Serge Atakayi is desperate for another shot at European football next year.
The St Patrick’s Athletic winger would love to conjure up more moments like his wonder-winner away to CSKA Sofia during the summer - and put himself in the shop window.
Atakayi (23) knows just how important tonight’s visit to Dundalk is to the Saints’ Euro ambitions, with the third placed Lilywhites enjoying a four-point cushion over their rivals with just five games remaining.
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“It’s a very, very big game for us,” said the DR Congo-born attacker. “When we go there I just want to win, I don’t want to draw, because it (the gap) would be closer if we win.
“Everyone will be focused. We know we have to do better again. We are ready, we are going to fight. We just take it game-by-game. That’s the most important thing.”
Atakayi continued: “It’s always best when you play in Europe because everyone sees you and you have more chances to get a bigger club.
“Everyone wants to play next year in Europe again.
“I don’t think any player here just wants to play in the League of Ireland only. That’s the main thing. Even the coach, everyone who supports us.
“We know what we have to do. We just focus game-by-game and let’s see how it takes us. We just need to win.”
Of course, fourth place would still be enough if Derry City win the FAI Cup in November.
“If we don’t go to Europe we just fight again and hope someone wins the Cup for us so we can go,” Atakayi added.
Regardless of whether European qualification is achieved, Atakayi is living the dream in his career as a professional footballer.
It was all he ever wanted to do growing up in Kinshasa, where his biggest opponent was his mother and her desire to see him focus solely on his schoolwork.
And it was through football that his life changed forever. While touring Finland in 2010 with a Congolese schoolboy side, Atakayi and some of his teammates applied for asylum.
His request was granted and he spent the rest of his childhood and teenage years in Finland, playing youth football with FF Jaro in Jakobstad.
He graduated to their senior set-up and moved in 2016 to Rangers, where serious injuries stalled his rise to the first-team. He made just three senior appearances there.
Atakayi went back to Finland with SJK - where he worked under former Irish striker Jon Daly - and in mid-July Daly, now at Pat’s, invited him to Richmond Park.
Within 24 hours of his arrival in Dublin on an 18-month contract, he had made his first-team debut in a 1-1 draw at home to Dundalk.
“Everything was so fast, I didn’t even see my family or friends,” said the 23-year-old, who has a two-year-old son still living in Finland.
“But that’s football, you never know what will happen. You just need to be always ready.”
Recalling his incredible journey to Finland at the age of just 10, he said: “It was very difficult.
“It was very hard for me, the first three months, not to see my mum, my sister who is like a twin for me, even though we’re not twins.
“It was very difficult to leave my mum and then I didn’t hear from her on the phone for maybe four months.
“Then after that, we’d start to talk and all of the time when I stopped the phone, I’d just cry and say ‘I miss my mum’.
“I asked the Finnish Ministry if I could go home because I wanted to leave and go back to my mum.
“But in Finland it’s very hard when you come as a kid, you can’t leave alone so your parents need to come pick you up.
“My mum doesn’t work, she didn’t have money but they say, ‘your mum needs to come pick you up’.
“So then they guaranteed to my mum that they would take care of me and everything would be well. That was the big promise to my mum so I’m glad everything went well.”
Atakayi has been back to DR Congo twice in recent years.
“The first time was in 2019 when I was at Rangers. Congo Under-23 called me,” he said.
“Youssouf Mulumbu played with Celtic, so we were very close in Glasgow. He asked me to go to Congo.
“After many years I was a little bit scared. But I went and everything was good. I saw my mum, I saw my sister and my family.
“And then last year I had a proper time there. I was there for two months spending time with everyone in my dad’s family and my mum’s family.
“It was tough to leave them but it was good.”
Atakayi still sees his son regularly, but living in a different country to his child has given him a fresh perspective on his own actions all those years ago.
“It’s tough,” he said. “Now I understand how my mum felt. I see myself that it is very hard.”
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