Sometimes you sink into the mud up to your waist. You can barely move, let alone kick a ball. Playing football in a swamp. It seems hopeless, almost insane. And yet the annual World Championship Swamp Soccer in Hyrynsalmi, Finland, proves that it can be done. This weekend the 24th edition will take place with 131, mainly Finnish teams, who will compete for medals in the midst of a festival atmosphere.
By Walter Tempelman
Swamp soccer is played on a 30 by 60 meter pitch. Sometimes the fields are reasonably playable, sometimes not at all. On the really wet fields, the football players plow through a wet and muddy field. It can happen the ball is between two players, who simply can and do not move forward for minutes. Katja Pasanen, a member of the Nelinkontin team (which means On all fours) that has been participating for 12 years, still remembers her first game of swamp soccer.
“We took it very seriously, that first time. While everyone was already partying the day before, we put on our sports gear to warm up. We wanted to be ready. The next day when I stepped onto the field, I immediately sank down to my waist. I couldn’t move, it was cold and I thought, ‘Oh my god, what the hell have I got myself into, I’m gonna die, haha’. This is not football, this is surviving.”
Local heroes
Nelinkontin won the tournament last year, Jukikunnan Murheilijat was the best in the men’s elite group. Pasi Saario and his mates play football all year round in the sixth division and in the old boys league and have their regular football trip in swamp soccer. They are the local heroes of the region. “We are affiliated with the sports association in our village Jokikunta, with about 600 inhabitants in the Vihti region. We are involved in several events and are quite active on social media. People from our region know us. Sometimes I meet someone in the supermarket that I have never seen before and they know that we participated in swamp soccer and compliment us. “
The Swamp Soccer World Cup has been held since 1998 and was once invented by cross-country skiers who developed fitness training in the swamp during the summer. Swamp soccer sometimes feels more like a workout than a game of soccer. “You don’t have to know how to play football at all to participate in this,” says Pasanen, who stems from (ice) hockey herself. “Sometimes they say one match of two times ten minutes equals an hour of training up in the hills. Last year we also participated in the mixed team competition, so some of us played 15 games in two days!”
Muddy
To win, you have to be a bit lucky with the pitch you play on. Too many matches in the real heavy swamp can be disastrous to the result. “Sometimes you stand on – or rather in – an unplayable field and you know it will be 0-0 for sure. I have seen situations where a player had to be helped to just get out of the swamp, let alone that person could pass a ball,” says Saario. “But I do want us to play on fields that are half wet and soft and half hard. And also really muddy, because that’s how it should be at this event.”
It is clear that swamp soccer is not just about winning. In fact: the fun, the atmosphere, the party is important and makes it more of a festival. The V-ALKO squad of Tapio Vilenius, Marko Hellsten and Oula Etelälahti, among others, is an example of a team enjoying the festival. “We are a team of family and friends who have been doing it for eighteen years. It is fantastic to come to this party every year. We are one big family,” says Vilenius. Hellsten adds, “I have a wife and four kids who play it too, they love it.” The team has never won a medal in those eighteen years. “How many times have we finished fourth? Four times I think? We really do our best when we are on the pitch, but to us it is of course about the atmosphere, about the whole event.”
Drunk
Etelählahti joined the team later on and first wanted to know what swamp soccer exactly entails. “You have to see and experience it for yourself”, I was told. “And that is true. It is a kind of festival area with bars, food, music, and – we are in Finland – so there are also saunas. And then there is football. The trick is to always keep moving on bad pitches. If you stand still for ten seconds, you’re fucked, you sink. The swamp is like glue, you can’t move anymore.” It is strenuous and physically demanding. Especially if, like V-ALKO last year, you have no substitutes. “Last year everyone had to play every game, yes. That got really tough, especially the last games. Everything hurts in your body. You are tired. And drunk hahaha.”
No matter how difficult, no matter how terrible the first experiences may be, no mater how deep your body got stuck in the mud, the swamp gets you. The whole atmosphere ensures that many teams put the soccer tournament in the swamps of Hyrynsalmi on their calendar every year. Pasanen, Saario, Vilenius, Hellsten en Etelälahti, they al say it: ‘It can become very addictive.’
