
The last thing about a transfer that is still about the player is his signature on his own terms, and it is there. HJK have lost him in all but the paperwork.
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and HJK know it.
Tòfol Montiel 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Alexander Abrahamsson 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.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Lassi Lappalainen is on it.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. HJK know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around HJK people have started saying his name in the past tense.
Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Oskari Väistö has, at HJK, and the first month will show what that does to a man.
SJK did not want to sell and the number is why they did. $880.0K for Oskari Väistö, and the expectation that arrives with him is the kind no amount of settling-in period softens.
The shirt still fits. Samuel Anini Jr. is back at HJK, and half the ground remembers him in these colours already. Some signings need selling to the town; this one sold itself.
The number the board signed off was not enough. It has been asked again and raised its own offer to $94.6K — a club that wants Amidou Traoré enough to be asked twice.
Pyry Mentu, 20, plays like he has been here for years — 8.18
A mark of 8.18 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 20-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
HJK have gone to IF Gnistan with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
The offer from SalPa for Liam Rippon was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
HJK have gone to IF Gnistan with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
The offer went to TPS this week and it is theirs to answer. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loud the door closes.
He is 20 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at HJK, and it is not being withdrawn.
At 37 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.91 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at HJK is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Leonel Montano was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Nobody at HJK 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.
“I want to win things, and I would like to do it here.” Nothing has been demanded and nothing has been threatened — but a boardroom at HJK hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
Successful dribbles: 16. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and HJK know it.
The dugout7 Jun 2027
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 1‑2 defeat, delivered by Nikolai Hakola to a room that had heard them before.
There are footballers who have a good season and footballers a season is remembered for, and the second kind get their names read out in a hall in the summer. HJK will be quietly delighted and privately nervous.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.15 at 37, and nobody on the pitch was better.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at HJK is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Teemu Pukki and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Leonel Montano was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
It is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. HJK told Ángel Rodado something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at HJK this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
The door stayed shut a long time after the final whistle. What was said in there is between them; whether it worked is between them and Saturday.
The dugout10 May 2027
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 0‑2 defeat, delivered by Nikolai Hakola to a room that had heard them before.
“I was told what my role would be, and I signed on that basis. It has not happened.” A grievance with a date attached is the hardest kind to settle.
Player ratings12 Apr 2027
A brace, and Ángel Rodado takes the afternoon — 8.47
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Ángel Rodado provided it, and the 8.47 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
$2.3M was the most the club would pay and Chesterfield were asking for more. Deals like this are revived in the last week of a window roughly half the time, and everybody involved knows it.
3 wins in a row changes how opponents warm up: quieter, more glances across. Runs end, everybody knows that — but nobody in this dressing room is planning for it.
HJK ran out of time with KuPS. The paperwork was open when the deadline passed, and a transfer that was almost done is now a transfer that never happened.
Teemu Pukki and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
5 boys move up, and somewhere in the building the people who coached them at twelve are quietly having the best morning of their working year. Nothing about this shows up in a result and it is why the academy exists.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Till Cissokho 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.
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.
A conversation in the manager’s office, and a commitment that came out of it. Promises like that are cheap to make and expensive to break, and Lucas Lingman has written the date down.
Kaius Simojoki 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.
Nobody at HJK 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.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at HJK, and both men came out saying it was fine.
He asked about his future and was given an answer with minutes in it. The manager has now made a promise in a building where promises are remembered, and the clock on it has started.
Santeri Haarala has done the arithmetic and does not like the answer. Nothing corrodes a squad faster, and no club has ever solved it by explaining the wage structure to a footballer.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at HJK, another week without a signature from Lassi Lappalainen.
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.
Something was said to Teemu Pukki and then it happened. In this industry that passes for remarkable, and the dressing room noticed faster than any supporter could.
The demotion a club never announces and a dressing room always notices. David Ezeh is further from the side than he was, and the reason will not be given until he asks.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Teemu Pukki is on it.