Estonian football is famous for delivering unexpected yet good natured peculiarities like, possibly, no other league in Europe. In a friendly match between FC Flora and the Finnish HJK, away fans gradually hijacked the live commentary of the match for around 30 minutes until, eventually, being wrestled down by security and returning the microphone to the Estonian commentator. Flora won 2-1.
Yesterday, FC Flora hosted the Finnish grand HJK in an annual pre-season friendly, with Konstantin Vassiljev‘s squad performing admirably to lead HJK 2-0 at half time, eventually winning 2-1 with Markus Poom and Rauno Sappinen scoring for the home team. But this is not what made this particular friendly especially noteworthy.
A group of HJK fans travelled to Tallinn to support their team and to enjoy a wintry day out in the picturesque capital of Estonia, only a short ferry trip away from Helsinki. Having arrived to the EJL hall for the match and taken to their allocated sector, HJK supporters watched their team go down 2-0 in the first half.
Frustrated yet undeterred, despite this being a friendly game where HJK tested many youth players that it was, some of the away fans must have noticed that the Estonian commentator of this match – Kristjan Jaak Kangur – was positioned in their immediate vicinity. For those watching the broadcast live, of course, this proximity was already quite obvious, as the chants of away supporters were clearly audible during the broadcast.
On the 56th minute, somehow, with or without consent of the commentator, one of the away fans connected a spare headset to the broadcast system and commenced a Finnish commentary of the game, having, rather professionally, exchanged names with Kristjan Jaak Kangur first. This was, surely, the boost that the Finnish team needed as HJK pulled one goal back about a minute later, not only sending away fans, along with the newest member of the commentator team, into jubilant ovations but also resulting in more visiting fans choosing to contribute to the commentary of the match.
For about 10 minutes thereafter, a bilingual commentary of the game took place. Any Finnish speakers tuning in at that point may have been equally surprised by the availability of commentary in their language and by why the Finnish commentators were occasionally being shouted at, and shouting back at, what sounded like arena security staff. Flora supporters, allegedly, took the side of their Finnish brethren and encouraged security to not intervene.
The high point of the Finnish language commentary came when a line of away fans took the opportunity to take the microphone and each express their personal dislike for how their team was performing. One headset would not suffice for such an ambitious undertaking with so little time left, so Kristjan Jaak Kangur was dispossessed of his headset as well and, with him gone on the 73rd minute, so was the Estonian commentary. To make their victory final, a HJK sticker was affixed to one of the security cameras and a fan group’s flag was hoisted in from of the TV camera around the 80th minute, prompting soccernett.ee to formalise their capitulation to the energetic HJK fans by placing a notice on the live broadcast which noted that ‘HJK Fans are commenting on the game’.
The order was restored shortly thereafter as a group of security personnel removed visiting fans from the commentator’s position, making it possible for Kristjan Jaak Kangur to resume his work.
Despite the broadly humorous nature of the incident, it must be acknowledged that multiple racist statements were made on air by the Finnish fans, supplemented by a heavy dose of swearing. With Finnish and Estonian languages sharing much of the vocabulary, these would not have been incomprehensible to the domestic audiences either. As for the club itself, HJK issued a statement condemning this type of behaviour and banning the person responsible from the fan club:
HJK has zero tolerance for racism. The person who made the racist comment during the livestream of the Flora game has been identified and has no further involvement in HJK games. The supporters have also completely excluded the person from the activities of Klubipääty.
