A beach soccer tournament took place in Nallikari on August 13th and 14th. There were 16 women’s teams and 48 men’s teams competing, with no restrictions set on who could participate. The teams travelled from Keminmaa, Muhos, Kajaani, Ylivieska, Salla, Rovaniemi and Helsinki, however most of the teams were local.

Six fields were neatly set up on the beach, all of them a lot smaller than a conventional football field. This made the game more action-filled in some sense, as the players could attempt a goal from anywhere on the field. Each game only lasted for two, 10-minute halves, which is a lot shorter than a usual soccer game of two, 45-minute halves.

The atmosphere was very southern beach-like, with temperatures reaching 28ºC on Saturday, and beach music streaming loudly from the speakers. A host frequently updated the audience on the scores, and families who came to swim in the sea took peeks of what was happening. As the AC Oulu coach put it in his welcome, ‘Finally there is a summer event in Oulu on an international scale’.

The observers were mainly young men sipping beer, enjoying the sun and cheering at the goals. The players seemed to take the game very seriously, and the audience was no less involved than in a conventional soccer match. An estimated few thousand people had shown up over the course of the two-day event, which the organisers reckoned to be a great success. There were no seats, so people just surrounded the fields by sitting or standing on the sand.

The only problem I came across was the fact that a few matches were taking place at the same time, and people had a hard time deciding which game to watch. ‘I really want to see the men’s finals, but my friend is playing for the women’s team at the same time on a different field!’ one of the observers was complaining.

The tournament was organized by AC Oulu, and is the first of its kind for the city.  The organisation was very good, with the fields and the café put up very nicely, and, what surprised me, the garbage cleaned off the beach right away between the tournaments. ‘The event was a success! We are meaning to organise the same event next year,’ Anna-Kaija Kaikkonen, one of the organisers, stated proudly.

Such happenings really break the stereotypical view of Oulu being always cold and windy. The combination of hot weather and beach soccer had transformed Nallikari into a southern-style sea resort for the weekend. ‘The idea of having something like this is Oulu is amazing! And I’m not usually even interested in soccer,’ claimed observer Leena, who unintentionally showed up at the beach just in time for the finals.

The winners of the tournament were FC Härdelli for women and AC Kasikuus for men, both from Oulu. The full results can be seen at http://beachsoccer.fi/joukkueet.html .