After names Muhammad Al-Xorazmiy Tashkent University of Information Technology

2.2 Volleyball in Finland

There are 400 registered volleyball clubs around the country, which are the members of Finnish Volleyball Association. Volleyball is played in 5 levels, the highest called “Mestaruusliiga”. There are around 118 000 volleyball players in Finland and 27 000 of them are young. The number of registered players is 11 500 and 6 900 of them are juniors.

Finland has 8 national teams: men, women, 3 boys´ teams and 3 girls´ teams (with sitting volleyball and beach volley national teams, even more).

The biggest junior volleyball tournament called “Power Cup” is played annually in Finland, having around 1000 teams participating with over 10 000 players. (Finnish volleyball association 2016.)

Aittokallio pointed out in his pro graduation thesis that still in the year 2010 the situation in men´s highest league, Mestaruusliiga, wasn´t that glorious: all the teams didn´t have professional head coaches and training was more like an hobby for most of the players. Teams had only a couple of professional players - excluding some top teams which had majority of players who did mostly volleyball for living. (Aittokallio 2010.)

After those years, the level of professionalism has risen. In the season 2015-2016, all the clubs in Mestaruusliiga had professional head coaches and the same development has happened also in seasons 2016-2018. Also the number of professional players in each team rose and the most of the players in every team played volleyball as their primary work, even though some of the younger players were studying at the same time. The best teams like Valepa raised their level closer to the level of top volleyball teams in Europe, as Valepa proceeded to Champions League 2017-2018 pool phase as a first finnish male volleyball team. (Mestaruusliiga 2017.)

Finland men´s national team has stabilized their status close to the top of the volleyball world, as they reached the 9th place in the World Championship in 2014. National team has been the participant of European Championship finals many times in a row. Men´s team is also participating in World Championships second time in a row held in Italy and Bulgaria in autumn 2018.

Finland has quite efficient training system for young talented players, as the best ones of each generation are selected to the national training center to study in high school and to train twice at the same time under professional coaches. This training center is located in Kuortane. The level of coaching in national teams is raising all the time, because the coaches both in junior and senior national teams are educating themselves with the scientific data about volleyball, co-operating and also organizing educational visits to the countries which are now at the top of volleyball rankings. By this method the best data and concrete experience is learnt and implemented. (Finnish Volleyball Association 2016.)

However, the coaching level in junior volleyball clubs is varied, because the coaches are typically parents of the kids playing in the team or some other people keen on volleyball, and not all of them are educating themselves on the courses provided by Finnish Volleyball Association. The lack of professional junior coaches is shown in varied teaching methods and coaching styles, which leads to the non-systematical development of junior players. Professional coaches are needed not only on the top national team level but also on the junior club level.