Maskun Palloseura (MaPS)

Maskun Palloseura were born in 1988 in Masku, a rural town in the Turku region of southwest Finland, when the football section of the local multi-sport club, Maskun Kataja, amicably broke away to dedicate itself to the ball alone, inheriting a tradition that dates back to the 1930s in the town. MaPS is the portrait of Nordic grassroots football: a development club built on volunteering, with over two dozen teams and seven hundred players of all ages, from mini-football to veterans, and a first team competing in the Kolmonen at the modest Taponkedon kenttä. In a town known across Finland for the furniture chain that borrowed its name, football is the other great local product.