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      Wales will ‘go toe to toe’ with Poland in bid to reach Euros, insists Rob Page

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Thursday, 21 March - 23:08

    • Playoff final being in Cardiff is vital edge, says Wales manager
    • ‘We don’t care who comes to see us … we’ll have a go’

    Rob Page has insisted Wales fear nobody at home and promised his side will go toe to toe with Poland in Tuesday’s crunch Euro 2024 qualifying playoff final in their bid to “get across the line”. Wales teed up a home date with Poland after an emphatic 4-1 semi-final victory over Finland in Cardiff and Page believes the game being in the Welsh capital next week is a major advantage.

    Wales overcame Finland courtesy of goals from David Brooks, Neco Williams, Brennan Johnson and the substitute Daniel James. Page warned it is only “half-time” in their attempt to reach a third successive European Championship but feels Wales should head into the tie full of confidence.

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      Wales set up Poland showdown after James seals emphatic win over Finland

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Thursday, 21 March - 21:45

    On a night when Wales knew they needed the fresh blood to fire, how they delivered. A comprehensive victory over Finland means Wales have now won each of their last three playoffs in Cardiff and if they beat Poland here in the final on Tuesday they will secure a place at the Euro 2024 finals in Germany this summer. None of the goalscorers featured at Euro 2016 but all played a significant part in ensuring their hopes of reaching a fourth major tournament in five remain very much alive.

    The pick of the goals was an unstoppable free-kick from Neco Williams but it was Daniel James, on his 50th cap, who capped the ­scoring, rounding the Finland goalkeeper Lukas Hradecky after a calamitous error by a dawdling Miro Tenho, the Finland centre-back. David Brooks gave Wales the ideal leg-up before Williams doubled Wales’s advantage but Teemu Pukki struck before half-time for Finland.

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      Wales v Finland: Euro 2024 qualifying playoff semi-final – live

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Thursday, 21 March - 19:03

    Speaking of Teemu Pukki . Our man Ewan Murray spoke with the former Norwich striker and found him in bullish mood.

    I’m not going to pretend to have intimate knowledge on this side. Especially when their main man, Robert Taylor, plays for Inter Miami and is injured.

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      ‘This is our last chance’: Pukki and Finland braced for Wales

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Thursday, 21 March - 08:00


    Finland forward is flourishing at Minnesota in MLS but now has the Euro 2024 playoff on his mind

    Teemu Pukki is in no mood to deliver understatement. “It is a big thing, one of the biggest games in Finnish football history,” he says.

    The opponents? Wales. The prize? To move within a single game of a Euro 2024 finals appearance.

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      ‘It’s a beehive’: Tero Saarinen’s mighty Macbeth puts Helsinki’s first dance house on the map

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Tuesday, 19 March - 15:08 · 1 minute

    As he stages Shakespeare’s bracing tragedy with a cast who share the main role, the choreographer and his company’s managing director Iiris Autio discuss the upswing in Finnish dance

    Is this a dagger I see before me? Not at all. Macbeth is centre-stage and thrusting a hand towards a juggler’s ring instead of a weapon. A handful of rings are then fashioned into a crown that is precariously balanced atop the acrobat’s head. There are no other props, and not a damned spot of stage blood, in this uncommon take on Shakespeare’s tragedy. Each member of the seven-strong cast plays Macbeth, some even juggling the title role and Lady M in the same scene.

    Finnish choreographer Tero Saarinen ’s bracing dance-theatre production startles from the start. Delaying the witches’ arrival, it begins on the battlefield and is played without an interval, like the best Macbeths. The spirit of circus is ever present, the murderous thane’s vaulting ambition at one point represented by his desperate clambering over a heap of bodies. Each wayward sister is played by a pair of entwined performers. For one of Lady Macbeth’s speeches, an actor protrudes amid the other six who are jumbled together as if to represent her skirts. When she repeatedly attempts to clean her hands, the accompanying speech is spoken time and time again by different actors, accentuating her fixation.

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      Weather tracker: cyclone warning in Australia while Finland freezes in -16C lows

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Monday, 18 March - 09:44

    Meanwhile, South Sudan has ordered schools to shut amid extreme heatwave

    A cyclone warning has been issued in northern Australia for coastal communities from the island of Groote Eylandt to the Northern Territory/Queensland border. Tropical Cyclone Megan, which developed in the Gulf of Carpentaria on Saturday, has been declared a category 3 cyclone by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. Megan is forecast to make landfall on Monday, but has already brought gale-force winds and heavy rainfall to some areas over the weekend. Groote Eylandt was cut off after more than 400mm of rain in just 24 hours on Sunday.

    There is a chance that Megan could strengthen further into a category 4 storm before making landfall, with the potential for damaging wind gusts of up to 125km/h. Megan is the fifth named cyclone in Australian waters so far this season, which is below the average of about 10 by this stage of the year.

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      Jari Litmanen on Ajax, Barça and a wrist that ‘broke into eight pieces’

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Sunday, 17 March - 08:00 · 1 minute

    The best footballer Finland has ever produced reflects on the highs and lows of his career and his anonymous life today in Estonia

    There are not many people who can get away with a leather jacket. Especially a fur-lined, double-breasted leather jacket. But Jari Litmanen, now 53, is definitely one of those people, as he strolls through the Old Town in his adopted home city of Tallinn. It would be impossible in Finland or Amsterdam but here he walks freely, seemingly just another middle-aged man trying to stay out of the cold. But between 1994 and 1996 he was the best footballer at Ajax, then the best male team in the world. Of course, he was loved for his talent. But he was also loved for the way he kicked the ball, the way he looked. Nineties Litmanen was a vibe, and it turns out the 2024 version isn’t far off.

    The Finn doesn’t grant many interviews, certainly not in person. His aloofness has fed the image that he is shy, reserved, mercurial, perhaps even a little arrogant. This is the opposite picture of the person who comes bouncing into the room, who beams comfortably at the camera. Litmanen is generous with his time, polite to all those around him, meticulous with his details. He is also surprisingly funny. Not laugh-a-minute funny, but there is a mischief in his face, a sparkle in those dark eyes. We talk about his recent appearance on the Finnish version of Top Gun, his new Instagram account (in which he shares positive news of Edwin van der Sar’s recovery from serious illness ), his acting as an Amsterdam diamond jeweller and comedic timing in Finnish children’s films as a Dutch art dealer and an Italian pizza delivery man .

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      Norway, Sweden and Finland host Nato military exercises

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Monday, 4 March - 10:18

    Nordic Response aims to strengthen cooperation between countries and bolster alliance’s ability to defend region

    A first-of-its-kind training exercise involving more than 20,000 soldiers from 13 countries has launched across northern Norway, Sweden and Finland as the region prepares to become a fully Nato territory within days.

    The joint defence exercise, which runs until 14 March, was previously known as Cold Response and held in northern Norway, a founding Nato member, every other year. In recognition of Finland’s recent membership of the western military alliance, and with Sweden expected to join imminently, this year it is being designated Nordic Response for the first time.

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      Sweden will complete its ‘long farewell to neutrality’ with Nato accession

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Tuesday, 27 February - 05:00

    For Swedes it means a dramatic change of national identity, while the alliance gets greater control of the Baltic Sea

    Just a few short months ago, Sweden’s Nato membership seemed a very long way from being a done deal. Having submitted its application to join in May 2022 after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it seemed at times as though Stockholm might be left hanging interminably. While Finland, which had applied to join the alliance at the same time as its neighbour, became a member at record speed last April , Sweden got stuck in a diplomatic quagmire.

    Last summer a series of Qur’an burnings in Sweden inflamed ties with Turkey, making a “yes” from Ankara look unlikely and at times inconceivable. And as recently as September, Viktor Orbán’s government was embroiled in a public war of words with Sweden over criticism of Hungary’s democracy and teaching in Swedish schools. Late last month, after Turkey’s parliament had given Sweden the green light, the Hungarian prime minister was still pushing for negotiations in a public letter to his Swedish counterpart, Ulf Kristersson.

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