Thanks for all the positive feedback on the Football Archive -
http://www.finlandfootball.net/. It is very much appreciated. Sometimes I receive a query that I cannot answer.
Could you possibly help Joe with his query below please?
Who is right? my hobby is compiling ALL European results into tables for each country. Now Finland: My information is that 1974 IK Tampere and TaPa Tampere merged to become FC Ilves. Then they became Tampere United before 1999. Ilves then out of football until 2007. This is FC Ilves, not IK Tampere. Then Tampere Utd were kicked out of league, but I see they are back. Is it continuating or brand new team. I also noticed recently that FC Ilves AND Ilves Tampere are competing in league again. I'm trying to establish year they actually became Tampere United, FC Ilves and Ilves Tampere. Also noticed that IK Tampere is playing in lo wer leagues. New Team?
Now FC Lahti: they were Reipas Lahti [Lahden Reipas]. They merged with Kuusysi Lahti in 1996 to become FC Lahti. In 2012 Reipas Lahti returned to football. I assume they unmerged with Kuusysi Lahti. But now I've found out Kuusysi are now called Lahti Akatemia and in lower divisions. Again I noticed that Kuusysi Lahti is also in in lower league. So which club is the original Kuusysi and when did they emerge?
Hope you can help help because Ive spent at least a week using a football reference book and the Wikipedia to check these teams out and they actually miss out changing back/unmerging of the above teams. In 2010 I found these team in Top 5-6 divisions Tampere Utd, FC Lahti, Ilves Tampere AND Ilves Kissat Tampere.
I hope this is not too long winded and hope you can reply.
Thanking you in anticipation.The main key to solving this mystery is understanding that sports clubs in Finland can exist even without a first team playing men's football.
Lahti: FC Lahti, est 1996, is the result of Kuusysi and Reipas merging their first teams. FC Lahti hasn't unmerged since. However, despite the merger neither Kuusysi and Reipas died as clubs. But instead they both have individually continued existing as the main junior teams of the city in order to develop players for FC Lahti, who used to have no junior teams at all.
Before 2011, a local div2 team called FC City Stars was taken over by Kuusysi. However, this "new" Kuusysi was only effectively acting as a lower division affiliate of FC Lahti. In 2012 Reipas did the same, taking over SalReipas (don't confuse it with Reipas), and it too became an affilitate of FC Lahti. But FC Lahti were watching them from above like a good parent should, and decided in 2013 that they weren't having it with Reipas and Kuusysi doing individual shit, and proceeded to take over some more control of the clubs - a move which involved establishing some junior teams for FC Lahti itself as well as merging both Reipas and Kuusysi first teams into their new div 2 academy team FC Lahti Akatemia. But Akatemia relegated to div 3 in 2017 and was, again, re-named Kuusysi. Somehow Reipas also play in div 3 now, but I have no idea how or why that team has ended up there.
Tampere: Ilves, est 1931, had their football department first die in 1938. Then they had a 2nd edition that existed between 1942 and the fifties, which also died. But the club continued existing in other sports, and would become a very significant force in Tampere icehockey during the fifties and sixties. In 1974, this enabled them to be big enough to merge the first teams of the struggling TaPa and Ilves-Kissat, into a third edition of Ilves first team football. (Ilves-Kissat were formerly just "Ilves" from Viipuri, but when the city was lost to the war and they had to relocate to Tampere, they also had to add "Kissat" to their name, because of the existing Ilves. However, despite the similar-sounding names and that 1974 merger, Ilves-Kissat always remained a separate club from Ilves. The Ilves-Kissat football department and the first team was re-established in 1986 and continues to exist as a completely separate today. TaPa did the same later as well, but I can't find the dates.)
In the nineties however, Ilves ran into financial trouble and the footballing team meant to merge with TPV to create a new "United" first team for Tampere, only for TPV to pull out at closing stages, so Ilves had to "merge" into Tampere United alone. However - this is important - unlike Kuusysi and Reipas did to FC Lahti, Ilves never really became an affiliate club of TamU (even despite TamU only having a first team and no junior teams at that time). Hence the club seeked to return to first team football individually from TamU rather soon. First they took over a local div 2 club called Duck Park Rangers in 2001, but this was not a really serious effort. They eventually gave up with it in 2004 and the team was adopted by a separate club named KOO-VEE. Then in 2008, when Ilves again decided they need a football team, they obviously took over the same KOO-VEE team again. This fifth separate effort at establishing an Ilves first team finally seems to have been fruitful even in the long term, and this is also the same team that currently plays in the Finnish premier league.
TamU, on their own, went bust in 2011 due to the match fixing scandal. The Tampere United you see currently is a phoenix club (think AFC Wimbledon) that the fans restarted from the bottom in 2012. It currently plays in div 2, and has its own junior teams. It claims the history of Tampere United (est 1999) but not Ilves, whom they have some sort of rivalry with.
Obviously this is just a simplified representation of the events since including every detail would fill an entire book (and I'm not sure of all the details myself), but hopefully your friend finds this helpful anyway. Sources: This thread
http://futisforum2.org/index.php?topic=47187.msg1810382#msg1810382, Finnish language wikipedia and what I have understood about the subject myself.
