Shefki Kuqi opens up about his escape from war in Kosovo, playing in the Champions League, Roy Hodgson and THAT incident against Wolverhampton Wanderers.
Shefki Kuqi isn’t like other footballers.
“What I’ve gone through in life, leaving my country and leaving my family,” he says, “these kinds of things: that’s pressure.
“Pressure in football?
“I never felt that.”
For Kuqi, a career in football isn’t merely a record of games played and goals scored. It’s a life raft; the vessel that saw him transformed from a frightened, vulnerable refugee arriving in a new country at just 12-years-old, to the confident young man playing Champions League football just six years later.