JIPPO

In 2020, JIPPO reached the Round of 16 in the Finnish Cup and ran into FC Inter Turku, a step further than the club from Joensuu had gone before. The next year brought the same result against different opposition, and in 2022 the run went one round longer: a fourth-round tie with JJK Jyväskylä that finished 1-1 and went to penalties, where JIPPO came out on the losing side. None of it delivered a trophy, but for a club with no Veikkausliiga title and no Finnish Cup to its name, three cup runs in three years were the closest thing to a highlight reel it had produced.

JIPPO took its current form in the autumn of 2001, when two Joensuu sides, JiiPee and Ratanat, merged rather than continue to compete against each other in the city's lower leagues. The new club took the field for its first season in 2002, starting out in the third tier. Its natural level turned out to be a division higher: JIPPO climbed into Ykkönen in 2006, finishing fifth, and stayed there for the best part of a decade, settling into mid-table finishes without ever pushing for promotion. The 2014 season broke that run — relegation back to Kakkonen — and it took until 2021 for the club to work its way back to the second tier, where it remains.

Matches are played at the Mehtimäen tekonurmi, a ground that holds 1,000 spectators, modest even by Ykkönen standards. Among those who came through the club in recent years, Eemil Tanninen spent two seasons on the books, from 2022 to 2024, before moving on.

JIPPO's rivalry in Joensuu runs against the city's football history rather than a fixture list: for a club built out of a merger of two local sides, the sharpest edge has always been proving itself against clubs from bigger cities in a division where it has spent most of its life fighting to stay rather than to climb.