Finland is not a nation that many would name when listing the powerhouses of the European women’s game, with them qualifying for the European Championships on four occasions but only making it out of their group twice, whilst they have yet to appear at a World Cup.
However, when looking at their national squad, there is an argument that they should be attributed with a little more respect than they currently enjoy, with one of those Euro appearances seeing them reach the semi-finals. It is clear that they produce some excellent footballing talent, as indicated by the number of Finnish players on the books of some of the biggest names in the game, with full-back Emma Koivisto (Liverpool Women), midfield duo Olga Ahtinen and Eveliina Summanen (both Tottenham Hotspur Women) and goalkeeper Tinja-Riikka Korpela (Roma Femminile) just some of those whose performances can be enjoyed in the biggest leagues on the continent.
The Finnish leagues, too, are not divisions seen as being especially strong and are often overlooked when searching for matches to watch. However, that is not to say that stories don’t occur that spark headlines, and those who opted not to take in the 2023 season missed out on a historic occasion as KuPS Women secured a first-ever domestic double by lifting both the Kansallinen Liiga (the women’s top flight) and Finnish Women’s Cup trophies.
There is an argument that this is not exactly a rags-to-riches story, with KuPS, in Finland’s eighth-largest city of Kuopio, generally recognised as one of the nation’s most successful sides in the women’s game. However, the counterargument to that is that they have done it in a year that saw them go through a coaching change, with Pauliina Miettinen replacing the long-serving Ollipekka Ojala midway through, and endure a difficult start to the campaign, which saw many write off their chances of lifting silverware in the early stages of it.
With that in mind, this tactical analysis will take an in-depth look at how they managed to turn their season around and to prove those doubters wrong, with a deep dive into their tactics in attack and defence and the players who helped them to etch their names into the club’s archives. The scout report will also look at where they can improve their performances as they build towards 2024 and the challenge of defending both titles.
Quick transitions
Whenever reading analysis of KuPS Women’s style of play, the same phrases tend to crop up, and the general picture that is gained is one of a team that likes to attack at every available opportunity and whose brand of football is built on quick passing and movement off the ball.
In order to make that work, though, it needs to be something that everyone on the field buys into. That includes the defenders, and it is noticeable when KuPS look for new recruits to bolster their backline that they always prefer to sign backline players who can pass out from the back and who show confidence and decisiveness when moving the ball around the pitch.
It is also important to have stability at the back, with consistency in team selection always a good policy as it allows players to develop their understanding of each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and that is something that KuPS have generally subscribed to over the last year, with their two central defenders more often than not being American Hannah Sharts and mid-season signing Emma Santamäki. As a result of them playing together so often, Sharts and others in the vicinity recognise here that once Santamäki turns and looks to transfer the ball up the field, she needs teammates to spread out and to make the pitch as big as possible, giving her multiple passing options and therefore different ways of starting an attack.
On this occasion, Santamäki opts to pass towards the far side of the field, which starts a sequence of phases that ends with the ball moving into Ilves Women’s third and KuPS getting a shot away at goal, and that indicates just how dangerous the latter is when firstly given this amount of space and secondly having the quality to connect the dots.
It should be noted that they were helped here by Ilves not being able to close off all of Santamäki’s possible passing routes here due to the way that KuPS have spread out. However, it still shows how having this team ethic and consistency in selections at the back was a key reason for Miettinen’s side providing a constant attacking threat.
Looking more specifically at Santamäki’s contributions to their transitions, this progressive pass map indicates just how often she played the ball forwards and gave her team opportunities to access the final third, and this is why they depended on her so much as the season went on and benefitted from having her in the squad.
The fact that there were so many forward passes also highlights the direct nature of KuPS’ play, with them always looking to send the ball forward where they could and rarely resorting to shifting it sideways or backward. There might be some who would have seen this as a risk for KuPS to make, given that there is always a chance that the ball could be in spaces before those at the top of the field were ready to receive it, but this never bothered the champions, with their 86% passing accuracy showing just how tidy they were in possession and how little they saw transitions prematurely break down.
The knock-on effect of having centre-backs who show that level of quality in possession is that the full-backs are not required to drop as far back, and instead, they can focus purely on moving forward and assisting their teammates further up the pitch. In this case, Emmi Siren has done just that with her progressing the ball into the midfield and giving her team an additional body in that area of the pitch.
It was not uncommon to see KuPS being this aggressive in their movement as the 2023 season went on, with their full-backs often staying in these advanced positions, and the advantage of it is that it creates overloads and gives them another playmaker who can break through lines and keep the ball moving up the field. In this case, Siren demonstrates her ability to find gaps and to set up chances by feeding the ball through for fellow Finland international Anni Hartikainen to run onto, and the fact that Hartikainen then, in turn, crossed for Roosa Ariyo to tap home inside the box indicates just how beneficial this can be for teams who operate with this mentality.
There were some games when they couldn’t rely on those positional rotations, though, with some teams getting players behind the ball and preventing them from having the same effect. The meeting with Åland United Women was one of those matches, but KuPS didn’t panic and instead showed that they are not just a one-trick pony, with them making the ball do the work and keeping players in more fixed areas of the pitch.
This did require the team to have a very different skillset, and central to the success that they enjoyed with this way of playing was their midfield, which was suddenly front and centre of their efforts to move the ball around the pitch and to connect the two halves of the pitch together. One player who really stepped up to make that possible was Oona Siren, Emmi’s twin sister and also a full Finland international. She tended to float around in the defensive midfield spaces — but also known for her ability to distribute, she became an essential presence for her team as they tried to open their opponents up with well-timed passes into different areas of the field.
Siren was not a player who attracted much attention during and after KuPS’ matches in 2023. Yet, there is little doubt that she played a vital role in allowing them to attack in different ways and to keep the pressure firmly on their opponents. It was clear to see how much her ability to pick teammates out and start attacks from deeper areas allowed KuPS to control the flow of their games and dominate possession as the season went on (they enjoyed an average of 66.62% possession per game in 2023).
Variety in attack
Given the amount of creativity and effort that KuPS Women put into executing their transitions correctly, it would be easy to assume that their final passes or actions inside the final third would be much more straightforward in their appearance as they looked to avoid overcomplicating matters and squandering opportunities. However, simplicity is not a word in KuPS’ vocabulary as a general rule of thumb. So their attacking play showed just as much inventiveness and variety as was clear to see in other areas of the field.
In this case, for example, Åland were not as structured at the back as they were previously and have left space open for KuPS to exploit, with Hartikainen in possession on the nearside of the field and looking to send the ball into the middle for one of her teammates to get on the end of.
The interesting thing to note here, though, is the positioning of those in the middle, with former Albania forward Lavdie Begolli in front of Wilma Forsblom, and that almost seems to be back-to-front given that Begolli is generally a playmaker for the team whilst Forsblom is known for her goalscoring.
However, the reason that they have set up in this order is because it allows them to manipulate Åland into creating a gap and giving the former a route through to goal, and that is shown here by the infield pass from Hartikainen arriving at the feet of Begolli and both Senja Salo and Taylor Aylmer (the latter of whom spent the second half of the year with NWSL side Racing Louisville) instantly drifting towards her in their efforts to bring the attack to an end.
By doing so, though, they have abandoned the semi-structured line they were previously in, which means there is now a gap available for Forsblom to move into, which is critical here. With the defenders now effectively out of the game, all Begolli needed to do was to flick the ball behind her and into her teammate’s path, and, even though Åland did try to rectify their error through Salo, Aylmer and Sanni Ojanen all sprinting across towards Forsblom, the damage had already been done. The ball ended up in the back of the net.
This is not the only time that KuPS have used different player setups to create gaps to use to their advantage. Decoy runs are another common feature of their final third play and also have the desired effect of manipulating defences into giving KuPS an abundance of chances to test opposing goalkeepers. Therefore, again, there is an inventiveness to their attack that has been clear to see whenever they have stepped foot onto the field, and it has definitely played its part in taking the club to the league and cup titles in 2023.
There are other ways that KuPS have demonstrated their creativity, though, with wing play another key focus for them when progressing up the field. In this case, full-back Maja Göthberg has taken the ball up the nearside channel and fed it into Gentjana Rochi’s path. The expectation would be for the North Macedonia striker to send a first-touch pass back into Göthberg’s path and to allow the Swedish player to cross the ball into the goal area for a teammate to get on the end of.
However, Rochi recognises that doing so at this point in time would allow ONS to track back and block the cross, with Siina Siermala matching Gothberg’s pace and having the necessary speed and momentum to prevent the ball from entering the goal area. Therefore, to negate that possibility, she holds onto the ball for a fraction of a second longer and angles her body as if to send the ball towards the middle of the pitch. By doing so, she creates doubt in the minds of both Siermala, who slows down, and Anni Heikka, who is in front of her, and forces them to hold their positions, which gives Göthberg a better chance of sending the ball into the middle without being under the same amount of pressure.
With her cross finding Forsblom here and leading to another goal for the champions, it shows again how being inventive and creative was a key reason for KuPS securing their first-ever league and cup double.
Whilst it has been evident so far that a lot of KuPS’ attacking play is built on well-executed tactics, there were times when systems and shapes became irrelevant — instead, individual player intelligence was required — and whilst they were able to secure a comfortable win, the match against ONS was one in which they needed to dig deep again to find alternative methods of creating chances.
It is clear here that ONS wanted to get numbers behind the ball and to put as much distance between it and their goal, so added patience was required as KuPS tried to find alternative ways of creating gaps and linking up with each other. One player who really embodied that was Begolli, with her ability to hold the ball up and slow things down on the field, giving her teammates time to get into dangerous positions, frustrating the defenders, and again tempting them to move out of line.
On this occasion, she needed to work a little harder than she has done in some other games to force the gap to open up, with a series of sharp changes in direction eventually taking Stina Virkkala out of her way and allowing her to send the ball forwards, but her endeavour paid off and she ended up shooting at goal and testing her own luck rather than trying to find a teammate in the space behind the ONS back line.
Again, it was a case of KuPS mixing things up and finding different ways to break their opponents down. This allowed them to eventually get their hands on both pieces of silverware available once the season had concluded.
Defensive setup
As with any successful team, though, getting the defensive side of things right was just as vital to KuPS Women securing both titles, and it was increasingly evident as the campaign went on that they gave just as much thought and time on the training ground to how they would set up without the ball as they did to when they did have possession.
When breaking down how they set up inside their own third, there were several fundamental aspects to their shape which brought them success, and the first was the need for numbers to be present in the centre of the field as they looked to ensure that they had as high a chance of winning first balls as possible, ending opposing attacks at the earliest available opportunity.
In this case, the success that brought them is indicated clearly, with Neela Antikainen in possession for HPS Women on the far side of the field and both Henni Rinkinen and Dolma Gurung waiting in the middle for the cross to be made. However, to counter the fact that there are two possible passing options that the ball could travel to here, KuPS have three players marking them, ensuring that there is a better chance of them winning the ball than their opponents and that they can bring the attack to a rapid end. It pays off here as the delivery only travels as far as Sharts, who immediately clears her lines.
What is vital to note, though, is that it was not a one-off to see them set up with three players in a line here, and it was a regular sight to see in their games and a key demand of Miettinen’s as the season went on. It might not be an original tactic, with many other teams also basing their defensive play on having two or three players in a compact shape, but it was certainly effective, with KuPS succeeding in 69.3% of their defensive duels and 50.9% of their aerial duels throughout the 2023 campaign.
With KuPS favouring either a 4-2-3-1 or a 4-3-3 (used in 46% and 26% of matches, respectively) for most of the season, setting up in that way meant that there was always one player left available. That was the second key aspect of their defensive play, with that player tasked with moving out and closing the ball down as soon as it moved into KuPS’ third and aiming to either prevent it from entering their airspace entirely or, at the very least limiting the angles that it could travel through.
Hartikainen was given that role in this case, with HJK Helsinki Women’s Helmi Raijas receiving a pass from Lotta Lindström and looking to send the ball into the goal area. However, the speed at which Hartikainen moved towards her meant that any time that she might have had was instantly removed, and her cross, as a result, was easy for goalkeeper Fanny Söderström to collect.
It may appear that KuPS were virtually unbeatable during the 2023 campaign. Still, it would be a lie for them to claim to be, with there being several moments when they looked vulnerable and made it far too easy for their opponents to apply pressure on their back line.
This situation was one of those, and it resulted from KuPS’ desire to play out from the back and so operate with a high back line. The advantages of doing so have been clear to see throughout the scout report, but the disadvantages are shown here, with a vast amount of territory left unoccupied behind the KuPS defensive line, inviting opponents to target it and to catch them out with a quick counterattack.
On this occasion, PK-35 Vantaa took them up on it, with Roosa Toivanen sending the ball over the top for Sara Sofia Velez to run onto, and, whilst Santamäki was able to make a vital intervention at the last minute, the fact that this was not the only game in which KuPS were forced to turn and run towards the goal area showed how this was a significant problem area for them and is something that they will need to look at as they continue to prepare for the 2024 campaign.
The other issue they came across at times in the campaign was that their constant desire to play out from the back made them a very predictable opponent, and some teams could work out their tactics and use them against KuPS.
In this case, for example, Oona Siren has tried to make a fairly typical pass towards Brazilian midfielder Paulinha but has not spotted that PK-35 Helsinki’s Minea Lassas is nearby and is looking to make an interception as soon as the ball is released. As a result, KuPS lost the ball and were again unable to set up in their structure as mentioned above due to the speed of the counterpress. Only a poor decision by Pia Tavi here let them off, with her opting to shoot at goal when she did have a teammate available to move the ball to in space.
Whilst it may have only been one loose pass, the simple fact is that KuPS’ opponents had a combined 41.3% accuracy for shots on their goal last season, and they conceded 25 goals in total at an average of 1.04 per game. Therefore, if they are to be a better side and keep improving, they will need to tidy up these moments of poor quality because if they don’t, their progression and improvement could hit a snag and allow others to catch up with and overtake them.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this tactical analysis has taken a closer look at KuPS Women, who secured a domestic double in Finland for the first time in their history in 2023 and who have now firmly cemented their reputation as one of the country’s most successful women’s sides.
As has been detailed throughout, several critical tactical details aided their bid for silverware, with quick transitions and well-constructed attacking play at the heart of everything that they did well. When breaking their performances down, it is easy to see why so many teams struggled to contain them whenever they had the ball.
The defensive side of things did also have plenty of positives in it, but there were also a few areas in which they made life increasingly difficult for themselves, and that is what they now need to look at as they continue to build towards their next target, which is a better performance in the Champions League. They are already out of this season’s competition, having beaten Danish Gjensidige Kvindeligaen champions HB Køge Women but suffered a defeat to Serbian Women’s Super League winners ŽFK Spartak Subotica in the final match of their first qualifying round mini-tournament, but they will get the chance to try again in 2024/25 courtesy of this year’s league title.
What could complicate matters is whether Miettinen is still at the club when the new domestic season gets underway, with there being rumours that she may opt to walk away following some health problems. Whilst no one would begrudge her if she did decide to leave the club, there will surely be a lot of hope around Kuopio that she stays on to continue the work that she has already started. Retaining her will undoubtedly allow the team to keep making a name for themselves as ones to watch in the European game.
