Sami
Hyypiä
Interview
Photo: Paul Hazlewood
Before the nights started
drawing in, our magazine’s
sports aficionado, Laurence
Elphick, met up with Liverpool
legend and current Brighton
and Hove Albion manager
Sami Hyypiä. Since our
interview and after a frustrating
start to the season, there
have been calls from some
corners for him to be replaced,
although a more recent poll
suggests the fans would like
to give him more time - here’s
what Sami said to us.
102
Okay, so I want to talk to you about Sami
Hyypiä the person and the man. That’s
what our readers will be really interested
to know a little bit about - an idea of your
upbringing in Finland.
I grew up in a small village. It was there
because it had a big paper mill and I
think 95 per cent of the people worked in
the paper mill. So I grew up in a working
environment and that was a quite good
time, a relaxed time - of course, people
had their problems but it was a quite safe
environment to grow up in. Everything was
close. I had 500 metres to go to school
and 300 metres to go to the football pitch.
We played football during all the free time
we had and football was always, for me,
the number one sport to do.
How old were you when you realised that
you were quite good at football?
Maybe 18. I wasn’t the biggest talent when
I was growing up. But I needed to work
harder to develop all the time and that was,
for me, mentally good that I had to work
when I was younger to improve. At some
stage in your career comes a time when
you really need to work hard to make the
next step and I felt that I was ready for
that because I always had to work hard.
If somebody has a big talent, it’s easy for
them because they’re not making any effort
to improve themselves so if they go to a
game and score ten goals, then they’re
happy. But at some stage of your career,
there comes a time when you really need