Finland at the EM: Hradecky falls out of the usual professional footballer

After victories, the Finns actually sing a song called “Oi Suomi on”, Lukas Hradecky once said.

The team around the Bayer Leverkusen goalkeeper pays homage to the virtues of their home country with this ritual: "Oh Finland is, oh Finland is, oh Finland is a beautiful country," it says in the text.

"We have a sauna, schnapps and axes, oh Finland is a beautiful country." Now they are not only participating in an EM for the first time, they have even won a game.

But after the 1-0 win against Denmark at the start of the tournament, during which the drama about the collapsed Christian Eriksen had occurred, nobody sang. The 0: 1 against Russia in the second game did not give rise to a party mood either, in the third group game against Belgium this Monday (9 p.m. in the FAZ live ticker for the European Football Championship and on MagentaTV) this tournament should finally turn into a joyful one with the round of 16 Football Festival to be transformed. The team is facing the "biggest game in Finnish football history", says head coach Markku Kanerva and emphasizes: "We have everything in our own hands."

But even without taking part in the knockout round, the tournament will remain an unforgettable experience for Hradecky.

After the opening game, he was accused of not deliberately letting a penalty shot by Pierre-Emile Höjbjerg into the goal because the Danes were noticeably upset and could hardly play properly after the successful resuscitation of their star and in the opinion of many observers should be punished with defeat.

"Relaxed drink a beer"

You can “prepare for everything that has to do with your own performance”, says Hradecky in the Bild newspaper, “but not for something like that”.

In this particular situation, any kind of behavior would have been open to attack.

If he had let the ball into the goal, the criticism would have swelled to a shit storm, he would have been accused of giving the Finns a one-off chance.

With this penalty saved, Hradecky finally became a national celebrity.

Before the European Championship he was able to "walk around Finland in a relaxed way and drink a beer", that may now be different.

By the way, Hradecky likes to drink beer, which caused a stir on the sidelines of an international match against Belarus in 2018.

After Finland's 2-0 win, he grabbed a spectator's cup, which he emptied in one big gulp.

A few weeks after the robbery, he found the victim of theft and sent him 24 cans of Czech beer to compensate, "Debt paid," he tweeted. Hradecky is a footballer who is valued not only for his reflexes, but also his spontaneity and humor. Although after the action with the viewer's beer he was suspected of being drunk every evening. “Of course that's not the case, I'm a professional,” he says. "I turn on Netflix, cook something to eat, take a beer from the fridge and then rest."

Hradecky knows about his privileges as a high earner, but also talks about the dark side of this life plan. The behavior of footballers is quickly misinterpreted or even deliberately misunderstood, and as a professional you are "somehow locked up". Anyone who is not careful will quickly be bent into a standardized standard professional by public expectations and the fear of offending. Hradecky is someone who resists such compulsions. “I think it's important to be yourself, and luckily I recognized that early on,” says the professional, who is used to being a little out of place.

He was born in Bratislava, Slovakia, a few days after the wall fell.

Shortly afterwards, his family emigrated to the Finnish port city of Turku.

Here father Vlado, a trained engineer, was able to earn money as a professional volleyball player after the end of the Cold War.

The young family stayed, Lukas became a footballer and was nicknamed "the spider".

Because he likes to build up wide in front of the opposing strikers with his arms spread apart.

In Leverkusen, after the end of the career of the Bender twins, he is one of the very few players who belong to the “real type” category and will therefore also play a key role in the coming year.

Because he helps with his way of looking at football with a certain ease.

When he moved from Bröndby Copenhagen to Eintracht Frankfurt in 2014, he claimed to have become a goalkeeper because he is too lazy to run as much as his colleagues on the field. Now he says: “I hope that we are underestimated in Belgium , but we're not as weak as you might think. ”The Belgians often have problems with the Finns. Of the five duels since the turn of the millennium, the Scandinavians have won two and not lost a single one.

The game won 2-0 in 2007 was particularly memorable, when an eagle owl that kept flying low over the lawn caused a long interruption and became the team's mascot. With another win, the Finns would be in the round of 16, with a draw they can hope, and with a lot of luck even one defeat could be enough to make it into the knockout round.