youllneverwalkalone

York9 has just signed Julian de Guzman's 7 year old son. Just to fuck with his head.

So in a couple of hours VPS are gonna play their 2nd game in the Finnish Cup group stage, and since Jonas Häkkinen's paperwork is finally done (it wasn't for the first game...) it also probably means that he's gonna make his debut tonight, possibly from the bench but still. I will be watching him today and post a report later in the other thread. 
Now to make this news a bit more interesting to you I'm gonna post a medium sized wall of background as to what kind of club Jonas has arrived in from Vancouver. 
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So VPS are a Finnish top flight club who come from a city in the West Coast that starts with V. But that is as far as the similarities with Vaasa and Vancouver go as while 70k is a good mid-sized town in Finnish standards, Vancouver kinda shades it in comparison. 
For a long while VPS were just a run of the mill club, traditionally playing long ball football, for most of the time aiming just to survive in the top division and never winning a title since the 40's. So essentially we were one very boring team for any outsider to follow & was justifiably nothing to get excited about when some earlier Canucks played for us (Andrew Barsalona 2014 and Tomer Chencinski 2011). 
But everything changed when the long time assistant manager named Petri Vuorinen rescued the team from relegation in 2015 and was named the head coach before 2016. He decided to change around the entire philosophy of the team, and VPS were suddenly playing very much a possession based game. Along with a renovated stadium with a smooth artificial pitch replacing the old, bumpy stadium mid season, Vuorinen's 4-2-3-1 format genuinely worked and we were actually quite close to title that year. 
So along came 2017 and Vuorinen decided to take his system one step further. Some young coaches were recruited from Portugal to assist Vuorinen, he changed the system to 3-5-2 and turned the football absolutely crazy. Tall defenders who, prior to VPS never looked like they had any business passing the ball, were now passing the ball A LOT. Like, genuinely A LOT. Between the goalkeepers and the 3 stoppers VPS just wouldn't give the ball away, but even under intense pressure from the opposition team, would just pass the ball amongst each other, seemingly more afraid of losing the ball than conceding goals. 
I genuinely believe Vuorinen's system has no precedent in the history of football amongst teams that are not dominant, because when you're a small club and have shite players it just doesn't make any sense to play like Barcelona. But Vuorinen thought otherwise and thought he can develop any lanky tall defenders into Gerard Pique, small young midfield prospects into Xavi and journeymen wingers into Messi. And now put your Swansea example back in your bag, I'm genuinely not exaggerating when I say "no precedent" and "like Barcelona". We ended that season with an average possession of 63.3%, breaking the 70% figure many times. We also had over 600 successful passes a game and almost broke 1000 in one game. Out of ALL clubs in Europe in 2017, only Bayern Munich had higher avg figures in their league than us. Barcelona was 3rd, PSG 4th and City 5th. 
And for the first half of 2017, this....worked. The players genuinely adopted the system in time for the league started, and time and again even stronger opposition teams would be surprised by the system, not knowing at all how to combat "Vepsulona" because usually the worse team doesn't keep the ball. Of course we would still sometimes concede silly goals, losing possession in the ever-going rondo in our own penalty box, but regardless of them mid-summer we found ourselves 2nd in the league standings, and in Europa League qualifiers we surprised the 10 times richer and larger Olimpija Ljubljana 1-0, 0-1; they clearly hadn't scouted us and didn't know what hit them when the VPS carousel set off and left them looking like a low league club. And the 30 times larger Bröndby that was our next opponent beat us 2-0 at their home but at our stadium we had the advantage of a smooth artificial pitch. We took the control of the game from the first whistle, scored an early 1-0, the entire stadium if not the city was pumped and bouncing... and then our GK scored a ridiculous own goal from a corner. So we won 2-1 anyway but was not enough. 
Then after the disappointment opposition teams finally learned to combat us in the league too and we hit a rapid downward spiral, not winning in 13 games a row or something. And the way we played suddenly looked absolutely horrible and frustrating, as understandably when a possession based football goes wrong, it looks like the players aren't even trying so we dropped to midfield in the league eventually.
So after the disastrous end to the season, Vuorinen was forced to tone the Barcelona aspect down for 2018 and we had a bit of a "meh" season with a bit of a mishmash playing system, with some signs of the ball playing defensework retained, but the formation reverted back to 4-5-1 and some counter attacks attempted. We still finished 6th but after all this, Vuorinen has now attracted a lot of criticism for refusing to go back to the long ball system. 
So now we're in 2019, and unfortunately the new stadium has turned out to be very expensive to maintain and the cashflow isn't what it used to be. We've had to offload many important players, have a lot of injuries and only got a GK just before the first game, so people are expecting us to fight against the relegation mostly. Now I know Häkkinen has also played in the central midfield in the past, but that position has enough players as it is. Whereas apart from Jonas the club has 2 serious stoppers right now. One of them is Timi Lahti who is something of a club legend by now and will not give away his spot in the first 11 any time soon, but the other is the young Eero Auvinen, who didn't really impress last year nor in the first game. So at least the fans are counting on Häkkinen a lot & expecting the young Vancouverian to impress and perhaps even claim the other spot in the opening 11.
Finally, below there is a nice video made by Copa90 about our club & how it is for a foreign footballer to settle in here (albeit from before the new system): 
 
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Tl;dr? In short - Jonas' new club might be fighting against relegation this year, but the club now counts on Jonas a lot because of financial reasons & still have knowledgeable coaches who believe in player development, and the playing system which likely still relies a lot on the defenders' on the ball skills which, hopefully is going to improve Jonas's skills. So I hope it's a good place for him. 

Yes he has signed.  
Here is my translation of the Finnish article:
"New player contract - versatile Jonas Häkkinen has signed with Vaasan Palloseura 
Vaasan Palloseura [VPS] has signed a player contract with the young Finnish player Jonas Häkkinen. The contract is 1+1 years. [unspecified whether the option is one way or two way] 
Jonas Häkkinen is a multi-functional player who owns both the Finnish and Canadian passports, and who can play both stopper and defensive midfielder. 
"For the last few years he has played stopper, but before that he has played defensive midfielder, as well", VPS head coach Petri Vuorinen comments. 
Häkkinen has played his entire career in Vancouver, where he has played in the Whitecaps academy. Häkkinen has Finnish parents and he speaks good Finnish, although his native tongue is English. 
"Jonas has trained with us for quite a while already. He came to Finland to uplift his career. Comparing him with other players of his generation (1999), I believe that he has the full potential to succeed in Finnish Premier League", Vuorinen analyzes. 
Very little about this promising player is known in Finland. Contact between the player and the club came through his agent. The youngster has trained with VPS for a month already. 
"The agent suggested that we give Jonas a trial. We decided to take him along and have been judging his play. In the last few years, many young players looking to develop have trialed for us. This time we found a good "match". I do not think many have heard of him here, even though he is Finnish. He is a new face for many here in that sense."
In addition to his playing skills, there is another thing Vuorinen specifically likes about Häkkinen. 
"He has a very tough but healthy attitude about sports and football in general. All that is right", Vuorinen comments. 
Jonas' own interview will be done during November. 
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Since it's my first post, I figure it's fine to use this space to say hello everybody, too. I am a VPS fan from Finland - a cold, stable Northern country, with an under-performing National Team with a history of promising players selecting some another country, and whose general public has an unhealthy obsession with this sticky-sport played on ice.
Suppose this description also explains to you all why I have somehow developed kind of a weird sympathetic affinity towards the "soccer people" in Canada, and hence I have been following your NT for the past few years, including lurking on this forum occasionally. So I figured that now that this guy signed with my local club team, it would be a good excuse to register here too. So I do hope you guys don't mind having me as an "outsider" for our countries are yet to develop a fierce rivalry in this sport. (Although I also wouldn't mind, if in the next few years one developed over Häkkinen's services at the senior level. )
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Would Jonas warrant his own thread, btw? Now that he's going to be playing here, I would be more than glad to contribute with updates on Jonas etc. since I watch every VPS game anyway.

Opare is a Canadian citizen who wants to play for Canada. For me that is enough to warrant being interested in him and following his career even if FIFA regulations prevent him from ever playing for Canada.

Kwame Awuah has signed with NYCFC
 
 

Good luck to him. I remember shaking his hand during the 2008 championship pitch invasion at Swangard when he was only 17. 

Good grief. I'm laughing but I'm also cringing. 

My son (Cesar Ortiz-Rojas) was born in Toronto-Ontario on March 20, 1997. He is playing as Left/Right Fullback defines. He has played the last three years in Peru for AFIS but he was coming back to Canada often to finish his High School. He last played in Ontario for Richmond Hill Raiders (1997) (OYSL). He is under the radar in Canada since he was in Peru most of the time. I am attaching some videos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lwAmJWZI6I
 

The list looks great. So modern! On Opare, I think we have a much better chance of getting a FIFA exemption than say Gershon Koffie -despite Marc Weber reporting that the latter is about to join Canada in 2016. I would leave our Kofi on the list.

I love what it looks like. Very simple to  access and follow.

You don't remember very well as you took this over from me and it was an orderly transition. I believe I took the thread over from Kurosawa, who took it over from JPG.
I would suggest or echo the simple suggestion that the list be cut and paste from the google document and both be provided on the first page of a new a thread. If google is so fucking amazing, you should be able to do this in 5 seconds.

I think you're right after-all. I passed it to JPG. Although he must have done it twice because Kurosawa didn't take it over from Joe McCarthy. Unless there was somebody else in there who I thought was JPG.

Went and had a look.  I started my thread on feb 24 2013.  Apparently I volunteered right away, but didn't start the thread till February. here is the thread from jpg, oddly what I forgot was that you recommended me which I actually responded to as the catalyst for me doing it.  So if you started a thread, you didn't run it for long at all relatively speaking.  I think it's possible you might be the one having the memory lapse though, but if not help me out?  Here's the thread.

Call me old fashioned, but the MOACA is pg 1 with the updated list and the only posts in the thread were the links to the most recent information. A no-bullshit thread, just easily accessible facts

The idea is that the MOACA list is property of the Voyageurs and that we are the safe keepers of said property. Hosting the list on an external site is essentially outsourcing something that numerous people have worked hard to maintain for this supporters group for almost 20 years.

That's your opinion and you're entitled to it, however i'm sure you'll find alot of senior V's  would rather not relinquish a piece of our tradition. If you can't understand that then i'm sorry, but i'm not going to budge on my opposition to you moving our list over to an external site. The info. may be public knowledge, but our seperate, sovereign list must remain on this site. No one is stopping you from posting your list wherever you like, but if you take on the position of maintaining the V's MOACA it should temain on our site, shared or not.
As with anything on this site there should be input from everyone, especially the senior members, contributors, past stewards and leaders.