In the 14th part of our regular series, The Ex-Files, Blair Ferguson catches up with Flying Finn Shefki Kuqi.
A person’s upbringing and circumstances often mould their outlook on life and this certainly seems the case with Shefki Kuqi, who in 1989 when 12 years old had to flee his native Kosovo in search of safety during the Balkans conflict.
"I was 12 when my parents moved to Finland and as a boy at that time you don’t really know what’s going on, you just think what normal kids think,” remembered the former striker, now 37.
"It was quite difficult to understand why we moved and why we left the country away from our family and everybody.
"It was a really hard time, especially in the last week when we knew we were going to leave.”
Having been granted asylum by a very unfamiliar Finland, Kuqi initially found it difficult, describing it like "starting your life again”, with football firmly off the radar given the language barrier and uncertainty.
He avoided football for the first two years because his family weren’t sure how long they would be in the country but after that time had passed he decided to get into the game, but facing new challenges.
"They said we don’t need players like him because he’s foreign,” he recalled. Was that hard to take? "Of course, but it makes you mentally strong and I’ve always said that if you want something you have to prepare for everything.”
At this point he says he was he was happy just to train with the team and get trainers, football boots and a tracksuit.
But his perseverance and positive attitude soon paid off and he started his career with Kangasniemen Palloseura and then moved on to Mikkelin Kissat, Mikkelin Palloilijat and HJK.
During the 2000 season at his next club, FC Jokerit, he was the top scorer in the Veikkausliiga, the Finnish top flight, with 19 goals and it was then he knew it was time for the next step.
"After two or three years of being involved here in Finland I knew I wanted to push myself,” explains Kuqi.
Celebrating scoring for Stockport
"I wanted to push myself technically because I never had anyone that could train me or show me what to do. It was attitude and desire that had got me to where I was in football and I always wanted to push myself.
"I never had in my mind ‘today I play in the Finnish League and in the next two years I play in the Premier League’, I always took it step by step. My first priority was always to be ready for anything and make sure I secured my place in a team.
"I was 23 years old when I came to England and I never regret that because sometimes players leave a bit too early and they try and go too quickly rather than playing in the country where they are.
"I was player of the year here, I was top scorer, I won the Finnish Championship and Cup, I won the League cup, I won everything that you could win in football here and by doing that I got my place in the national team and then it was the time for me to move.”
Listening to Kuqi you can tell he is an intelligent man who knew that waiting to develop in Finland was better than finding himself on a bench somewhere in England.
He was now to embark on the next stage of his football career, which first would take him to Stockport County.
"I had one or two other options but I went to Stockport County in January 2001 when they were in what was the First Division (now the Championship) and for me that was the next step.
That famous dive while with Wednesday
"I went there, again, I got my place in the starting XI and played week-in, week-out and at the end of the season I went to Sheffield Wednesday.
"It was a great club for me but I just turned up at the wrong time. When I turned up things were going wrong on the pitch, off the pitch and everywhere else. It was a tough time there, but then I came to Ipswich.”
This would prove to be a stand-out period in his career and one which he looks back on as his favourite time. TWTD has heard a lot of players wax lyrical about the club, but few quite as Kuqi does.
"I’ve been to a few clubs but Ipswich are always in my heart, I always follow them and from then I never looked back.
"I always remember when I was with Blackburn and I was speaking to the fitness coach, Tony Strudwick, [now at Manchester United].
"I can’t remember what game it was and we were talking about who would win but Ipswich were playing against one of the top teams and I said ‘Ipswich will win today’.
"He told me that I must love Ipswich too much because I always talk with my heart not my head about them!”
How did his September 2003 move to Town come about? "It happened very quickly, but looking back it was the best thing that could have happened.
"Willie Donachie was the assistant at Sheffield Wednesday and after a while Joe Royle got the job at Ipswich and then Willie went with him.
"They got me in on loan because Willie knew me from Sheffield Wednesday. I was on loan for three months and after three weeks I signed a permanent contract.”
During his loan spell there were other offers which could have taken him away from Suffolk but even after that short time Shefki couldn’t bring himself to leave, especially not to Norwich City.
"At the time I was there on loan Norwich were trying to sign me as well but for me there was no way I could have gone to that club,” he insists. "In fact Norwich tried to buy me twice after I left Ipswich as well but I knew how much the supporters disliked them.
"I remember talking to someone about it and they said ‘you won’t be the last person to play for Ipswich then Norwich or vice-versa’ but I’m not that person so I couldn’t do that.
"For me the way I was supported by the Ipswich fans and the way they treated me was amazing and I’m a very loyal person.”
"Even when I was the away team playing against Ipswich they sung my name and that means the world to me.”
His favourite moment while playing for the Blues? "There are loads, and I’m not just saying that.
"I always remember my first game [at Watford] where I met the team at a hotel and we went to the match. [Joe Royle] said to me ‘you’re going to start the game on the bench and come on in the second half’.
"I remember we were losing 1-0 at half-time and I came on and scored with my first or second touch in front of the fans [as Town won 2-1] and from there we won seven games in a row.”
One thing that always stood out during his spell with the Blues was the famous swan dive goal celebration.
Gary Croft, then of Cardiff, admires a Kuqi dive
"My celebration was something different and something I loved doing, it became quite popular at Ipswich, probably because I was scoring goals! I was always trying to get higher and higher, the ‘Flying Finn’ was the perfect combination.”
Kuqi vividly remembers, like most of us, the play-off disappointments, Darren Currie’s miss at Leeds, Town’s inability to beat West Ham in the semi-finals and the worst of all for himself, the injury he suffered against Leicester in early February which many believe caused a massive stutter in Town’s 2004/05 play-off push.
"I went for a header against Dion Dublin, and I don’t think it was an accident because the way it happened with his studs coming into my thigh,” he remembers.
"The physio told me ‘you have to come off’ but I thought I could keep on playing. He said to me ‘Shefki, you can’t stay on, the stud’s gone in your thigh, look at the hole’.”
Scoring for Town at West Ham in the 2005 play-off semi-final
Town were top of the table three points ahead of Wigan when Kuqi suffered his injury, but after two defeats and a draw in his absence the situation was different on his return with the Blues now third, three points behind Mick McCarthy’s Sunderland, who had gone top.
"David Sheepshanks has said to me that he always regrets me getting injured,” he recalled ruefully.
He says he would have loved nothing more than to play in the Premier League with Ipswich and had they been promoted he never would have left.
But this was a man who struggled and fought his way into the Championship, and now he was offered the chance to play in the Premier League by Blackburn Rovers.
Raising a flag while at Blackburn
Few could condemn him for deciding to leave and he says then-chairman David Sheepshanks told him, "If you can go to the Premier League then we won’t stop you because at the moment we can’t give you that opportunity.”
Although Kuqi got off to a strong start at Blackburn he soon found himself out of the starting XI due to a loan signing, and finally in the stands watching.
He explains: "To play against the best players week-in and week-out was great and in my first season I scored eight goals in the Premier League, most of them before January.
"I had six goals before January and I was playing a lot and we missed Craig Bellamy because he was injured, he was unbelievable when he was at Blackburn.
"But we signed Florent Sinama Pongolle on loan from Liverpool and then I was on the bench all the time, I never even started after January.
"I remember Pongolle only scored one goal from January until the end of the season. I always thought that if I had played with Bellamy I would have hit double figures.
"We signed Jason Roberts and Benni McCarthy and I spent one or two games in the stand and for me it wasn’t about the money I just wanted to play and be part of the team.”
In action for Palace
From there Kuqi headed to Crystal Palace, which he says didn’t go to plan: "It never worked out at Crystal Palace, we were favourites to go up but didn’t even make the play-offs, it was a hard time.”
During his time at Selhurst Park, after a spell on loan at Fulham, he returned to Ipswich on a similar basis at the end of the 2007/08 campaign but it was a move which was blighted by injury, specifically his first hamstring tear.
With Fulham
"I remember that because it was really, really strange. That’s the first time I’d ever had a hamstring injury.
"When I came on everyone was standing and applauding and somebody played the ball to Tommy [Miller] and I knew what he was going to do and I was one-on-one with the keeper but I just fell down.
"I thought someone had shot me! I didn’t know what was happening and when I got up again I tried to stand on my leg and it just went down again. That night I was in a lot of pain, I couldn’t bend, put clothes on, socks on, I just couldn’t sleep.
Stretchered off when back at Town
"I went for a scan the next morning and got told it was just strained a bit. I went back to the physio and asked if he was sure he scanned the right place because my whole hamstring was black. I went to get it checked in London and had another scan and there was a 10cm tear.
"I tried to come back again but I felt pain. I came on for four or five minutes against Norwich but it just wasn’t right.”
Celebrating a Norwich own goal while back at Portman Road
After departing Palace in the summer of 2009 Kuqi made his way to Germany to fulfil his ambition of playing with his brother, one-time Town trialist Njazi, which he did in Bundesliga 2, with TuS Koblenz.
His next stop was Swansea, the club he likens most to Ipswich in terms of feeling welcome. After that came a move that few, including Kuqi, would have imagined, a four-month spell back in the Premier League at Newcastle.
At Swansea
With Andy Carroll having departed and Shola Ameobi picking up an injury, Kuqi was perfectly placed to come in as a free agent with the transfer window then limiting the Magpies’ options.
He talks passionately about his short spell with Newcastle: "Unless you go there you don’t understand what a massive club it is.
"The supporters live and die for that club and it will always be one of the best things of my career. My one wish I have now would be to score a goal for Newcastle.”
From Town to Toon
During his playing career Kuqi represented Finland 62 times, scoring eight goals, and looking back on his career he will go down as one of their greatest ever exports.
"I was the first player from outside of Finland to play for the national team, the first Finnish player to play in the English Premier League and the first Finnish player to score over 100 goals in British football,” he recounts proudly.
Facing England for Finland
After spells at Oldham and Hibernian Kuqi called time on his playing days and it wasn’t long before he ventured into management, taking a job back in Finland with top flight side FC Honka in February. It’s a step which seems natural for a man who loves the game so much.
In the final years of his career he says he started to consider management and the influence managers he worked under had had on him, including Joe Royle, who he still speaks to regularly and regards highly.
Netting from the spot for Oldham
He said: "The last three or four years are when I started to think about management. I always loved football and I can’t see myself doing anything else and when you’ve been involved so long it’s hard to stay away from it. The next best thing you could do is to be a manager.
"I’ve had loads of different managers, good ones and bad ones, and nowadays I think it’s about man-management and motivation.
"I think I’ve got through a lot of things and the way I’ve been brought up and the things that have happened in my life off the pitch made me mentally stronger and a better person and helped me a lot and gave me a lot of experience.”
Kuqi has tried to strengthen his side by adding his former Ipswich team-mate Pablo Couñago, although whilst he’s ready to play Kuqi is still unable to unleash him on the Finnish league, which runs through the summer.
"I needed a goalscorer because we create a lot of chances and the first person that came to my mind was Pablo,” he says of the 34-year-old, who had been plying his trade with Spanish third-tier side CD Choco.
"If I needed somebody to run up and down from box to box then Pablo definitely wouldn’t be who I would pick but I need someone who can score goals and protect the ball and inside the box Pablo is one of the best players I could have. But we can’t register him right now which is absolutely stupid but we want him to play.”
Pablo and Shefki at Town
He says his budget at Honka, which is in the town of Espoo, is currently too limited to bring in any more of his old Portman Road team-mates.
One question remained, albeit an obvious one, would Kuqi ever consider managing Town at some point in the future?
"Of course. If anything came up at Ipswich I would never say no, whatever the circumstances because Ipswich is always in my heart. It would be a dream come true.”
You can read all the previous Ex-Files here.