When Eveliina Summanen joined Tottenham from the Swedish side Kristianstad in January 2022, everything changed for her. The 27-year-old knew she was coming to a league with ambition, a league increasingly catching the attention of the best European talent, and a league that stood to benefit from a home European Championship that would catapult interest and growth further.
“At Spurs I got enough support and time to kind of grow into things,” Summanen says. “I wasn’t just thrown into the deep end right away. I got the right support, right help on and off the pitch to get to where I am now. It didn’t just happen overnight, I just slowly, slowly kept building and that’s still what I want to do, keep taking steps forward.”
Summanen has become a key midfield cog for Tottenham, and earned the award for the Women’s Super League goal of the month in November for her stunning 40-yard winner against Aston Villa, which was also voted Tottenham fans’ goal of the season, a goal she describes as a “one-hit wonder”. The Finland midfielder says: “It’s a good thing to keep in mind, getting goals and assists and to be part of that attacking game as well. But I’m not expecting the same kind of goal.”
Her goal was a rare highlight amid a difficult season for the north London side, who finished 11th, six places lower than in the 2023-24 season, the year they also reached a first FA Cup final. What went wrong? “To be honest, I haven’t had so much time to reflect on last season myself, because of the Euros and then having to switch on to preparing for the new season,” Summanen says. “But, obviously it didn’t go as we wished for. That’s just a learning curve for all of us in the club and in and around the team, just to remember that nothing comes for free in this league and you just need to work for it.
“Now we have a new chance with a new coach and just a lot of new positive energy coming to the team. So, the best thing is to focus on what’s coming next and not worry too much about what happened last season. That’s in the past now and we can’t change it. At the end of the day, that’s part of football sometimes. It’s going to be tough and there will be tough times during the upcoming season as well.”
The disappointing campaign led to the departure of Robert Vilahamn as manager at the end of the season. The former Manchester United assistant Martin Ho, who spent two years in Norway as manager of Brann, was appointed the club’s new head coach.
“There’s not been that much time yet with him but he’s given us a lot of good energy and that’s sometimes the most important thing,” Summanen says. “Without going into too much detail, he’s just tweaking small things. It’s still quite hard to judge, but the first impression has been really good and really positive and I feel like there is a route for us to go down. There is so much more potential than what we showed last season and I think he can bring that potential out of us.”
Summanen does not just have to throw off the disappointment of last season; she also has to exorcise her frustrations at Finland’s exit from the European Championship in Switzerland this summer, with Riola Xhemaili’s injury-time leveller for the hosts ensuring the qualified from Group A ahead of the Finns. “It was a massive disappointment that we didn’t go through,” Summanen says. “That was our clear goal. We were so close to it and, in my opinion, we played well enough to deserve that chance in the knockout stage. But if you don’t win the right games you don’t get enough points, and that’s what it’s all about.”
There were positives to take from the tournament for Finland; after three defeats in 2022 they at least earned four points in Switzerland. “We’ve been taking the steps in the right direction all the time,” Summanen says. “We’ve shown now at the Euros that we can compete against good teams, but we’re not there yet and the results show that. So we need to keep on working and obviously we’re focusing on challenging for the next things ahead of us when we have our next camp.”
Summanen has come a long way from Lappeenranta, the small town she grew up in. “I don’t think I had any other option if I wanted to stay in my home town than to play with the boys. So that was kind of put on the table for me and I felt like that was the best thing to do so I could be more at home and where I have my family support around me, which has always been massive. Now, there’s more and more options for younger players, younger girls, to play with and against girls. You have more teams, you have more competition.”
Competition couldn’t be fiercer than in the WSL. “I think the English league is the best in the world,” Summanen says. “There are more and more Finnish players coming to the league, which is really good for us. And the Finnish girls are also getting good roles in their teams, not just being rotation players.
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“It’s great that players are able to take these steps. In other countries as well. We have a lot of players that are taking the right steps right now and searching for the best possible environment, and I think I’m in one here.”
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