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Lauri Ala-Myllymäki (center) scored Ilves’ victory goal. MAGAZINE / Kalle Parkkinen
Ilves, who started the football league in a sticky way, cut his five-match winning streak with a 1-0 victory over the league jumbo RoPS on Wednesday in Tampere.
Matias Niemelä, who played his league debut with a RoPS goal, immediately got into the actual ball rain, as Ilves took the shot statistics as high as 22-1.
– Was it really that much? Yes, that was the task, Niemelä laughed when he was informed about his play on Monday.
– It felt like I was playing an ok game. This was a big step for myself, but there is still room for improvement.
Lauri Ala-Myllymäki, who started on the bench, managed to overtake Niemelä at the beginning of the second half.
– He needs to recover a little too. There was a feeling that Lauri would score when the substitution came. And the goal came pretty much as I thought, Ilves’ head coach Jarkko Wiss stated.
The lynx rose to fifth and four points from KuPS and Inter, who hold the top spot. Zurab Tsiskaridze, the top winner of RoPS, who continued to win, played his first minutes in Tampere after being injured in the opening round.