It was both natural and unfair to place the tag of the ‘Finnish Messi’ on his head in his childhood. The Barcelona legend was a player that Antman looked up to, but it was those closer to home – his mother and his brother in particular – who shaped his formative years.
Had fate allowed the forward to head down a different path, Antman could have had the opportunity to pull on that famous red, yellow and blue shirt at the Nou Camp. Now it is a red, white and blue one that he wears after moving to Rangers from Go Ahead Eagles last month.
Russell Martin believes Antman is a player with a bright future in the game. He is one with a fascinating back story, too. Here, the Rangers Review discovers what makes Antman the person and the player and learns about his route to Ibrox.
The first steps in the journey were taken two decades ago under the guidance of Pertti Kemppinen. Antman is one of around 10,000 children that one of the Godfathers of Finnish coaching has worked with. Few have made as much of an impression as the kid from Korso that didn't have the words in his vocabulary to communicate at his first training session but who quickly let his feet do the talking.
The basis of the Tanoke methodology is to train children's motor, visual and cognitive abilities, combining a scientific approach with an understanding of how boys and girls learn and grow. Three years ago, Kemppinen received the Jyrki Heliskoski Honorary Award for his decades of service to coaching. At the same event hosted by the Finnish FA, Antman collected the Under-21 Player of the Year prize.
“Oliver joined our football school at the age of three,” Kemppinen told the Rangers Review. “At the time, both his older brother and older sister were already attending. From the very beginning, Oliver stood out as extremely determined and highly competitive, with a breathtaking eagerness to learn how to play football.
“Over the years, he distinguished himself more and more from our other trainees thanks to his exceptional willpower. He attended our football school almost daily and as a result, his skill level grew visibly and consistently. He was incredibly hungry to learn.
“Naturally, his enormous training volume soon made him stand out — not only through his ball-handling skills but also in broader technical and physical areas, such as motor skills, coordination, body control, and speed. His perseverance and tenacity also set him apart in terms of character.”
Footage from a Finnish news programme - with the camera crew sent to discuss his potential move to Barca - shows a prodigious Antman dribbling in his living room and working through drills at a local park, the quick feet and close control that are now the hallmarks of his game evident in the boy with a mass of blonde hair that was more messy than Messi. On the day he signed for Rangers, he credited his mother, Susanna, for his development after years spent taking him to training and matches. The family even made a move to Barcelona after Antman was initially scouted by the La Liga giants aged just eight.
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Coaches were sent a highlights reel and match footage before Antman was invited for a trial after he was spotted at a local session. A second trip was planned to allow him to participate in a tournament but a FIFA sanction on Barcelona for their activity regarding youth players scuppered the move and a letter of apology was received from Albert Puig, then the director of La Masia.
The family returned to the city regardless. As a 12-year-old, Antman trained 50 hours-per week and neighbours contacted the police over concerns about his presence on the streets and absence from school. His mother explained that he was receiving an education at home, where she put her life savings into paying rent. When she decided his time at UE Cornella was not benefitting her boy, they moved to CF Damm while still harbouring the dream of playing for the biggest club in Catalonia.
His sisters, Emilia and Olivia, were also talented players and his brother, Daniel, played professionally in Finland. Regardless of the day, even at Christmas, New Year or Easter, Susanna would tell the kids to pull on their boots.
“Oliver spent about a year in Spain, at the same time I was there,” Kemppinen said. “A key element in his development during that period was the Spanish street football culture, which is very active in Barcelona. There, Oliver played rondos and intense small-sided games with older and bigger players. In Barcelona, he played for a strong team, although not in FC Barcelona’s La Masia academy teams.
(Image: Andrew Milligan)
“His mother played an enormous role in his development. She was always there at the side of the pitch during training - transporting him, encouraging him, and supporting him in many ways. In Oliver’s case, I would say his success is the result of three essential factors: first and foremost Oliver himself, but also his family - especially his mother - and the long-term work of our Tanoke Football School, where I was on the pitch with him every day.”
Kemppinen recalls how Antman was considered too slow for a wide man in his early teens and that his power output was lower than other players of his age. His experience told him to look beyond the numbers and he knew from Antman’s stride frequency that his biological maturation would come. When it did, Antman found his feet.
The 24-year-old still keeps in touch with the man who was his mentor. Antman even attended a summer camp in his homeland, eager to give back to the school who taught him and to those who will graduate to become the next stars of the Finnish game.
One story of the many that Kemppinen could tell perhaps encapsulates Antman’s personality. The old adage about hard work beating talent when talent doesn’t work hard does not apply to Antman. He has always had both attributes. Indeed, that will to win sometimes boiled over and he was temporarily excluded from sessions to cool his fiery temper.
“I have countless memorable moments with Oliver, as he impressed me from the very start,” Kemppinen said. “One that stands out is when we were practicing a highly demanding aerial ball-control drill, which we called the ‘Barcelona juggling pattern.’
“When Oliver couldn’t perform it, he became very frustrated and shouted at me, ‘No one can do this!’ I told him that his older brother — Daniel Antman — could do it on the first try. Annoyed by this, Oliver began practicing the pattern for several hours a day, and eventually, he mastered it.
“It was a perfect example of his competitive spirit. As the youngest child in his family, he was determined to compete seriously with his brother and sister, who were both highly skilled with the ball.”
After a year in Spain, Antman returned home and signed for HJK. When his next club, Legirus Inter, disbanded in the winter of 2017, he was left injured and with nowhere to train. A former coach at Tanoke, Roberto Nuccio, signed him for Tikkurilan Palloseura and he was spotted playing for the Finland youth team at Under-16 level.
Steen Nedergaard was head scout for FC Nordsjælland and offered Antman trials at the club associated with the Right to Dream Academy. The relationship blossomed over the following year. The rest is history.
“His main quality is on the counter-attack,” Flemming Pedersen, the technical director of FC Nordsjælland and Right to Dream, told the Rangers Review. “He is very fast, direct, and he is also a good finisher, from both the right side and the left side. His one v one skills are very impressive, he can drive with the ball, again on both sides, and that allows him to play from the right or the left.
“He drives with the ball, he can make a pass or score a goal. His stamina is important to him, he is a player that can repeat high intensity runs. He has very good work ethic in everything he does.
“I have seen some videos from his dad from when he was a very young kid and how they did individual training with quick footwork. You can see his feet when he plays, his feet are like drumsticks. He has trained a lot on dribbling, on ball handling and having very quick feet from a very early age.”
Antman spent five seasons at Nordsjælland after moving from Gnistan. He was a team-mate of Mohamed Diomande and the likes of Kamaldeen Sulemana, Mohammed Kudus and Benjamin Nygren, now of Celtic.
(Image: Bruce White/Colorsport / Shutterstock)
Pedersen takes pride from seeing two of his former pupils at Ibrox. He states that Antman and Diomande were not best friends off the park, but they were two players who spent a lot of time in company on both sides of the white line, living together in the campus and working to improve individually and collectively.
Ahead of his final season, Nordsjælland and Antman came to an agreement that if he did not get the game time that he wished he would be allowed to move on. A move to Go Ahead Eagles brought seven goals and 17 assists as well as the KNVB Cup victory that Antman ranks as the most significant achievement of his career.
“He contributes in terms of his numbers,” Pedersen said. “That is what we all want from players, we need outcomes.
“We have seen last season when he played in Holland, when he was a regular in the team, that he got those outcomes more often. At FC Nordsjælland where we played for six years, we saw that in spells.
“He came when he was 17 and started in the Under-19s. In the spring of 2019, I gave him his debut while he was still an Under-19 player. He never, even though he was there six seasons, was a regular in the starting team.
“At Nordsjælland, we didn’t get the best out of him. You need to get into a team and play constantly but the competition was just too high in those moments. In terms of attacking players, there has always been a lot of tough competition from players.
“He wanted to go and play. In the end, we could not say no. It would have been beneficial for us for him to stay but in these situations, when you have been with us for six years, we could not say no. He has taken that opportunity in Holland and now in Scotland.”
The Rangers Review revealed last month that an agreement had been reached with Go Ahead Eagles for Antman to move to Ibrox. When the transfer was finalised, Martin referenced the hunger to learn that each of his mentors points to and the 24-year-old has new levels to reach at Ibrox.
Martin handed the forward a debut against Viktoria Plzen within while the ink was still drying on his contract. That show of faith, and the impressive performance in the 3-0 victory, came as no surprise to Pedersen. He is sure there is much, much more to come in time.
“He had the technical qualities to play in Nordsjælland and also the character,” Pedersen said. “He wanted to get better, he wanted to learn. He was easy to work with because he has this intrinsic motivation to improve and better himself.
“It is also important for a manager to get into the head of Oliver because he is the type that sometimes he can have a different idea, so it is important that you understand that and understand him. Sometimes Oliver will see things that maybe his coach or his team-mates is not seeing, so you have to get into his head to get the best out of him.
“You can collaborate with him. My personality is that I like to be challenged, because then I have a chance to learn myself too. While Oliver was playing at Nordsjælland, sometimes he could challenge me and my staff. That is always interesting because you need to see it from his side.”
That debut against Plzen is the most effective that Antman has been for Rangers. He was overlooked for a start against Celtic in the final match before the international break but will be called upon during a defining run of matches for Martin in the coming weeks.
A World Cup qualifier against Poland this evening could see him collect another cap for his country. It will certainly not be last that Antman earns, as Ari Virtanen, a sports writer with the Helsingin Sanomat, explains.
“Antman made his breakthrough in the national team in 2023,” Virtanen told the Rangers Review. “He scored four goals in five matches then. Only two players in Finland national team history started more efficiently their careers in the national team.
“I personally think that he could have a great future in the national team and he will be one of the key players of Finland's attack in the next few years. Finland does not have too many pacy and skilful wingers like him at the moment.
”Daniel Håkans of Lech Poznan and Topi Keskinen of Aberdeen are according to my knowledge faster players, but Antman has more tricks in his bag. He is a better dribbler, ball carrier and more efficient winger than Keskinen or Håkans right now.”
The move for Antman was something of an outlier for Rangers this summer as Martin elected to shop in England for the majority of his recruits. Bojan Miovski and Derek Cornelius were the only two other players to come in from abroad during the latest summer rebuild.
🇫🇮 A slick Finland move finished off by Oliver Antman 👏#EQlinkups | @Alipay pic.twitter.com/OUyI5Ywtsi
— UEFA EURO (@UEFAEURO) September 9, 2023
The forward fits the profile of many of the acquisitions in that he was bought for a relatively low fee and is of an age where – all going to plan, of course – Rangers could have success in the here and now and turn a profit in the future. Before making that next big step, Antman must stride forward at Ibrox.
“I have understood that football fans in Finland were somewhat disappointed that he moved to Scottish Premiership as there was also some interest from the Championship and bigger Dutch clubs,” Virtanen said. “The timing of the transfer was right in my opinion. Hopefully this move will develop him further.
“I have interviewed him many times at the national team matches. In my opinion he is a confident person who can boldly say his opinions. I think he is a rather likeable guy. He told me in 2022 that he dreamt about a move to Netherlands or Belgium and then a further move to bigger leagues. I think he has the skills to play in top five league in the future.”