Part-time Swiftie, Potterhead and Finland International: Into the mind of Exeter City's Ilmari Niskanen

From winning the league at KuPS to, getting relegated with Dundee United and landing at Exeter City, The Dugout talks to Ilmari Niskanen about his football career and his love of Harry Potter.

Picture this: You have been at your local club for 7 years, and you are within touching distance of winning your club’s first League title in 43 years. You (the league leaders) are playing the team in second place, and all you need is a draw to win the league, whereas they need a win. And then, in the 51st minute, you are on the right-hand side of the box, you look up … and lash the ball into the top left-hand corner of the net. Your reaction, I imagine, would be something like this:

Ilmari Niskanen celebrating the opener against Inter Turku to help KuPS win the 2019 Veikkausliiga.

When talking to Ilmari, you can tell he has an immense passion for the game. With a glint in his eye, he recalls his time at Finish Giants KuPS. Growing up in Finland, football was Ilmari’s passion. He started playing aged five and looked up to his father Jari Niskanen who also played football at a much lower level. Football is not a big sport in Finland, so Ilmari and his father often watched Premier League games, and in particular Manchester United, “I really love Wayne Rooney, he was by far my favourite player.” And the reason that Ilmari loved Rooney as a child was not just because of his brilliance with the football at his feet, but also his passion and attitude in every game he played.

And you can see that watching Rooney has had a lasting effect on the Finish international. The immense passion for the game and a brilliant attitude on and off the pitch is something that you can see in Niskanen as he charges down the wing every week for Exeter City. In his own words, “That is the one thing that I always value in a player, not just the skills or anything but the heart that you are actually showing.”

Passion on the Football pitch is clearly something that Niskanen has in abundance.

Making his senior debut aged just 15 in the Finnish 3rd division, Niskanen scored 9 goals and assisted a further 10. At 15, the same age as the youngest ever Premier League player, Ilmari Niskanen had directly contributed to 19 goals in a single season. But the road to professional football is never smooth, injury problems hit Niskanen like a tonne of bricks. A year after his first season, Niskanen was hit with some terrible news. He had picked up a stress fracture on his lower back, leaving him out for 6 months. After finally returning, he was then hit with another injury, the same one leaving him out for another 6 months.

And just when things couldn’t get any worse, a brain tumour was found and he was out for another 4 months. Any other teenage footballer would call it quits after this kind of ordeal, but not Niskanen. He was ‘saved’ by his hard work, motivation and desire to pursue his dream of playing football abroad.

With injuries and trauma behind him, Niskanen began to start playing regularly for his local team in the Veikkausliiga. Throughout his 7 year spell at KuPS, Niskanen grew into one of the best in the division, winning the league with KuPS in 2019 in dramatic fashion, as mentioned earlier in the article.

His success in Finland earned him a big move to Ingolstadt 04 in Germany. But his two years in Germany were stark contrasts of each other. A club that fell from the Bundesliga in 2017 to the third tier of German football in 2020, it was a great and much bigger club than KuPS. Despite getting promoted in his only season in Germany, as the club finished 3rd, Niskanen doesn’t look back on his time with Ingolstadt very fondly. “I think back on that maybe I should have waited a bit and see if there had been other options,” he told the Dugout.

The summer of 2021 saw Ilmari make his second transfer in as many years, this time to the Scottish Premiership as he signed for Dundee United, In Ilmari’s words, “To be fair I really love them [Dundee United]. I really love my time there. I spent two years. The first season was really good personally and as a team, we finished fourth, and got European football as well. Then the second season was [the] complete opposite, horrendous from the start. We were never really able to turn things around during that year and [we] ended up being relegated which is easily the worst moment of my footballing career so far.”

Following relegation with Dundee United, Ilmari had a host of clubs after his signature. And then, on 15th August 2023 (my birthday), Ilmari put pen to paper with Exeter City Football Club. Partly persuaded by manager Gary Caldwell, but also by Finland team-mate Vil Sinisalo. The goalkeeper was on loan from Aston Villa at the time, and his heroics in goal not only kept Exeter in League One but also earned him a big-money move to Celtic in the last summer window.

Vil Sinisalo and Ilmari Niskanen at training for Finland.

Last season for Exeter was an up-and-down one. A great start was quickly overshadowed by not winning in 13 league games. You’d have thought that a run like this would have crushed the morale of a dressing room, but this was not the case. It was obviously tough in the dressing room, and there was also a lot of frustration. As Ilmari points out, during this nightmare run Exeter played some good stuff and it tended to be goalscoring problems that cost the team the three points. But in the end, the run ended and the Grecians built up some momentum that Gary Caldwell’s men have taken into this season.

Frustratingly for Ilmari, he missed out on a place in Finland’s Euro 2020 squad. It is clear when speaking to him that Ilmari is very frustrated that he couldn’t play at the tournament, but that frustration has been turned into motivation. While understanding the difficulty of the task, Niskanen has a clear ambition to reach the upcoming World Cup. But this is a good Finland team, they beat France 2-0 a few years ago, where Ilmari played a French forward who he told us is the best he has ever played against: Marcus Thuram.

And the Finish have some quality players, Rennes’s Glen Kamara; Norwich legend Teemu Pukki; Leverkusen’s shot-stopper Lukas Hradecky, Celtic’s wonderkid Vil Sinisalo and, of course, Ilmari Niskanen.

So what does the future look like for Ilmari? Here’s what Ilmari had to say, “Yeah, I want to play in the highest possible level where I can and yeah I really hope that will be with Exeter City. I really hope we can push for promotion this year. We know as a group of players it’s gonna be really difficult. But we definitely believe that it is possible. Playing in the Championship with Exeter City would be amazing.” There is clear ambition here, a man who has dedicated himself to football and who has found a home at Exeter City were he can play his best football.

Quick-fire questions:

Favourite Food? Salmon Soup

Favourite Movie? Lord of the Rings, and Harry Potter.

Ilmari is something of a Potterhead, this photo was taken on his second trip to Harry Potter World in London with his girlfriend.

The following question was not planned but came up at the mention of Harry Potter.

Favourite Harry Potter character(s): Ron Weasley, Hagrid and Neville Longbottom.

Favourite TV Show: The Office (The American Version).

Favourite Song: In The End. By: Linkin Park. Empire State of Mind. By: Alicia Keys. Karma. By: Taylor Swift.

Favourite Holiday: Road trip to the Isle of Skye, Scotland.

Messi or Ronaldo: Both, but Messi is slightly better.

Best Friend in football: Viljami Sinisalo, Celtic goalkeeper and Finland international.

Best Friend at Exeter City: Shaun Macdonald, Exeter City goalkeeper.

Best Trainer at Exeter City: Jack Aitchison.

Best player at Exeter City: Pierce Sweeney.

One word to describe Exeter City manager Gary Caldwell: Genius.

Best player you’ve played against: Marcus Thuram

Best player you’ve played with: Glenn Kamara

Ilmari Niskanen has had an up-and-down career, from winning the league in Finland to being relegated while at Dundee United. But with a starting place at Exeter City and with the Finland national team, the future looks bright for the KuPS legend.

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