The Big Interview: Anna Tamminen
The Finnish international has just been named Player of the Year in Sweden. She talks about her journey from obscurity to the top and how she's still coming to terms with her own success...
Support unique, in-depth and insightful women’s football content with a paid subscription for a discounted price of £45 a year or £10 a month, with a seven day free trial.
“Right now, it seems like it!” laughs Anna Tamminen, when I quip how well things are going for he right now.
The goalkeeper has not only just been named Best Goalkeeper in the Damallsvenskan for the 2023 season, but the MVP of the whole league, a rarity for a player between the posts, with the grand acknowledgement usually going to those putting balls in the net, rather than those tasked with keeping them out.
Aside from that, Tamminen broke the record for games and minutes in a row without conceding and picked up a league medal as Hammarby got their hands on the trophy for the first time since 1985, as well as winning the cup too.
With Finland, Tamminen has just been part of the squad which has won its League B group and earned qualification to League A, which means she has sterner tests to look forward to, as well as a debut Champions League campaign with the newly-crowned champions of Sweden.
A self-confessed “glass half empty person”, even Tamminen cannot help but smile and laugh her way through an interview where clearly so much of her own personal success, as well as that of the team, still hasn’t sunk in.
Her humility shines through as she talks about a journey which has seen her go from nowhere to the very top in a short space of time, but right now she has just returned from a post-season holiday in Indonesia where she gained some “much-needed sun” after a cold winter in Sweden’s capital city, Stockholm.
“Yeah…I would say so,” she says, with a chuckle, when I ask if she has had chance now to reflect on an almost perfect 2023.
“After the season, I did a lot of interviews I felt kind of…weird? I couldn’t understand what happened and the way it happened.
“I’m an expect the worst rather than hope for the best kind of person, most Finnish people usually are! The last minutes on the pitch in the last game I was like ‘no, no, no, no, we’re not going to do it.’”
Her pessimism though was miss-placed. Heading into the final day of the league season, Hammarby were tied on points with rivals and defending champions BK Hacken, with Tamminen’s side heading to Norrkoping, while BK Hacken hosted Pitea, with the former champions needing to heavily out-score the Stockholm side to win the league.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Women's Football Chronicles to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.