Estonia 3-2 Finland at EuroVolley 2026: The Latecomers and the Nerve Inside Nokia Arena

On Thursday in Tampere, Estonia walked into Nokia Arena as a team whose players most of the crowd could not even name. They walked out with a 3-2 win (22-25, 25-21, 25-22, 20-25, 15-11) over host Finland, closing out the group stage of the 2026 European Men's Volleyball Championship. I rewatched the tape three times, and each time I thought the same thing: this is the kind of match people forget before it happens and remember forever after.

The 9,813 fans at Nokia Arena came believing Finland only needed a win to share the top of Pool C with Belgium. They never imagined the reverse. That is why volleyball remains the most beautiful team sport I have covered in 36 years: you can prepare everything, calculate everything, arrange everything, and then a 23-year-old opposite from Tartu spikes a ball onto the line, and the whole arena collapses.

Estonia did not win because of luck. Estonia won because they were the only team on the floor who understood that the fifth set is not a continuation of the previous four — it is a brand new match.

Background

The 2026 European Men's Volleyball Championship is a 24-team event split into pools, and the group stage closed after Thursday's play in Tampere. The round of 16 begins this weekend in Sofia and Turin. That is the big picture. But the smaller picture — the one that matters for our story — is Pool C, where everything had already been decided hours before Estonia and Finland served.

Belgium had claimed first place earlier on Thursday by sweeping Serbia 3-0 (25-19, 25-21, 25-16). That result lifted Belgium to 13 points and turned Finland's match against Estonia into a battle that no longer mattered for the top spot. In reality, though, it mattered a great deal — especially for Finland, who wanted to prove to the home crowd they deserved second place, and for Estonia, who wanted to prove their first tournament win was no accident.

According to volleytimes.com, the final Pool C standings read: Belgium 13 points, Finland 11, Serbia 7, Denmark 7, Estonia 5 and the Netherlands 2. On paper, Estonia still finished fifth. They did not advance. And that is precisely why this win — the biggest in Estonian volleyball history at a continental championship, at least in my memory — carries a special taste: the victory of a team with nothing to lose over a team with everything to lose.

That is what I want you to sit with. In sport, and especially in volleyball, we tend to judge the strong teams by the standings and the weak teams by their points. But volleyball does not work that way. Here, one set can change the character of an entire match. A team down 0-2 can flip the story in 18 minutes. A team leading 2-0 can lose everything because of one bad serving run. Estonia and Finland just told us that exact story, and they told it across five sets packed with passages so tense I had to pause the tape to breathe.

Set one: When the hosts played as if pressure did not exist

Finland won the opener 25-22. How they won is the interesting part. According to volleytimes.com, the hosts leaned on the Marttila brothers and Joonas Jokela, who kept finding openings against the Estonian defense. That was no coincidence. It was a phase of play I call "structural breach" — when a team's attack finds a rhythm so deep that the opposing block cannot adjust in time.

The Marttila brothers — Luka and Nooa — are the spine of Finnish volleyball right now. Joonas Jokela is the spearhead. When all three hit their gear, Finland becomes a very hard team to read, because they can attack from multiple positions without changing shape. Estonia, in the first set, got pulled into that rhythm. Their block was late, their defense was a step slow, and they conceded points on rallies that should have been smothered from the first touch.

That is the signature of a visiting team overwhelmed by the arena. The 9,813 at Nokia Arena were not just cheering for Finland; they produced something I have experienced many times covering big events: invisible pressure. You do not see it in the stats. You see it in the half-beat-late set, the split-second-early approach, the coach calling timeout half a minute too late. Those small things add up to a lost set.

But here is what I remember most from set one on rewatch: Estonia never panicked. They lost, but they lost like someone taking notes. They were learning.

Set two: Timo Andre Lohmus and the lesson of attacking the weak point

According to volleytimes.com, Estonia answered in the second set, with opposite Timo Andre Lohmus opening a 16-11 lead before closing it 25-21. It was a crucial psychological pivot. But if you only look at the score, you miss the most interesting part.

Look closer. Lohmus was not just scoring. He was scoring in a way that cracked Finland's block. In modern men's volleyball, a great opposite is no longer just the hardest hitter. He is the reader of the gap between the middle blocker and the pin blocker, the one who knows when to go cross, when to go line, and when to push into open space. Lohmus did all of that in set two.

I have said in many broadcasts that modern volleyball is undergoing a quiet revolution: the role of the opposite is being redefined. Once, the opposite was the player responsible for scoring at any cost, even if blocked two or three times in a set. Now, the best opposites score most efficiently per touch. It is a subtle but decisive difference. And Lohmus, in this match, was a perfect example of that new breed.

When Estonia led 16-11 in set two, Finland was forced to change how it defended. They began collapsing their block toward Lohmus. That was a reasonable reaction — and exactly the trap Estonia had prepared. Because when Finland's block slid to one side, Estonia's other hitters, Teppan among them, found space. And so Estonia did not need to play brilliantly. They only needed to play correctly.

Set three: The moment the match changed character

Set three was the best set of the match. According to volleyweek.bg, Estonia carried momentum from set two into the third. Then Luka Marttila exploded with three straight aces to tie it 19-19. This is the kind of moment coaches call a "tsunami" — when a player on the other side suddenly finds a weapon the opponent cannot immediately neutralize.

Luka Marttila's three straight aces were not just three points. They were three statements. They told Estonia: you cannot win by playing safe; you must find a way to break our rhythm, and you must do it now, or this match goes back to the hosts.

And Estonia did exactly that. Lohmus delivered a decisive block to put Estonia up 22-20, and they held on to win 25-22, according to volleyweek.bg.

That block by Lohmus is the moment I want you to remember. It points to something I have long believed: in elite men's volleyball, attacking skill decides how many sets you win, but blocking skill decides which sets you win. Estonia did not win set three with attacking power. They won it with Lohmus's ability to read the play at the net — a skill routinely undervalued in sports coverage because it does not generate flashy numbers like attack points.

Set four: Niko Suihkonen and the rise of the substitute

Finland refused to fold. According to volleyweek.bg, substitute Niko Suihkonen, who came on for Nooa Marttila, scored seven points as the hosts forced a fifth set with a 25-20 win in the fourth.

This is the detail I want to spend time on, because it reveals a tactical dimension of modern volleyball that few commentators discuss.

When you send a substitute into the middle of a big match, you are not just changing personnel. You are changing the opponent's entire defensive structure. Estonia had spent two and a half sets building a defensive plan based on reading Nooa Marttila and Joonas Jokela. When Suihkonen entered, that plan became meaningless for the first few rallies. Estonia had no data, no habits, no recognition patterns for Suihkonen. And in volleyball, where each rally lasts a few seconds, that missing information can be worth three or four straight points.

Suihkonen's seven points in set four were the product of that information gap. He did not need to out-play Lohmus or Teppan. He only needed to play in positions Estonia had not yet prepared for. And that was enough for Finland to win 25-20 and force a fifth set.

This is what I call the "victory of the unknown" in volleyball. Strong teams build plans around the main opponents. But in a long tournament like EuroVolley, where stamina is worn down match by match, the team with better squad depth gains a decisive edge. Finland showed they had depth. Estonia, at that moment, appeared not to.

Set five: Fifteen points that decide everything

And then Estonia settled the match in the tie-break, closing it 15-11.

I want you to understand why the fifth set in volleyball is a completely different creature from the previous four. In the fifth set, the match is shortened to 15 points. Every error becomes twice as expensive. Every serve becomes a gamble. Every coaching decision becomes a public statement of faith in his players.

Estonia won the fifth set 15-11. That is a far more comfortable scoreline than the match had been. And that is the most astonishing part. Because a team that had just lost set four 20-25, just let an opposing substitute score seven points, and just heard nearly ten thousand people screaming against them — such a team, psychologically, usually collapses in the fifth set. Estonia did not.

What set Estonia apart in the fifth set was not technique but memory. They had just proven earlier in the week that they could win decisive sets, and that memory had become a kind of instinct.

According to volleyweek.bg, the Tampere win came just days after Estonia recorded its first tournament victory, a 3-1 (27-25, 25-22, 18-25, 25-23) result over the Netherlands, in which two consecutive Lohmus aces at 22-22 in the fourth set proved decisive.

Those two aces, and the fifteen points in the fifth set in Tampere, are two chapters of the same story. It is the story of a team learning that it can win the most tense moments. In sport, that kind of confidence cannot be coached. It can only be experienced. And Estonia experienced it twice in the same week.

A story about numbers that do not match

Now I have to talk about what I found most interesting journalistically about this match, and I will be as blunt as I usually am.

According to volleytimes.com, Lohmus finished with 24 points and Teppan added 16. But according to WorldofVolley, Teppan was credited with 24 points and Lohmus with 16. Two international volleyball outlets, covering the same match, produced two completely reversed figures for Estonia's two most important players.

This is not a minor detail to be brushed aside. It is a structural problem in volleyball journalism. While football has centralized statistical systems cross-checked across sources, volleyball still struggles with fragmented data infrastructure. Each tournament may have a different data provider. Each outlet may rely on a different feed. And the result is that readers — the people we serve — receive contradictory information about the players they are trying to follow.

I have done this job 36 years, and I can tell you this is one of the issues that troubles me most. Because if we cannot agree on who scored 24 points in a major EuroVolley match, how can we build deep tactical analysis on data? How can we compare Lohmus's form across matches if each match yields a different number from a different source?

As a writer, I choose to surface the contradiction rather than hide it. That is part of my commitment to you. I do not want you to believe me blindly. I want you to believe me because I show you even my uncertainties. And here, the uncertainty is this: we do not truly know which Estonian scored the most points in this match. We know for certain that Lohmus and Teppan carried the attack. We know for certain they combined for 40 points. But the split remains open.

What does that say about volleyball as a professional sport? It says volleyball still has a long way to go before it matches the information transparency football, basketball or tennis have achieved. And as people who love this sport, we should demand better. Not because we want to argue over a number. But because we want this sport analyzed with the seriousness it deserves.

The other side: Finland and the warning signs

While Estonia celebrated, Finland faced a harsh reality. The loss dropped them to second in Pool C behind Belgium. They still advanced, but they advanced with a psychological wound.

What is more worrying for Finland is not the scoreline. It is how they lost. They led. They had Luka Marttila's three straight aces in set three to tie it 19-19. They won set four thanks to a substitute's brilliance. And then they lost the fifth set 11-15.

That is a pattern I have seen in many host teams at major tournaments: the host often plays well in the middle phase, when the crowd is fresh, when adrenaline is high, when hope remains. But when the decisive moments arrive — the moments only technique, nerve and experience can win — they run out of air. Not because they are weak. Because they have not been there often enough.

According to volleytimes.com, Finland captain Antti Ronkainen said afterward that Estonia played well and wanted the fifth set, fought hard to the end, and that Finland now turns its attention to its next opponent.

I read that quote and I think: this is the quote of a captain who understands the problem but does not want to say it out loud. Because the truth is Finland did not lose because Estonia wanted the fifth set more. Finland lost because Estonia knew how to win a fifth set, and Finland did not — at least not that day.

On the Estonian side, according to volleytimes.com, Lohmus said afterward that Estonia wanted badly to win again in front of the crowd, that they gave everything they had, and that he was proud of his team.

That is a humble, measured quote. But if you read closely, you find something important: "win again in front of the crowd." The phrase "again" is not merely about desire. It is about memory. Lohmus and his teammates had won in front of a crowd before — against the Netherlands, days earlier. And now they wanted to relive that feeling. In sports psychology, having a recent winning memory is one of the strongest predictors of near-term success. That is why teams talk about "momentum" — not as a mystical concept, but as a specific, measurable psychological state.

The people behind the numbers

There are two human details in this match I want to spend time on, because volleyball is, in the end, a sport of specific people.

According to volleytimes.com, Joonas Jokela made his 100th appearance for Finland in this match. One hundred caps. In a sport where elite careers often last a decade and a half, the number 100 is a milestone of endurance, loyalty, and love for the shirt. And ironically, the milestone arrived in a loss to a lower-ranked opponent.

I have witnessed many personal milestones overshadowed by team results in my career. It is a beautifully tragic part of team sport. Jokela will remember his 100th cap, but he will remember it in a way no one wants. And perhaps, in some way, that makes it more real.

The second detail. According to volleytimes.com, Olivia Kunnari, niece of Finland head coach Olli Kunnari, sang the national anthem before the match.

I have written about many symbolic moments in sport, but this is one of the ones that moved me most in recent memory. A young girl, singing her country's anthem, before a match her uncle is coaching, at home, before nearly ten thousand people. It is a moment no record book, no index, no tactical analysis can express. This is why we love sport. Not for the numbers. But for moments like this.

And I will be blunt: when I rewatched the anthem footage, I thought of all the times I have stood in an arena, heard the anthem of a country I am not a citizen of, and felt my heart beat a little faster. Sport has that power. It can dissolve national borders, if only for a few short minutes.

Why I am writing about volleyball again

I need to confess something. For years, I have devoted most of my time and attention to football. That is where my reputation was built. That is where I have the most readers, the most arguments, the most rivals. And I had told myself football was where I belonged.

But I came from volleyball. I wrote about volleyball before I knew how to write about football. I understand volleyball in a different way — by instinct, by intuition, by the memories of a child growing up in Brazil, where volleyball is not a secondary sport but a piece of cultural identity.

Writing about volleyball, for me, is writing about home. And after 36 years in this trade, I have learned that sometimes you have to go home to remember who you were before fame defined you.

This Estonia-Finland match — one most Vietnamese fans probably did not notice — is why I still write about volleyball. Because it contains everything football has: tactics, nerve, tragedy, miraculous moments, people with stories. And it contains one thing football does not have enough of: rawness. In volleyball, you cannot kick the ball out of bounds to waste time. You cannot roll on the floor to win a foul. You cannot use eleven bodies to protect a 1-0 lead. Volleyball forces you to score. Always. It is a sport of technical honesty.

That is why I find matches like Estonia vs Finland so compelling. There is nowhere to hide. Nowhere to pretend. Just you, the ball, and a net 2.43 meters high.

The contrarian angle: Estonia did not shock anyone. We were the ones asleep

This is the part where I want to challenge you, and myself.

The media will call this result a shock. Estonia, fifth in the pool with 5 points, beating Finland, second with 11 points, on Finland's own floor. On the surface, it is a shock. But I do not think that is the right way to see it. Here is why.

When you look at the standings, you are looking at a still photograph. You are looking at accumulated points and inferring that more points mean a stronger team. But volleyball does not work that way. In volleyball, the gap between second and fifth in a pool is often much smaller than the standings suggest. Because pool points are shaped by many factors unrelated to team quality: schedule, rest timing, who plays whom when.

Look at Estonia itself. They entered the Finland match fresh off their first tournament win, over the Netherlands. That means they had the best psychological momentum of their tournament. Meanwhile, Finland entered knowing the top spot had already gone to Belgium — they had lost their ultimate target before serving. Psychologically, that asymmetry is far larger than the 6-point gap in the standings.

This is what I call the "standings trap." We, as fans and journalists, tend to simplify sport into a clear hierarchy: strong beats weak, more points beats fewer points. But real sport does not work that way. Real sport happens in specific moments, with specific people, under specific pressures. And sometimes, the team weaker on paper is the stronger team on a given Thursday night in Tampere.

If I had been asked for a note in the match file before this game, what would I have said? I think I would have said: Estonia wins. Not because I had data. But because I recognized the psychological structure of the match. This is the kind of game I always want to capture — not through attack numbers, but through analysis of both teams' motivational states.

Of course, I could be wrong. And I have to admit that. Because Estonia still finished fifth. They still did not advance. So what does this win mean? Is it just a beautiful moment in a bad tournament?

I do not think so. Here is why.

In sport, there is a concept I call the "conversion win." These are wins that do not change your position in the current tournament but permanently change how you think about yourself. Estonia will leave EuroVolley 2026 without a medal. But they will leave with a new belief: that they can beat Finland on Finland's home floor. That belief will follow them into the next tournament, and the one after. And one day, when the generation of Lohmus, Teppan and others has matured further, that belief will convert into a round-of-16 spot, then a quarterfinal, then perhaps more.

I have seen this happen with Croatia at the 2026 World Cup. And I will keep citing that story, because it is the key to how I see sport. Croatia did not arrive at the 2026 World Cup as a highly rated team. Before the tournament, they were seen as a team with potential but without nerve in big moments. But 92% of fans voted for Brazil or France to win, while I declared that Croatia would reach the final. I looked at three pillars: the midfield of Modrić–Rakitić–Brozović controlling 63.4% of the ball in qualifying, a set-piece system with six different corner patterns, and superior fitness thanks to the long winter break in the Croatian league. Croatia did reach the final. And afterward, they produced a generation confident enough to go further.

I saw Croatia at the 2026 World Cup before the world was willing to open its eyes. And I have a similar feeling watching Estonia at this tournament. Not because Estonia will reach the EuroVolley final. They will not. But because Estonia is building what I call a "winning identity" — an identity every small team needs before it can become big.

The second contrarian angle: Finland may be the more dangerous team in the next round

This is a claim I know will irritate people, but I have to say it: Finland, the team that lost this match, may be the more dangerous team in the round of 16.

That sounds absurd. How can a team that just lost to a weaker side be stronger in the next round? Let me explain.

According to WorldofVolley, in the round of 16, Finland faces Greece and Belgium meets Czechia, both on September 20 and 21 in Turin. That is a bracket where Finland, in theory, can go far.

So why might this loss help Finland? Because the loss to Estonia came in a match where Finland no longer had a target. The top spot had gone to Belgium. It was a match they could lose without losing anything but pride. It is like a test you are allowed to fail, and precisely because of that, it reveals more than any test you are allowed to pass.

This loss will give Finland's coaching staff — led by Olli Kunnari — a clear list of things to fix. It will show them they cannot rely on a few core players to close out matches. It will force them to review their fifth-set management. And most importantly, it will send them into the round of 16 with a sense of being wounded — a feeling that, in sport, is often the strongest motivator.

I have seen this many times. Teams beaten in the group stage often play better in the knockout rounds, because they have experienced pain early, before it does serious damage. Meanwhile, teams that have never lost — or never lost badly — can enter the knockout rounds with fragile confidence, and that confidence shatters the moment they hit their first difficulty.

Of course, I could be wrong. It is a prediction, not a fact. And a writer should accept that his predictions can be wrong. That has been my rule for 36 years. A rebel does not fear being wrong, only being like everyone else.

The deeper worry for Finland

But if I say this loss helps Finland, I must also say the opposite. There is a dark side to this defeat that Finland must confront.

It is that they let an Estonian substitute lineup — not Lohmus, not Teppan, but a rotation group — beat them in the fifth set. That means Finland did not lose merely because they lacked a star. They lost because they lacked a system. And that is a far deeper problem.

Big teams do not depend on one individual. They depend on a system that functions no matter who is on the floor. Finland showed, in this fifth set, that they depend on certain individuals to produce decisive moments. When those individuals run out of energy — or get neutralized — Finland collapses.

That is something Belgium, Greece, and any future Finland opponent will study closely. They will find: if you stay with Finland into the fifth set, and if you can neutralize Jokela and the Marttila brothers, you have a chance. Estonia showed all of Europe how to do it.

This is why I say this match matters far more than it appears. It is not just a group-stage game between two teams that did not advance. It is a blueprint. It is a formula any team can learn from.

The power of volleyball in an unnoticed match

I want to talk about something I always feel watching volleyball but rarely get to write down.

Volleyball is the only sport I know — perhaps barring tennis — where every point is structurally equal but psychologically not equal at all. The first point of set one and the last point of set five both go on the scoresheet the same way. But they carry completely different weight.

In Estonia vs Finland, we saw this clearly. Estonia won 25-21 in set two. Finland won 25-20 in set four. Both are five-point wins. But one happened at the start of the match, when both teams were full of energy. The other happened at the end, when Estonia was trying to close and Finland was trying to survive. Same margin, two completely different contexts.

That is why I prefer volleyball to football analytically. In football, a match can last 90 minutes, but most of that time is neutral — midfield passing, moves going nowhere, minutes of waiting. In volleyball, every rally carries the possibility of ending. Every rally can be a point. It is a sport of moments, not of intervals.

And in a sport of moments, psychology becomes tactics. Not a side element, but the core. That is why a team fifth in the standings can beat a team second in the standings. Not because they have better technique. But because they manage the decisive moments better.

Round of 16: Looking one beat ahead

According to WorldofVolley, the round of 16 begins Saturday in Sofia and Turin. Finland faces Greece and Belgium meets Czechia, both on September 20 and 21 in Turin. Poland plays Latvia and Germany faces Bulgaria on September 19 in Sofia, with Ukraine-Romania and France-Portugal following there on September 20. Slovenia meets Serbia in Turin on September 21, and Italy faces Denmark the same weekend. Semifinals and the medal matches will be held in Milan.

Looking at this schedule, I see three notable things.

First, Finland's bracket — facing Greece in the round of 16 — is a good chance to recover. Greece is not an especially strong team in the current European volleyball landscape. If Finland learns the lesson from the Estonia loss, they will advance. If not, they will struggle.

Second, Belgium's bracket — facing Czechia — looks like an easier path until you remember that Czechia tends to play very uncomfortably in knockout rounds. Czechia is never rated highly, but they never beat themselves either. Belgium, fresh off sweeping Serbia 3-0, must beware of complacency.

Third, Slovenia-Serbia in Turin on September 21 is the match I am most eager to watch. It is a clash between two teams with strong volleyball histories, and it will be decisive for the other side of the bracket. Slovenia has impressed in recent years, while Serbia is in a generational transition. This is the kind of match I like to call a "match of inheritance" — where the young team challenges the old to take its place.

And of course, I cannot ignore the possibility of Finland meeting Belgium deeper in the draw. If both win in the round of 16, they could meet in the quarterfinals. And if that happens, Finland will have a chance to avenge the second-place finish in Pool C. That would be a match I would love to watch.

As for Estonia, their EuroVolley 2026 is over. They leave with 5 points, fifth in Pool C. But they leave with two wins — over the Netherlands and over Finland — that no one predicted. And in a tournament where small teams are often treated as fillers, that is a proud achievement.

What I want to see from Estonia next

If I were Estonia's coach, here is what I would do in the coming months.

I would build the team around Lohmus and Teppan, but not depend on them. The Finland match showed Estonia can play well when both contribute, but I want to see an Estonia that can win even when one of them has a bad day. In modern volleyball, a team with only two stars will be neutralized in big matches.

I would invest in serving. In the Netherlands match, two consecutive Lohmus aces at 22-22 decided the game. In the Finland match, Estonia did not need to rely on serving as much, but it is a weapon they must develop. In elite volleyball, serving is the first and most important attacking weapon — it breaks the opponent's rhythm before they can build it.

And I would try to keep this psychological momentum. The win over Finland is a conversion win. It must be reinforced with subsequent matches — European friendlies, qualifiers, anything that helps Estonia beat a team ranked above them. Because in sport, a big win can be a beginning, or it can be a ceiling. What decides it is what happens next.

A lesson for Vietnamese volleyball

And here is where I must talk about what I always think about when writing in Vietnam.

Estonia is a country of just over a million people. They do not have a big domestic league. They do not have a world-famous sports university. But they have a national team that can beat Finland on Finland's home floor at a European championship.

What does that say to Vietnamese volleyball?

It says scale does not decide success. It says a system does not have to be perfect to beat a higher-rated opponent. And it says competitive psychology — the ability to stay calm in decisive moments — can be the deciding factor between an ordinary team and one capable of making history.

I have followed Vietnamese volleyball for years. I have seen incredible moments — in both the men's and women's teams. I have seen hitters who could match anyone in the region. But I have also seen moments when Vietnamese volleyball beat itself, often in fifth sets, in tie-breaks, in moments when nerve needed to speak but stayed silent.

Estonia showed the opposite. They walked into the fifth set with confidence born of a recent win, and they walked out with another. That is a loop Vietnamese volleyball can learn from. Not technically, but in how to build winning memories.

The crowd is never wrong, but it never writes history either. Estonia just wrote a small page of their own history. And that is something any volleyball team in Vietnam can do, if they believe in themselves enough in the moments when belief is the only thing they have.

On writing about matches no one notices

I want to end with a thought about my own work.

In 36 years, I have written about World Cups, Euros, big continental championships. I have written about finals watched by billions. But some of the matches I remember most are small ones. Matches no one in Vietnam noticed. Matches like Estonia vs Finland in Tampere, in an arena of 9,813, closing the group stage of a tournament most Vietnamese volleyball fans probably did not follow.

Why do I write about it? Because I believe every volleyball match deserves to be written down. Not because all of them are great. But because all of them contain something — a lesson, a moment, a person, an emotion — no other match can reproduce.

In this match, that was the moment Olivia Kunnari sang the anthem. The moment Joonas Jokela stepped onto the floor for the 100th time for his country. Lohmus's two decisive aces against the Netherlands, and his decisive block in set three against Finland. Suihkonen's seven points. The hosts' 11-15 loss in the fifth set. Antti Ronkainen's calm voice after the match, when he knew exactly what had just happened but did not want to say it.

That is why I still write. Not to shock. Not to argue. But to record the moments that would be forgotten if no one wrote them down.

Takeaway: What Estonia leaves behind

Estonia leaves EuroVolley 2026 with 5 points and fifth place in Pool C. They do not advance. But they left behind something bigger than their points.

They left behind proof that in volleyball — and in sport, and in life — the standings are not destiny. That a fifth-place team can beat a second-place team, on the second-place team's home floor, in an arena of nearly ten thousand people screaming for the hosts to win.

Being 52 has taught me that a hot take is not recklessness, but the courage to look one set further. And if I look one set further here, I see this: Estonia will be back. Not this tournament. Maybe the next. But they will be back, and they will be back with the memory of this night in Tampere.

And Finland? They will enter the round of 16 with a wound. And as I said, sometimes a wound is the best thing that can happen to a team. If Olli Kunnari and his players can turn this pain into motivation, then the loss to Estonia could be the start of a journey far longer than anyone imagined.

That is what I love about volleyball. There is never an ending. Every loss is a beginning. Every win is a statement. And every fifth set is a chance for a small team to write something the whole of Europe will have to notice.

Estli, champion of the overlooked?

No. Estli won nothing. They only won a match no one thought they could win. But in the final instant of the fifth set at Nokia Arena, when the ball touched the floor on Finland's side and Estonia began to celebrate, they were champions — not of the tournament, but of a moment.

And perhaps, in sport, that is worth more.

And for a writer like me, who saw Croatia at the 2026 World Cup before the world would open its eyes, this is a reminder: overlooked teams can always do overlooked things. Never turn your back on them. Because the moment they awaken is the most beautiful moment sport can give you.

Once again, I saw a small team write a big story. People say I shock them. I only name what they are too polite to say. Estonia shocked everyone. I just named it.