Can anything stop hedging?
Yes, but not like that.
They have turned Stockholm in a week, the only thing that can turn them now is themselves.
Then they say it AIK You didn’t win a title this year. Peter Weinberg was about to debut as AIK’s new head coach (on paper, Henoch Joytom still decides) and seize the opportunity to shine in the spotlight. TV camera in the face, one minute to go, mouth full of gum.
– We go out and start like a fucking rock concert, he’s up.
And congratulations on this year’s Dirty Kick title.
After a hundred seconds it flowed BK Hacken forward as BK Häcken does. Alex Jeremyjeff has an excellent introductory job, Simon Gustafson who turns the ball to the left, Christopher Lund who intervenes and Ibrahim Sadiq who easily heads 1-0 for the visitors.
A rock concert? So put another cent in the music box, baby.
AIK broke up Djurgården in the Derby recently, and of course there were one or two black and yellow fans who wouldn’t mind giving up three points for anyone other than Djurgården and Hammarby in the gold fight. And if that’s what you wanted to do then…
… well, then maybe you should do something like here.
What we’ve learned about Häcken this year is that they attack wider and more numerous than anyone else, that they have a midfield made up of three very skilled but heavyweights, that they always score and always concede. But AIK failed to reinforce the inner midfield (Bilal Hussein and Yassin Ayari), they messed with the ball when building attacks and allowed Hahn to gather in two interconnected blocks. Häcken had two defenders (primarily Christopher Lund) who attacked the short streak, and AIK had Joe Mendes who chose to play on the side or stay.
AIK needed Cruijff as a break teacher, as he said “If you use the hit, you play very well. If you use two, you play well. If you use three, you play poorly”. I don’t know what Peter Wennberg said, but they spent the first half making all the basic mistakes you could make against Høgmos Häcken. Free space for Gustafsons and Rygaard, non-existent pressure play, slow play, and loss in the funniest winger fight of the year. Häcken is the only club in Allsvenskan that can say with certainty ‘Let’s test how fast Eric Otieno really is’. Ibrahim Sadiq challenged him every time, winning twice out of three.
It seems more and more that the only thing that can reasonably lower Häcken this year is the Häcken themselves.
In moments in matches, the desire to find constructive solutions is punished, they abandon the ball in the wrong positions or expose themselves to counterattacks when they fill everything forward. Good, smart teams can take advantage of this. A week ago, it was still possible to think that they would play two matches already in Stockholm, and you know how historically Häcken wasn’t cocky enough to solve matches in Stockholm.
1–0 against Djurgården, 2–1 against AIK.
It doesn’t even seem difficult.
They are very brave and rooted in the way they play. In the spring you can talk about how much Jeremejeff can afford to score goals, but last month he put his weight back on opposing target players (against AIK, he lost two completely open header positions in the goal area, and a free position towards the end). It’s as if Høgmo’s analysis of Allsvenskan was that there are few teams skilled enough to exploit the fact that a team playing double ten is behind a three-man attack and in front of the series’ best playmaker (Samuel Gustafson), within the advanced edges – and it looks as if He was absolutely right about that.
AIK put in a better effort after the break (before Häcken finally scored 4-0 on goal), they won duels and added more bodies, but they weren’t too close. Yassin Ayari received a red card after two warnings, it was the match for Haken’s team that he lost in the last quarter. It was the worst quarter of the game, I think they had a lot to think about with eleven against ten and one hand on the trophy. John Gedetti took a chance, Peter Abrahamson saved, and Blair Turgot hit back on his own leaving Jeremiah to score 2-0 in an open goal.
game over.
They were creating some drama at the end here, Jon Guidetti hit a 1-2 penalty in injury time, but that was it.
Is the season over?
Anything else would be exciting now. They made it, and now they just have to choose the right match to bring the first gold in history to Hising Island. Against defending champion Malmo? Against IFK Göteborg at Big Brother’s home stadium? Or on a final run before a smoker’s pravida?
– After that we played Häcken football, Høgmo said.
Usually he says that. Now that’s enough almost all the way home.