Estonia beat Finland 3-2 in Tampere as hosts miss out on a share of Pool C top spot

Before the ball went up

Before the first whistle in Nokia Arena, a young woman walked to the middle of the court, gripped a microphone with both hands, and sang the Finnish national anthem. Her name is Olivia Kunnari, the niece of head coach Olli Kunnari. Nine thousand eight hundred and thirteen people stood up.

In Da Nang it was nearly two in the morning. I sat alone in my room, listening to that voice come through a blurred stream, and thought about something very small: in a tournament of twenty-four teams, people remember who scored the final point. Very few remember who sang before the ball went up.

Inside that same arena was a man walking into his hundredth match for his national team. Joonas Jokela. A hundred caps is a weight only people inside the trade truly understand: more than a decade of getting up before dawn, more than a decade of eating in canteens, more than a decade of night buses home from airports after every long trip.

Then the ball went up. Nearly three hours later, Estonia won 3-2.

People switch on stadium lights to watch football. I switch them on to see the shadows.

Pool C was already decided before the ball went up

Belgium played the early match that same day and swept Serbia 3-0, with sets of 25-19, 25-21 and 25-16. That result took Belgium to 13 points and locked up first place in Pool C. By the time Finland and Estonia walked out at Nokia Arena, the tournament already knew who topped the group.

That gave the match in Tampere two completely different meanings.

For Finland, this was the last chance to at least share the top spot. Under CEV group-stage scoring, a 3-0 or 3-1 win is worth 3 points, a 3-2 win is worth 2, and a 2-3 defeat is worth 1. Finland went into the match on 10 points. To reach Belgium's 13, they had to win 3-0 or 3-1. Even a 3-2 victory would only have lifted them to 12.

This is the detail very few viewers notice while watching live: the moment Estonia took the fourth set, first place in Pool C had already left Tampere — before the tie-break even started. The fifth set was therefore no longer a fight for the group crown. It was a different fight, smaller on the standings sheet but far larger in the hearts of the people involved.

For Estonia, the meaning was inverted. The Baltic side came into the final round on 3 points, already eliminated. Days earlier they had recorded their first win of the tournament, beating the Netherlands 3-1 with sets of 27-25, 25-22, 18-25 and 25-23. In the fourth set of that match, at 22-22, Timo Andre Lohmus landed two consecutive aces to settle it. Estonia arrived in Tampere as a team with no objective beyond itself.

Twenty-four teams. The group stage closed. The round of 16 begins this weekend in Sofia and Turin. Finland face Greece and Belgium meet Czechia, both on 20 and 21 September in Turin. Poland play Latvia and Germany face Bulgaria on 19 September in Sofia, with Ukraine-Romania and France-Portugal following there on 20 September. Slovenia meet Serbia in Turin on 21 September, and Italy face Denmark the same weekend. The semifinals and the medal matches will be held in Milan.

Five sets, five different tactical problems

Based on my experience following these matches and on watching the footage of this one several times across two nights, I would argue this was not one match but five matches placed end to end, each with its own logic.

The opening set went to Finland 25-22. The Marttila brothers and Joonas Jokela kept finding openings against the Estonian defence. What stands out is that Finland did not attack with particularly heavy balls. They attacked with balls placed exactly into the seam between Estonia's middle blocker and their outside defender — the zone where a block must choose between two jobs at once, and when forced to choose, people usually choose wrong. Estonia lost that set because their block was reading the setter's hands instead of the hitter's shoulder.

In the second set Estonia answered 25-21. Lohmus opened a 16-11 lead and the visitors held it to the end. In volleyball, a five-point gap at 16-11 is close to a verdict in a set played to 25 — to overturn it, the trailing team would have to score four straight points across roughly twenty remaining rallies, at a real-world success rate that is very low. The second set was not decided by Estonian firepower but by their ability to keep the ball alive. Covers, digs in zone 6, high balls pushed out to the wing instead of driven into the wall — Estonia accepted playing uglier in order to play longer.

The third set was the best of the match. Estonia won it 25-22, but before that Luka Marttila fired three consecutive aces to level at 19-19, and the whole of Nokia Arena seemed to ignite. This was the finest moment Finland's crowd took home: a young player accepting the serve at a score where everyone understands one mistake ends it. Estonia did not collapse. They did not change their serving plan, they did not rush a timeout — they changed the block's starting position. And at 22-20, Timo Andre Lohmus delivered a decisive block. A block at 22-20 in the third set is worth more than ten points scored in the first.

The fourth set went to Finland 25-20, and the fingerprint was on the bench. Niko Suihkonen came on for Nooa Marttila and scored seven points. That number is a story in itself. More important is the tactical consequence: when Nooa Marttila left the court, the Marttila brother pairing dissolved, and Finland shifted from a spread attack to a more concentrated one. Estonia needed half a set to read the new shape. At the elite level, a substitution is not just a change of person — it changes the entire alphabet the opposing block is using to read the game. When Finland levelled at 2-2, the whole arena believed in a miracle. But that very euphoria was a double-edged sword.

The fifth set went to Estonia 15-11. In volleyball, people still call the tie-break a lottery. What happened here shows how lazy that phrase is. A tie-break is a short set where every ball weighs twice as much as usual, where a point lost at 3-3 can leave a mark in the head all the way to point 10. Estonia took this set by a four-point margin — over a set only 15 points long, that is a comfortable gap. The visitors scored with exactly what they had done all match: steady serving, solid first contact, and waiting for the opponent to err in closed-ball situations.

Finland responded with rigidity. Trailing in the tie-break, they increased serving power — emotionally reasonable, but their service-error rate spiked, and every miss in the fifth set is a free point for the opponent with no chance of recovery. What Estonia did better in the tie-break, in the end, was not about the hitters. It was about a calm trade-off: they accepted safer serving in order to keep their shape when the ball came back.

Two outlets, two top scorers

There is one detail in the match reports I want to pause on, because it says more about the trade than about volleyball.

According to volleytimes.com, Timo Andre Lohmus finished with 24 points and Teppan added 16. According to WorldofVolley, the numbers are reversed: Teppan is credited with 24 and Lohmus with 16.

Two reputable sources, two different top scorers for the same match.

This is not rare. The discrepancy usually comes from one outlet counting blocks and aces into the total while the other does not, or from two different score sheets in two different press areas. But it reminds me of something I have told myself across several decades in this profession: until you are holding the organiser's official scoresheet, a writer should say what he saw, not who he decided was best.

In this match, the thing my eye recorded most clearly appears in no points column: Lohmus was the blocker at 22-20 in the third set. That detail is more trustworthy than both of those statistical tables combined.

The final Pool C standings, per volleytimes.com: Belgium 13 points, Finland 11, Serbia 7, Denmark 7, Estonia 5 and the Netherlands 2.

After the match, Lohmus said his team badly wanted to win again in front of the crowd and gave everything it had. Finland captain Antti Ronkainen said Estonia played well and wanted the fifth set, that Finland fought hard to the end, and that the team now turns its attention to its next opponent. I leave both quotes untouched. They are plain, and they are right.

What the standings cannot measure

Now to the part where I think differently from the majority.

The easiest way to tell this story is: the hosts lost because of one moment, and a team already eliminated pulled off a shock. I do not believe either half.

Finland losing the fifth set is the story of one player missing a serve at a bad time. But the real price of the defeat was not paid in the fifth set. It was paid in the first and fourth sets — the two sets Finland won. That sounds paradoxical, so look again: in both of those sets Finland played fast, used many options, and then eased off after winning. Estonia, with nothing to lose, never eased off. A team that must win loses rhythm after every set it wins; a team with no objective left keeps the same rhythm for three hours. That was the biggest gap of the evening in Tampere, and it shows up in no statistical table.

Second half: Estonia caused a shock. Did they? This team had beaten the Netherlands 3-1 days earlier, in a match where they played the right way — steady serving, stubborn defence. A team that plays the right way twice in one week is not a team causing a shock. It is a team that has found its way of playing, only a little late.

And here is what I want to add about Finland, because I am writing about a losing team.

A national team playing its final group match at home, with nine thousand eight hundred and thirteen people singing along, with one player walking into his hundredth cap, with the head coach's niece singing the anthem — that team is living inside a ceremony. Estonia walked into the same arena to work. The crowd did not make the hosts weaker. The crowd turned the match into an emotional event, and in the fifth set, emotion scores no points. This match should not be read as an indictment of Finnish character. It should be read as a reminder: when the lights come on, the girl singing the anthem and the blocker at 22-20 live in the same arena but in two different worlds.

Finland still go to the round of 16. They face Greece in Turin. Belgium, the group winners, meet Czechia, also in Turin. The price of a fifth set is not written on the standings sheet everyone can read — it is written in the schedule, in the hours of rest, in who must play first and who gets to sit and watch someone else play first.

What remains after the whistle

That night in Da Nang, I turned off the stream when the sky had already brightened. I sat a while longer with a thought that would not leave.

In a tournament staged in Sofia, Turin and Milan, there was a girl singing an anthem in Tampere. There was a man playing his hundredth match for his country and leaving the court defeated. There was a team on 5 points, fifth in Pool C, going no further, that had still won its last match in front of nine thousand people. Having stood between the running track and the stands long enough, I know that a record never belongs to one person alone.

The match is over, but the stands still echo inside me like a room of my own.

On 20 and 21 September, in Turin, Finland face Greece. And the question I carry through this week is not whether Finland will win. The question is: when Jokela walks into his hundred and first cap, will Estonia be on his mind, or only himself?