Jani Sarajärvi

Former football player and current assistant coach at VPS Vaasa in Finnish Premier League

Jani Sarajärvi

Former football player and current assistant coach at VPS Vaasa in Finnish Premier League
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Biography

I am Jani Sarajärvi, a football coach originally from Northern Finland. At my home village people are skiing or swimming because we have long and snowy winters and a lot of beautiful clear blue and green lakes. People ask me why I became a footballer in a place like that when nobody has ever done it? I cannot tell them the reason, because in my mind football always was the love. My life just went inevitably towards playing football and I was ready to dive deeper than others to achieve my goals as a football player. Right now I have the same feeling about coaching football. Since playing is more difficult after injuries my inner fire is moving towards coaching. I cannot stop it and it is all right because I´m ready to do it.

My 11 years long professional football career, a few years of coaching and a strong educational background gives me foundations to understand football and science, but at the same time I understand that many bad habits learned have to be re-learned. There is many beliefs in football that are not scientifically proven facts and in my work I want to know the facts not the beliefs. In football world there is need to move from intuition and beliefs to logic and facts. I´m ready to put myself out of the comfort zone in order to move away from the beliefs and to learn and produce facts about the game, training etc. My critical and hard working mentality helps with achieving that goal.

During and after professional career I studied sports at HAAGA-HELIA University of Applied Sciences and at University of Jyväskylä. I did well in those highly respected schools and received excellent grades from coaching studies. However, I have always wanted to study specifically football and I decided to apply to Post-Graduation in High Performance Football Coaching master programme in Faculdade de Motricidade Humana because of the faculty’s and its professors firstrate prestige.

The environment one lives in is very important for ones development. Being in an environment that is new and where I´m not in the comfort zone is my goal because in that way the development is possible. I´m ready to move from my old mindset to a new one. I want to dive so deep into uncertainty that I cannot breathe and think and I don´t know if I am alive or not. After that I will come back knowing that this world of football and knowledge is the place I belong.

As a logical and critical team player with good communication skills I would be a good part of your programme. Regarding master thesis, I have done a quality work before and can do it again. Only this time I want to do it specifically about the game of football and produce new information to professors, coaches etc.