🇫🇮 FC Jokerit (Finland)

FC Jokerit (Finland)

The clubs name, FC Jokerit from Finland. Yes, that’s right, a club named Jokerit is featuring in this book, and you would be right in thinking their story is just as interesting as their name. As a modern-day football club, their history is relatively short, but they still made a huge impression, not least their fans who had a reputation of being a bit wild. Well, they would, following a side that was named FC Jokerit. Here is their story.

FC Jokerit was a Finnish football club based in Helsinki. The club was founded in 1999 and were owned by a man named Hjallis ‘Harry’ Harkimo, who is a colourful character to say the least. A Finnish businessman, sportsperson and Youtuber, he is also a member of the Finnish Parliament, running his own political party known as Movement Now. The club only lasted four seasons but did have a bit of success during that time. In there first season they won the Finnish cup, starting off in the 7^th round, beating Rakuunat Lappeenranta 2-1 away from home. Rakuunat are another club that have since been dissolved. The quarter finals saw Jokerit play at home, where they met FC Lahti, a club who themselves had only been founded in 1996. Jokerit won the game 2-1 and progressed to the semi-final where they would meet one of Finland’s biggest and most successful football team’s, HJK Helsinki. A local derby, it was seen by most as just a training match for HJK, who would surely steam roll past their smaller local rivals, who had just begun their football journey. But that wasn’t to be the case and nobody had sent FC Jokerit players the script as they beat their city rivals 1-0 to progress to the Finnish cup final in their first year of existence. Surely, after beating HJK, they would go on and win the trophy. The team that would stand in their way was FF Jaro, a club based in the Finnish town of Jakobstad. They were also known as Jaro Pietarsaari. The Suomen Cup as it’s known as in Finland was contested by the two club in front of an attendance of 3,217 and it was FC Jokerit who lifted the trophy at the end of the game, winning 2-1 and claiming the clubs first bit of silverware in their history. It also saw the club gain qualification for next seasons UEFA Cup.

In the league the club finished a respectable 4^th place out of 12, winning nine, drawing six and losing seven. This qualified them to what was known as the ‘Championship group’ in which the top eight clubs would play each other again to compete for the title. Not much changed in position for FC Jokerit and they stayed in 4^th place, with a record of eleven wins, seven draws and eleven losses. The 2000-01 season saw the club compete in the UEFA cup first round where they were drawn against Hungarian opposition, TK Hungaria. The lost the first leg 1-0 and the second leg 4-2, meaning they were knocked out 5-2 on aggregate. That wsn’t the end of their European journey that season, with the club falling into the Inter-Toto cup, a mini tournament that would allow you to try and progress into the UEFA cup if you won it. Unfortunately, FC Jokerit drew Premier League side West Ham United and while they drew the home leg 1-1, they lost at Upton Park, 1-0, courtesy of a Dave Kitson goal. But that didn’t stop them from doing well in their domestic form and the club finished 2^nd, behind Haka Valkeakoski. They finished with a record of sixteen wins, fourteen draws and just three losses, which qualified them once again for the UEAF cup first round. But once again, they found European football to be a step up too much as they were knocked out by Ukrainian side, CSKA Kyiv, beaten 2-0 in both the home and away legs, 4-0 on aggregate.

The 2001 season saw the club dramatically fall down the table, finishing 11^th out of twlve and facing a promotion/relegation play-off after only recording seven wins, seven draws and losing nineteen games that season. Their opponents for the play-off where the side they beat in the 1999 cup final, Jaro Pietarsaari. The first leg, away from home, ended in a 1-1 draw, setting up the second nicely, but it was the second division side who would cause the surprise this time, winning 4-3 and gaining promotion at the expense of FC Jokerit. The club didn’t spend much time in the Ykkonen, Finland’s second tier, and finished 2^nd out of nine, just behind KooTeePee Kotka. The club gained promotion after going through the various qualification stages, and saw themselves once again competing in the Veikkauliiga, Finland’s top tier. 2003 saw the club finish 10^th out of fourteen, winning seven, drawing seven and losing fourteen. But that was it from the Helsinki based side, who were sold to rivals HJK Helsinki in March 2004 and renamed Klubi-04 and placed in the Kakkonen, the third tier of Finnish football.

I mentioned that FC Jokerit had a bit of wild following, and in respect to Finnish football fans, they made negative headlines more than once. Known as the 116% Boys, so-called because they stood in the section 116 and gave 100% support to their team, they were one of the first football hooligans to make a mark in Finnish football. There had been minor fights between other clubs’ fans beforehand, most notably between supporters of Tampere United and FC Lahti, but the 116% Boys took it to another level. The club had been warned about racist chanting at games before their trip to FC Haka, and there was a heavy security presence put in place for the game because of the away fans. This didn’t stop the fans, around 50 of them, from invading the pitch when Haka scored a last-minute winner to secure a 2-1 victory. Reports show that two officers were injured during the fighting and reinforcements had to be called to usher the 116% Boys back onto their buses for their journey home. But the fans decided they didn’t want to go home and caused even more disruption, heading towards local bars and causing damage to property in the area. Their buses were stopped on their way back to Helsinki but only one person was charged with any misconduct. It put Finnish football in a bad spotlight, with the media comparing FC Jokerit to Millwall fans. It resulted in the Finnish football authorities tightening up security at their football grounds, with away fans being searched.

I interviewed Finnish football expert, Rich Nelson, who runs the escape To Suomi Twitter account, covering everything you need to know about Finnish football, and judging by his detailed answers to my questions, it is well worth the follow.

I have been told you are the man to talk to in regards everything Finnish football, what can you tell me about FC Jokerit?

Rich: Jokerit took over the place of PK-35 Vantaa in 1999 (Vantaa is a district within the Helsinki region), mainly as an attempt to engineer a big second Helsinki club to rival HJK, trading on the brand of the (far more successful and well known) ice hockey team. Finnish football in recent years has been fairly transient and a lot of clubs have folded and reformed, some have merged and re-split while Jokerit is the highest profile attempt at buying and rebranding, suppose the closest equivalent would be MK Dons in England. PK-35 were in financial trouble, and on becoming Jokerit, PK-35 reformed lower down the pyramid.

To me, FC Jokerit seemed to be a sort of project within a bigger project. Is this the case? Was there another motive for the foundation of the club in 1999, or do you know the reasons why?

Rich: The main reason for the club was an attempt to buy into the market without the tradition or history. Football and hockey do have some connections (such as TPS in Turku or Ilves in Tampere) where one club has multiple sports. That they put so much money into the Toolon stadium (currently the Bolt Arena) shows how much cash was behind them. There was ego there, Hjallis Harkimo went in with all guns blazing and was a very sheepish man at the press conference confirming the end. As he said then “We hoped that the people following Jokerit's hockey matches would also get excited about football, but those who arrived at the stadium could be counted with the fingers of one hand”. That they won the Finnish Cup so soon helped build momentum, they had a strong team with big names, but sponsors weren’t too interested and they struggled to fund the side.

While doing my research of FC Jokerit, I found a few other clubs who they had played to have been dissolved as well. Is this a problem in Finnish football?

Rich: Clubs dissolving is pretty common – there isn’t really a huge amount of money in Finnish football, most clubs get a large source of income from junior teams rather than senior games. In the mid 2010s, both PK-35 (again) and former champions Honka had to reform, while Covid has been the main reason why RoPS (Rovaniemi) have essentially put everything and everyone up for sale and dropped a division. In the women’s top flight “Kansallinen Liiga”, TiPS of Tikkurila came second and immediately withdrew from the league because of a lack of funding. Ice hockey is by far the most appealing spectator sport in Finland, and while the Finland national football team are doing well (see Euro 2020) and attracting a lot of money, the domestic game isn’t doing too well below the biggest clubs.

Finnish football came to life in the 90s’ and early 00’s with players like Jari Litmanen, Sami Hyypia and Mikel Forssell all becoming household names in the Premier League. Did this help promote the National League?

Rich: The strong performances of those players (Litmanen, Hyypia, Forssell etc) did very little for the league – most of the national team players did and still do play abroad. Litmanen and Forssell’s returns to Finland did raise some interest, but they were both well past their best at that point. Most of the highest quality young players get taken to the academies of big clubs in Europe before they make much headway in Finland. The standard of the Veikkausliiga has improved immensely and it’s a lot more visible than it was say ten years ago, but for all the good attendances, there are some woeful ones (a top flight game in October had an attendance of 237).

How do you see the league progressing in the next few years? Can clubs like HJK make inroads in European competitions? And now with the UEFA conference league, surely, we will be seeing more of the Finnish clubs in action?

Rich: There is proper competition at the top of Veikkausliiga, last season had a final day decider between HJK and KuPS, the previous two winners, which attracted decent attention. Some of the other clubs such as Inter Turku and SJK are well backed too. But HJK’s income dwarves the others, while they earned around 4 million Euros from playing in the group stage of the Conference League which would cover their entire budget for two years. HJK’s minimum expectation every season is to reach *a* group stage, but they didn’t do great in 2021 and not drawing a big club such as Spurs or Roma didn’t help. They have been investing in Finland internationals and decent foreigners so should do at least as well again next year. The Conference League is a great draw for Finnish clubs, but it’s likely to just extend the financial divide between HJK and the rest.

While I try to keep everything positive about the clubs I write about, I have to ask about the 116% Boys as they kept coming up in my research. Can you tell me anything about them? Good or bad? And do they still follow the current Jokerit FC?

Rich: Honestly don’t really know anything about the 116% Boys.

Finally, can you tell me an interesting fact about FC Jokerit that the readers wouldn’t know about? And can you see them ever making it back to the top tier of Finnish football?

Rich: Re the future of Jokerit, I definitely can’t see anything big in their future – the club name is pretty toxic now (as a football club), meanwhile the hockey operation is also a bit of a laughing stock because of the move to the KHL (Russian hockey league). The rules have tightened up around buying into clubs now, and HIFK, another Helsinki club, almost went out of business because of ownership issues. It’s also a bit of a closed shop as the Veikkausliiga is run by the clubs rather than the FA and they won’t want a pretender. They’ll remain a quirk in Finnish football history unfortunately.

 

An interesting football club, with a short but entertaining history. One major trophy, one second place finish in the topflight and one promotion from the second tier, all in four seasons. The club itself just seemed to be a bit a project within a project as the name Jokerit is highly recognisable when it comes to ice hockey in Finland. But the name Jokerit FC still lives on, in a new identity, and playing their football in the lower leagues. The club reformed in 2012, and now play in the Tali Halli TN league, which they have once in their history. They have also competed in the Suomen cup, reaching the 3^rd round, but sadly not reaching the heights of their original form when they won the cup in 1999. Will they ever reach those dizzy heights again? Who knows? They still regard HJK as their main rivals, whilst also adding their former selves, now known as Klubi-04 as a rival as well, despite rarely ever playing either team. There is no doubt in my mind the fans of FC Jokerit had fun while following their side, albeit maybe took it a bit too far on some occasions, but still, they seemed to have a laugh.