Honka vs Haka

Honka from Espoo host Haka for this Finnish Veikkausliiga round 2 clash at Bolt Arena in my hometown, Helsinki. This is the highest level of Finnish football. I will be at the stadium once again of course – hopefully to witness another winner with my fans! Indeed, the free pick I posted on Saturday was a winner as HJK Helsinki defeated Honka 1-0. This match is played at Bolt Arena because the weather in Espoo is unusually cold – there is a lot of snow in fact! As a result, the pitch is not in good condition at Honka’s home stadium, Tapiolan Urheilupuisto. The home advantage is in these circumstances a bit lower than normally but there will surely be hundreds of Honka supporters traveling to Helsinki from Espoo! The trip by subway takes for only about 20-30 minutes. I suspect the betting market has over-reacted to the match being played at a different stadium!

Honka are definitely the better team by raw class and are with the home advantage 50% favorites to win the match! In fact, the artificial turf at Bolt Arena favors Honka compared to grass pitch in bad shape. Indeed, Honka are the more skilled team of these two and have some fine offensive players. They will surely improve from disappointing last season! They challenged a pretty strong Slovakian team last summer in UEFA Conference League qualification losing 1-2 in aggregate, but in Veikkausliiga they just did not find a good groove. However, potential is definitely there! Honka also have a much bigger players’ salary budget than Haka for this season: 830 000 euros. Haka’s salary budget is 550 000 euros. In my opinion Honka have also spent the money more wisely. They also have a promising coach, Vesa Vasara. A calm and tactically brilliant guy!

Honka played a promising season opener on Saturday against the mighty HJK, who are clearly the best team in this league! They were better than I would have expected. Just to explain to my fans how strong a club HJK are - the betting market estimates HJK's chance of lifting the trophy at the end of the season at approximately 80%, but I would say the correct number is closer to 90%. HJK to are expected to win the league by more than 5 points' difference! They are even stronger now than last season as they have many great level for this league new players for example, defender Jukka Raitala from Minnesota United, MLS, where teams from both USA and Canada play. It is a pretty high-level league actually! Joona Toivio, also a defender, joined the the team for this season from Swedish team, Häcken. These guys have played well in the Finnish national team that even played in the EURO 2020 last summer even beating the semifinalists Denmark in Copenhagen 1-0 and are super-stars in Veikkausliiga! Even so, Honka defended very well last Saturday despite HJK winning in front of over 4000 home fans. HJK did not, quite surprisingly, get too many scoring chances and Honka had a few themselves! HJK were the better team, controlling the match but it could easily have been a draw as well! Honka’s offensive game has better structure and faster pace than last season and today against a lot weaker opponent than HJK they will probably control the ball here and probably create much more scoring chances than Haka! In addition, Honka beat two Swedish teams - Djurgården and Helsingborg in friendlies in the pre-season. These teams are much bigger than Honka by financial resources. They were promising performances but we must also remember that friendlies always include a lot squad rotating and players' motivation is rarely 100%.. Haka have achieved good results recently but have over-performed and beating Ilves at home was not anything that would excite me too much.. Honka are clearly better by raw class than Ilves. We must remember that Haka have not faced any strong teams lately and last time they did was on the 17th of December 2021 and KuPS, who placed in the 2nd place last season, crushed them 4-1! The betting market hugely over-values Haka here!

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来自埃斯波的Honka在我的家乡赫尔辛基的Bolt Arena举办了芬兰Veikkausliiga第二轮比赛。这是芬兰足球的最高水平。我当然会再一次出现在球场上，希望能和我的球迷一起见证另一个胜利!事实上，我在周六发布的自由选择是一个赢家，HJK赫尔辛基1-0击败Honka。这场比赛在博尔特竞技场进行，因为埃斯波的天气异常寒冷——实际上有很多雪!因此，Honka的主场体育场Tapiolan Urheilupuisto的球场状况不佳。主场优势在这种情况下比平时稍低，但肯定会有数百名Honka的支持者从埃斯波前往赫尔辛基!乘坐地铁只需要大约20-30分钟。我怀疑博彩市场对在另一个体育场举行的比赛反应过度了!

Honka绝对是更强的队伍，以50%的主场优势赢得比赛!事实上，博尔特球场的人造草皮比糟糕的草皮更适合Honka球场。事实上，Honka是这两支球队中技术更强的一支，并且有一些很好的进攻球员。他们肯定会比上赛季的失望有所改善!在去年夏天的欧联资格赛中，他们挑战了一支相当强大的斯洛伐克球队，他们以1-2的总比分失利，但在Veikkausliiga，他们没有找到一个好的状态。然而，潜力是绝对存在的!本赛季Honka的球员工资预算也比Haka大得多:83万欧元。哈卡的工资预算是55万欧元。在我看来，Honka花钱也更明智。他们还有一个很有前途的教练，Vesa Vasara。一个冷静而又有战术天赋的家伙!

Honka在周六的揭幕战中打了一场充满希望的比赛，对手是强大的HJK，他们显然是联盟中最好的球队!他们比我预期的要好。我想向我的球迷解释一下HJK是多么强大的一个俱乐部——博彩市场估计HJK在赛季结束时举起奖杯的几率约为80%，但我想说的是，正确的概率接近90%。预计HJK将以5分以上的差距赢得联赛!他们现在甚至比上个赛季更强，因为他们有很多伟大的水平，这个联盟的新球员，例如，后卫Jukka Raitala来自明尼苏达联队，美国和加拿大的球队在大联盟打球。事实上，这是一个相当高水平的联赛!后卫乔娜·托伊维奥(Joona Toivio)本赛季从瑞典Häcken队加盟德国队。这些家伙在芬兰国家队踢得很好，甚至在去年夏天参加了2020年欧洲杯，甚至在哥本哈根1-0击败了半决赛的丹麦，他们是Veikkausliiga的超级明星!尽管如此，洪城上周六在4000多名主场球迷面前获胜，但他的防守还是很出色。令人惊讶的是，HJK并没有得到太多的得分机会，而Honka自己也有一些!HJK是更好的球队，控制了比赛，但它可能很容易成为平局!Honka的进攻比上个赛季有更好的结构和更快的节奏，今天面对比HJK弱很多的对手，他们可能会控制球，可能会比hka创造更多的得分机会!此外，Honka在季前赛的友谊赛中击败了Djurgården和赫尔辛堡两支瑞典球队。这些球队在财力上比Honka大得多。他们的表现很有希望，但我们也必须记住，友谊赛总是包括大量的阵容轮换，球员的积极性很少是100%。哈卡最近取得了不错的成绩，但是他们表现得很好，在主场击败伊尔维斯并不是什么让我兴奋的事情。在原始阶级方面，Honka人明显比Ilves人更好。我们必须记住，哈卡最近没有遇到过任何强队，上一次他们遇到强队是在2021年12月17日，上赛季排名第二的库普斯以4-1击败了他们!博彩市场高估了哈卡的价值!