Magical Together: Women’s World Championships in Floorball and MyCoazh

10. Women’s Floorball World Championships are held 4.-12.12.2015 in Tampere Finland. This is only the second time when Finland is the hostess of Women’s World Championships.  In 1997 the second Women’s World Championships were held in Ahvenanmaa. Hostess city Tampere is also hosting Floorball World Championships for the second time. In 2004 the first WU19 World Championships were held in Tampere. From that tournament we can still recall phenomenal Jenni Nikkanen and trainings of team Sweden. Nikkanen was one of the most talented female floorball player ever but despite her superiority Sweden won gold. The other thing that will be always remembered is seeing team Sweden training: they were tackling each other at the trainings harder than Finnish men’s league teams those days!

Picture 1: www.WFC2015.fi

Games are played at Tampere-Arena and Hakametsä hockey arena, which are comfortable only 5 minutes walking distance from each other. Both arenas are situated only couple of kilometres from the heart of the city of Tampere. Team Sweden has been dominating the World Championships recently and is seeking for its fifth in a row. Hostess team Finland with the help of the home crowd is hunting for its third world championship. Switzerland and Czech are eager to surprise and behind traditional successors Norway and Latvia there are new rising teams e.g. Poland, Germany and especially Slovakia.

Picture 2: In 12.12.2015 at the end of the rainbow will be GOLD, Hakametsä hockey arena

There will be 16 teams altogether, divided in 4 groups. In every group there will be 4 teams. Group A and B are the “upper” groups and Group C and D the “lower”. Every team has theoretical possibility to play in the final but the differences between the teams are so huge, that there will hardly be any big surprises. All in all there will be 48 games in 9 days and for those teams that are heading for the top of the table there will be 6 games in 9 days. Quite a strain. All the games can be seen via IFF-youtube channel and on some TV-channels too, but Magical Together atmosphere is best of course on the spot!

Games are best on the spot but so are fans, too! There will be “the official fan of team Finland”, mr. Tero Töyrylä with his “Turha koittaa – Suomi voittaa!” chant, drums and horn and huge head pictures of the Finnish players. We will hear “Hop – Suisse, Hop Suisse!” and “Sverige-Sverige!” supports, too. Let´s hope that there will be fans and visitors from all over the world and all kinds of chants to be heard and learned. Organizers are aiming at breaking the earlier spectator records both on the spot and via television & youtube.

Group A’s favourite is home team Finland. Finnish team has very solid defense with probably the best goalies in the world and they have talent to attack, too. Finland is of course a challenger and during this competition period Sweden and Finland have played 8 times and Finland has won only twice. Sweden will not easily forget the game at Finnkampen couple of months ago, when they lost 7-0! Interesting players in team Finland to scout or watch are goalie Jonna Mäkelä, defenders Mia Karjalainen, Laura Mertsalmi and My Kippilä. It was near that team Finland would have had three siblings (and two twins): Kujala, Alanko and Kauppi –sisters. But after finishing training camp Oona Kauppi was replaced by Laura Hietamäki.

Picture 3: Jonna Mäkelä

Switzerland is doing everything they can with their very experienced team to win Finland and avoid Sweden in semifinals. This is the last tournament for the national team coach Sascha Brendler and there is a little bit taste of “one more time, trusted players!”. Swiss 1-line is one the best in world or what do you say about: Bärtschi – Ruttimann – Wiki, von Rickenbach – Marti. And the 2-line is almost as good: Zwinggi – Ulber – Stella, Ludwig – Putzi. Also the goalie Bircher is one of the best. Switzerland will do or die for Ruttimann’s and Marti’s ball possession, Bärtschi’s and Wiki’s goal scoring and Tanja Stella’s counter attacks.

Norway has a good herstory of women’s floorball with couple of medals, but the team is perhaps now not so promising. There are still some really high class players like Tone Einstulen, Karen Farnes or Sandra Vika, and there are quite a few talented newcomers. In qualification match against Russia Einstulen was at the rink half of the third period. Coach took a timeout just to give her a chance to get something to drink! And it paid off because she assisted Sandra Vika’s decisive goal only 4 seconds before the end of the game when Norway won Russia 4-3.

Poland is a mixture of experience and youth and could be one of the surprise teams in the tournament. Poland’s key players are experienced Elzbieta Piotrowska and Marta Stachowiak, but latter was injured just before the tournament and young Justyna Krzywak, also known as “JB”. Krzywak will go after the throws of the goalie Szarmach. She is very fast and able to score. Poland lost only 1-4 against Sweden in qualification match.

Picture 4: Marcin ja 3 Justynas, Justyna Krzywak second from left (ooops, in some devices second from right and upside down

Group B has only one favorite and that’s the reigning champion Sweden. “Dengladalandslaget” hasn’t got very happy news lately after top-quality defender Cassandra Edberg suddenly just out of blue announced that she’ll quit floorball. A month ago she was selected an all stars player of EFT-tournament. Then Ranja Varli commented on her not being selected to the team and just recently Johanna Holmbom was announced not to recover from a knee injury in time. Holmbom was a key player in team Sweden. She can play almost any role or position and now there will be only 1 player playing from right in team Sweden.

After last World Championships in Brno-Ostrava half of the Sweden’s 1- and 2-lines have either quit or were not selected to this team. What do you say about these names: Victoria Wikström, Emilie Lindström, Sandra Mattson (the best player of WFC2013), Isabell Krantz, Jenny Gustafsson, Malin Marklund and now both Cassandra Edberg and Johanna Holmbom. For any other national team it would be a death blow but not for team Sweden. There will always be the next talent in line.

In attacking Sweden is the best in the world and there are plenty of goal scorers but fortunate to other teams Sweden’s goalies and defense are not at the same high level. Centers Anna Wijk and Cornelia Fjellstedt are top performers, Eiremo concentrates on defending. Any of the forwards Stålhult, Jakobsson, Karlsson, Anreasson can easily put the ball to the net. Especially now when Holmbom’s injury opens the door for Andreasson the KAIS Mora’s line Karlsson – Wijk – Andreasson is back. This line is probably the world best in attacking but defense does not interest them – or should you say they don’t have to do it. When Moa Tschöpp is at the rink something will definitely happen coach just doesn’t always know at which end of the rink.

Picture 5: Cornelia Fjellstedt

Czech team didn’t show anything at EFT-tournament just month before the championships. They gave rest for their star player Eliska Krupnova. Czech was monotonous at that tournament and only the goalies were good. During the two-year-period team Czech had three games in a row without scoring a single goal.  It tells a story about goal scoring problems. Germany and Latvia will compete for the third place. In team Germany there is playing young and talented Randi Kleerbaum, who is playing at the moment in Finland.

MyCoazh is predicting the final order of the Group C Denmark, Australia, Singapore and Japan even though one has to admit that this prediction has very little to do with knowledge. In Group D there are a couple of familiar players: Slovakian Lucia Kosturiakova and two Russian players who are playing at the Finnish Women’s league. MyCoazh predicts this order in Group D: Slovakia, Russia, USA, Netherlands.

Picture 6: Lucia Kosturiakova

MyCoazh will be strongly participating in the tournament, too. We are analyzing games for team Finland and for other head coaches for viewing. There will be CoazhCorner where all the coaches interested in statistics/analytics can come and have a chat with us. CoazhCorner can be recognized by MyCoazh –logo. There will be some MyCoazh –youtube videos during the tournament, also.

During the tournament you will find MyCoazh game previews at Facebook pages (My Coazh) and short summary after the each days games are over. There will also be three longer stories about the tournament: this one before, during and after the tournament on www.mycoazh.fi and www.mycoazh.com sites. In Twitter @MyCoazh there will be lineups ½ hour before the game. During the game in intermissions there will be @MyCoazh Estimated Full Time predictions. @MyCoazh EstFT is right 2 games out of 3 after first period and in 4 games out of 5 after second period by the winner and even with the right scores by 60 and 75 percentages if we will give a range of +- one goal for both teams.

After each game @MyCoazh Most Valuable Player will be presented in a tweet. You can participate too. Send your favorite MVP-player to @MyCoazh and you can win MyCoazh PRO license (value 490 euros + VAT). You can scout your favorite player with MyCoazh Floorball application, which you can download from App Store

https://itunes.apple.com/fi/app/mycoazh-floorball/id834831456?mt=8

or from Google Play

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mycoazh.floorball1

for only 2,99 euros. It is easy to use. Just read the Info/Help section and start using the application. With MyCoazh Floorball you can scout one player (mark every action of that player) and after downloading, you can use it unlimited.

Picture 7: App Store & MyCoazh Floorball app

The most important thing in Women’s World Championships in Floorball is the Magical Together –atmosphere. That will say delivering the joy of the girls’ and womens’ floorball! Everyone of us can be a part of this either on the spot or via youtube or other media. The City of Tampere and the tournament organizers are ready: Welcome to Tampere! Let’s feel something Magical Together!

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This post was written by Juska