Jari Ilola

Jari Ilola
Personnel
birthday	November 24, 1978
place of birth	Oulu ,  Finland
position	midfield player
Men's
Years	station	Games (goals) 1
1995-1997	RoPS	47 0(5)
1998-2002	HJK	90 (11)
2003–	IF Elfsborg	86 0(0)
National team
Years	selection	Games (goals) 2
1998-2007	Finland	30 (1)
1 Only league games are given. As of January 15, 2010 2 As of January 15, 2010

Jari Ilola (born November 24, 1978 in Oulu ) is a Finnish football player . The midfielder , who played for the Finnish national team between 1998 and 2007 , won the league title in both Finland and Sweden.

Career

Career start in Finland

Ilola made her debut for RoPS in the Veikkausliiga in August 1995 . In the following season he established himself as a regular player and reached the final of the Finnish League Cup with the team , which ended, however, with a 2-3 defeat against HJK .

In 1998 Ilola moved within the Finnish first division to Helsinki to HJK. With the club he reached the group stage of the UEFA Champions League and was used there in the games against 1. FC Kaiserslautern , Benfica Lisbon and PSV Eindhoven . In the same year he won his first two titles when FF Jaro were beaten in the final of the League Cup and PK-35 Helsinki in the cup final . He also played his way into the Finnish national team and made his debut on October 10 of that year in the 0-1 loss to the Northern Irish national team in Belfast in the national jersey.

After Ilola was hardly used in 2000 due to injury, he established himself under coach Jyrki Heliskoski in the following season as a regular in midfield of HJK. In the 2002 season he scored three goals in 16 games and thus helped the team overseen by the Englishman Keith Armstrong around players like Alexei Eremenko , Antti Heinola and Mika Kottila to win the Finnish championship. With the title win he said goodbye to Finland.

Change to Sweden

Ilola signed a contract with IF Elfsborg . At first he was one of the substitute players at the Borås club and was mainly used as a substitute. In the 2006 season he was able to establish himself as a regular player and contributed to winning the Lennart Johansson Cup as the Swedish national champion in 20 games this season . He was also part of the regular staff in the following season, before he injured his knee in the summer and, among other things, missed the qualifying games for the Champions League against Linfield FC . Towards the end of the season he returned to the regular formation after his recovery, but had to undergo another knee operation in April 2008 and was unable to play the rest of the season. In the following year and a half, he had to undergo a total of four operations on both of his knees, so that he was out in the long term and was only a short time with the reserve team.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} palloliitto.fi: "ILOLA, Jari" ( Memento of the original from February 2, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed on May 29, 2009) 
2. ↑ sydsvenskan.se: “Ilola missar Champions League-kval”  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed on May 29, 2009)  
3. ↑ fotbollsexpressen.se: "Ilola missar resten av vårsäsongen"  ( page can no longer be accessed , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed on May 29, 2009)  
4. ^ "Jari Ilola talar ut om skadehelvetet" (accessed on January 15, 2010)

Web links

• Jari Ilola in the database of weltfussball.de