The Finnish Cup: FC Santa Claus, FC Chicken Wings in a four-hour draw with Crufts-like prize at stake | OneFootball

This article was written by The Sweeper Podcast, a weekly world football podcast covering all 211 FIFA countries – and beyond. You can listen to The Sweeper on Spotify here and on Apple Podcasts here.

Christmas has been and gone, but for Santa Claus – the football club that is, not the man with the beard – the other big moment of the year is fast approaching. Based in Lapland, with players who spend their days working in tourism or sorting through the avalanche of festive mail at the local post office, FC Santa Claus are among the hundreds of clubs hoping for a magic run when Finland’s main cup competition, known locally as the Suomen Cup, starts next month.

Ironically, given their Christmas theme – they have red shirts, Father Christmas on the badge and the motto ‘Don’t stop believing’ – FC Santa Claus do not actually play at the most wonderful time of the year. The Arctic Circle temperatures and a frozen pitch rule that out. But that is probably just as well, given the bombardment of media requests that leave the club quite literally snowed under throughout December.

Once January comes around, however, FC Santa Claus turn their attention back to the football pitch – and, more specifically, to the Finnish Cup. For a club that inevitably fades from view once the Christmas period is over, it represents their one big opportunity every year to make headlines for their footballing ability rather than their festive identity.

The land of fabulous club names

Last year, the FC Santa Claus reserves kicked off their Finnish Cup campaign in Round 0 – the preliminary stage that precedes the first round proper. They beat Kolarin Kontio (the northernmost club in the competition and the organisers of the Kontio Masquerade, where the local community dress up as the likes of Jesus Christ, the Duracell Bunny and Elmo from The Muppets), before bowing out in the first round.

The senior team, meanwhile, claimed a first-round victory over Ajax – that’s Ajax-Sarkkiranta from the north-western city of Oulu rather than the Dutch record champions – and then beat fellow sixth-tier side KTU in the second round, before their Herculean Cup run came to an end in the third round against… FC Hercules, of course!

There is more or less an endless supply of memorable names in the competition each year. There’s the delicious FC Chicken Wings, the eagle-eyed AC Stasi and Flamingo United, who are surely grateful that all ties in this competition are played over one leg. And that’s before we even mention the incredible FC Sexy Pöxyt (FC Sexy Pants), or FC Kiffen, whose name means to smoke weed in German and whose shirts have been spotted from Leipzig to Leverkusen.

The longest draw in world football

Their names will all be in the hat when the draw for the competition takes place on Thursday January 29. Featuring hundreds of clubs from across the country – from the Arctic Circle in the north to the Åland Islands in the south – and conducted live, it is among the longest draws in world football. Last season, the YouTube broadcast lasted more than four hours, making even the FIFA World Cup draw look short in comparison. The Finnish FA seem to revel in the absurdity, even publishing a meme on their official Instagram account that read: Lord of the Rings (2h58m), Titanic (3h14m) and Finnish Cup draw (4h10m).

The draw has not always been that long, however. Until 2022, the Finnish Cup used to have a group stage before then progressing to a knockout phase. That has since been scrapped in favour of straight knockout ties – a move that dramatically boosted interest in the competition and the number of participating clubs, which reached a record number of 420 in 2025. This year, 417 teams have registered to take part in the tournament.

Unique trophy twins

Another reason for the competition’s soaring popularity is that there are multiple trophies up for grabs. Speaking to The Sweeper Podcast, Finnish FA executive Tomi Leivo-Jokimäki explained that two additional competitions, the Regions Cup and the Roots Cup, have been built into the Finnish Cup: “The former is for mid-level clubs and the latter is for lower-league clubs. The best eight participants from each category in the Finnish Cup qualify and they all play the finals on the same weekend. I think that’s the main reason why most of the lower-league clubs take part, because they want to be involved in that.”

Of course, the Finnish Cup is still the main prize. The trophy has a fantastic back story, too. “There is one similar trophy in the world,” laughs Leivo-Jokimäki. “It is the one for Crufts, the dog show. I think it’s quite funny that the Finnish Cup and the world’s biggest dog show in Birmingham – I think it’s over four days and 20,000 dogs – have identical trophies.” It was made in England in the 1990s – although quite how it has such an unlikely identical twin remains unclear. Yet it is another lovable quirk of the Finnish Cup – along with its colourful array of club names and its long draw, which takes place today and is broadcast on YouTube. If you’ve got a spare four hours, be sure to tune in!