Serge Atakayi opens up about emotional Rangers exit
While Rangers are embroiled in a Scottish Premiership title fight this season, one former player is wondering what could have been.
23-year-old winger Serge Atakayi joined the club in 2016 but only played once in Scotland as injuries curtailed his progress at Ibrox.
He left in 2019 to return to his adopted homeland of Finland at SJK for a fee of £100,000 but revealed in an interview with Rangers Review that he had doubts over leaving Glasgow.
“I had just started a family,” Atakayi said. “I’ve got a kid and it was hard because I wanted to be closer to him.
“It was my first kid and I always wanted to see him. I didn’t want to always phone him. There was a lot of travelling, when we had a break at Rangers I had to ask if I could go home.
“I was asking myself, asking my family, asking my close friends, ‘What’s the best thing for me?’
“I started to like Rangers so it was really hard to leave but I had to go back home. Even now, I never want to miss a Rangers game when they play, I always want to see them.
“I am thankful for what the club gave me, they gave me a chance and they trusted me. I remember the day when I left, I cried, it was sad. I never believed I could leave but it was my decision.”
The Rangers effect
It’s hard to imagine how a player who played just once in three years could have begun to like Rangers but that is the kind of effect such a big club can have.
Atakayi’s time in Glasgow could have been so much different had he managed to avoid the majority of the injuries he suffered and he may even be a star at Ibrox right now.
It is all a case of ‘what if’s’ now though and with the likes of Fashion Sakala, Ryan Kent and Amad Diallo now the options out wide, he may have struggled to compete anyway.
That doesn’t stop the realisation that even players who barely play for the first team love the football club and have to really consider whether they want to leave when the time comes.
Hopefully, the same conundrum might see some of the Light Blues’ current stars take a step back and think about whether they want to leave and if only one stays, that is still a big improvement on previous seasons.
In other Rangers news, John Lundstram was a January target for a Championship club before he revived his Ibrox career.