Sami Hyypia

Sami Toumas Hyypia is one of those football players who have been there and done that. A defender, Hyypia is the captain of the Finland national football team. Hyypia began his playing career in the youth team at Pallo-Peikot, in 1980. For about 9 years, Hyypia was a part of the team and continued his playing career at Kumu, in 1990.

His professional playing career began with MyPa, in 1992. In his four years at the club, Hyypia was influential in helping the team win the 1992 and 1995 Finnish Cup titles. He moved to Willem II Tilburg after his second title, going on to become the team captain in his time there. Hyypia was also nominated as their Player of the Year, helping the team qualify for the UEFA Champions League.

After 100 games at Willem, he moved to Liverpool FC, his dream club. By this time, Hyypia had established himself as a fantastic central defender by this time. Surprisingly, that was the only position where Hyypia didn’t play during his career’s start at MyPa.

Hyypia’s pedigree was unproven and that seemed to be the only thing working against him at the club. Building up a fantastic partnership with Stephane Henchoz, Hyypia became one of the “best bits of business” Liverpool could have done in years – according to Ron Yeats, the chief scout for Liverpool at the time.

It didn’t take long for Hyypia to make his mark and in 2000-01, he shared the captaincy with Robbie Fowler, when Jamie Redknapp was suffering from injury. Hyypia, along with Fowler, led the team to the Football League Cup, the FA Cup and the UEFA Cup, a treble that was combined with his third consecutive FAF Finnish Footballer of the Year award.

However, his bright start soon gave way and, in 2003, Hyypia’s captaincy was taken away to relieve some of the pressure.

In 2004, Hyypia had a new partner in central defence, in Jamie Carragher. Along with other changes, Hyypia helped Liverpool win the 2004 UEFA Champions League. Despite a terrible performance on the night, conceding three goals, the Liverpool team managed to hold off 114 minutes of AC Milan’s onslaught, eventually coming out as winners over penalties.

Hyypia’s importance in the team was going down as Carragher was looking good as the main man while Steven Gerrard was stepping in as the next captaincy candidate.

Injury problems and a dip in form saw Hyypia’s performances go down a significant notch. However, in 2008, his commitment to Liverpool was renewed with a new contract that would take him to the end of the 2009 season. Hyypia won numerous awards, during his stay at Liverpool but decided to end his affiliation to the club in 2009.

Despite being offered an opportunity to stay on in a coaching role, at Liverpool, Hyypia wanted to continue playing and moved to Bayer Leverkusen in a two-year deal. Hyypia’s time at Leverkusen has been all about retiring from the game and passing out slowly through the door. Leverkusen have relied on his experience and used Hyypia as a mentor for the younger members of the squad.

Despite numerous attempts by Roy Hodgson to get Hyypia back to Liverpool as his assistant manager, there was little interest out of Leverkusen to release the man. After retiring from the game, Hyypia has already announced his intention of becoming the assistant manager at Leverkusen – a rebuttal of the advances made by Liverpool over the years.

At the international level, Hyypia made his debut for the senior debut at the age of 19. The current captain of the team, and has been named as the Finnish Football of the Year 9 times. After Jari Litmanen retired from football in 2008, Hyypia became the captain and has been since.