Collins' Beans: Cult Hero: Shefki Kuqi

‘When Shefki Kuqi rumbled off the bench for Newcastle last Saturday, he was making his debut for his 13th senior club. He is almost the definition of the journeyman striker. But his is a journey more extraordinary than most, one that began in 1989, when he was 12 years old.’

Credit where it’s due, those are the words of The Guardian’s Jonathan Wilson (a veritable footballing encyclopedia of knowledge and author of the terrific ‘Inverting the Pyramid available here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Inverting-Pyramid-History-Football-Tactics/dp/1409102041/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1298291942&sr=1-1).

Written below are extracts from a fascinating interview with the player that tells an incredible story of how Kuqi and his family ended up in Finland, embarking on a prfoessional football career that has taken him from Stockport County all the way to Newcastle United.

At stops such as Sheffield Wednesday, Ipswich Town, Blackburn Rovers and Crystal Palace, the big hearted Finn has both frustrated and impressed in equal measure. During his spells with Stockport and most notably at Ipswich he was a blunderbuss of a centre forward. Big and barrel chested, it’s fair to say he has never been the most refined of players but you could rarely question his effort and commitment (even if Neil Warnock once did).

He’s had ups and downs in his career but it shows the measure of the man that after he was fined and dropped for making a gesture to home fans during his up and down time at Palace he battled his way back to become the clubs top scorer the next season.

Kuqi has earned himself one last shot at the big time, even though his signing by Alan Pardew hasn’t exactly set the pulses of Geordie fans racing. The big man is closing in on 500 career appearances as well as a highly respectable 150 goals and who’s to say that before the end of the season we might not see his legendary flying belly flop celebration on a Premier League pitch or two?

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Kuqi was born in Vucitrn, a town in Kosovo, then in Yugoslavia, where two-thirds of the population were ethnic Albanians. Kuqi's family were among them. He grew up in a small village just outside Vucitrn, most of whose residents worked in a metal-processing plant on the road into the town. There were only 10 Serb houses in the village, five in a cluster just over the road from Kuqi's house, five just behind.

"The kids were aware of the differences between them but the games were friendly: if one side was short, Kosovans would play for the Serb side or the other way round. It was just an easy way of dividing people up, rather than anything more fundamental.That's largely how it was. People got on. If there was a party at a Serb house, Kosovans would give them a cake. But as time went by the relationship became more and more tense. My dad's brother had a good friend who lived opposite and there was a time when the friend's wife came over to warn us that things weren't looking good.

Towards the end of 1988 there were reports of Kosovans being attacked, of houses being burnt and people being killed. "People began losing their jobs, and [the Yugoslav president, Slobodan] Milosevic started making noises about wanting it all to be one country and one language," Kuqi says. His family decided to move when his brother was 16 and due to do his military service.

"There was a sense of fear among Kosovans, but it was when my brother was 16 so he had to do military service that the family decided it was time to move. I knew something was going on because my Dad and my Dad's brother and other relatives kept meeting to discuss things.”

The day they left is seared in Kuqi's memory. "We left home at 9pm on a Thursday night," he says. "It was cold. It had been snowing all day. We had a big garden and it was covered with snow. My uncle Sadik, my dad's brother, worked for the council and he had a snow plough, so when he had finished his rounds for the day, he came over and cleared the snow from the front of the house. My mother's parents lived right next to the station, so we went and stayed with them overnight.

"Everybody was feeling sad and crying – it was like being at a funeral. I didn't really understand what was happening; all I knew was that I was being asked to leave my home and all my friends. My dad was already in Finland, trying to get things ready for us.

"It was very cold. I remember wearing a long winter coat, and my Mama fussing to make sure we were all tucked up warmly. I think worrying about us was her way of coping with the stress of it all. We took the train first to Vucitrn. It was still snowing. All I could see was white. I stared back at the station and that end of our village and then, as the mountains blocked our view, at the shapes of those slopes. I'd played there and climbed and skied almost since I was born. I knew every hill and every valley but I was trying to burn the image into my mind as I knew I might never see it again. The snow had been unbelievably heavy and with the wind it had drifted into weird shapes, up to 2m high. Those shapes stick with me.”

"Our dad had told us that, when we were in Belgrade, we shouldn't speak because people would realise where we were from. He'd really drummed that into us so we were terrified of making a sound. My Mama's brother was an engine driver and all the way he was trying to keep our spirits up, telling stories about the railway, trying to explain to us how things worked, anything to take our minds off the journey.

We were on that train for five to six hours, getting more and more nervous as we got nearer and nearer Belgrade. You have to remember we'd been told all the time that the Serbs were our enemies and after what we'd seen on the news, we were scared of them: and this was their capital. We were going through the dragon's den. Our uncles tried to get us to play games but we didn't want to; we couldn't think of anything but the people we'd left behind, all the friends and family we used to play with.”

"That next stage as we headed north seemed to take forever. There was a great sense of relief when we pulled out of Belgrade and then when we crossed the border into Croatia, it was as if we'd cleared the biggest hurdle. We wanted to celebrate but we were still in Yugoslavia, so we knew we weren't in the clear. Every time we crossed a border or the inspectors came to check our tickets there was another spasm of fear. We'd had to pay somebody who arranged these things to get the visas.

"As time went on and we got closer to Finland we started to think about seeing Dad again after three weeks. It was the first time we'd gone that long without seeing him. But we knew they might send us straight back when we landed. So we were scared, wondering what was going to happen. Were they going to take us to my Dad, or send us straight back? We were wondering what was going to happen. There were real mixed feelings – we didn't even know if my Dad would be able to come and pick us up.”

"We arrived and of course we couldn't speak the language. We didn't know what was going on. We walked down off the boat and went into passport control – this big, low, cold building. It was very intimidating, antiseptic. We waited until the end, till everybody else had gone through, and we got more and more nervous, my mother especially. They spoke to us in Finnish and in English, but we couldn't communicate with them, so they took us in to a corridor and sat us down on some hard plastic chairs. I think we were among the first migrants to go to Finland. We had a really stressful wait for two to three hours until a translator arrived; we just kept thinking they were going to send us back. We knew some people who'd been sent back from Sweden.

"The next morning they took us to the police station. Our father's lawyer had joined us by then and we explained that we wanted to stay and why. We didn't know where dad was, so they took us to a camp near Helsinki. We had our own room and it was far more comfortable than the hostel but we were beginning to wonder if we'd ever see our dad again.”

"After a week we heard that he was in a camp in Mikkeli, so we asked to be transferred there. They agreed, which was a relief, but we had no idea what to expect. When we got there it was better than we could ever have believed. It was like a holiday camp – lots of chalets in a big field. People would go there in the summer with caravans. There were loads of activities for children – football pitches, swimming pools, basketball courts. They had converted it into a refugee camp that winter. When we got there dad was waiting outside for us. That was a fantastic feeling, everybody laughing. We were all together again at last so we knew that whatever happened we would all share the same fate."

Eventually, the Kuqis were granted asylum, and Shefki, having built up his fitness skiing round Mikkeli, joined the youth ranks of a local football club, Ka-Pa51. His life since has not necessarily been smooth but falling out with Carlton Palmer at Stockport before moving to Sheffield Wednesday, for example, is in a different magnitude of difficulty was nothing to compare with that first move.

Joining Newcastle at the age of 34 offers an improbable chance for a glorious finale. But the hardest stage of his journey will always have been the first.

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