QPR: American import was the source of continued Loftus Road frustration: View | OneFootball

Queens Park Rangers have had many players come and go from the club in recent time, some that will always be remembered and others that will easily be forgotten.

It isn’t firmly clear what category Niko Hamalainen fits into, but given how his time with the Rs went, he is likely someone the supporters will have forgotten about, given his frustrating spell.

QPR signed Niko Hamalainen from Dallas Academy in 2014

The 2014/15 season saw QPR back in the Premier League after winning promotion via the Championship play-offs the previous campaign.

That summer was very hectic for the Rs, as a lot of big-name players with hefty wages joined the football club.

However, it didn’t end there, because in September, QPR’s academy secured the services of winger Niko Hamalainen.

Hamalainen was the latest scholar at the time to join the club’s under-18s for that campaign. The Finland international signed a two-year scholarship that summer.

Hamalainen started his career in America, playing for Dallas’ academy, and that was where QPR snapped up the player.

Niko Hamalainen’s time at QPR was a source of frustration

So, as mentioned, when Queens Park Rangers brought Niko Hamalainen to the club, he was playing in their under-18s.

So, for the 2014/15 and the 2015/16 seasons, he was spending all of his time there, so it wasn't until the 2016/17 Championship campaign that he got his first chance with the first team.

In that campaign, Hamalainen played four times for the club, three in the league and one in the EFL Cup. But the following season, he failed to appear in the first team at all, playing in the club’s under-23s.

In the 2018/19 season, the Finland international played a few times in the EFL Cup before he was sent on loan to LAFC in February 2019.

He stayed with the American side for six months, and when he returned to QPR, the club then decided to send him out on loan once again, this time to Scottish side Kilmarnock.

He spent the full season with the Scottish side, and it was quite a successful loan spell, as he played 32 times for the club, but more importantly, it made QPR take notice, and his circumstances changed in the next campaign.

The 2020/21 season was the best it got for Hamalainen, as he started 18 of the 22 games he featured in the Championship, and in those games, he was averaging 79 minutes per game.

In that campaign, Hamalainen played the majority of it at left-back, and while he didn’t contribute much going forward, he did his part in defence.

The Finland international finished the season with a 70% pass accuracy, which helped him collect 0.5 key passes, and he had 50.7 touches of the ball.

Meanwhile, in defence, Hamalainen averaged a single interception per game, as well as 1.2 tackles and an impressive 1.5 clearances, all of which helped QPR keep four clean sheets when he played, as per Sofascore.com.

Hamalainen would have hoped this could have been the start of him playing as a regular member of the first team, but unfortunately, that wasn’t the case, and it was the best it got for the player.

The next season, Hamalainen was sent out on loan back to America, this time to LA Galaxy and then Brazilian side Botafogo. He played a few times for the Rs in the 2022/23 season, but in the second half of that campaign, he was loaned out once again before eventually being allowed to leave on a free transfer in June 2023.

The defender was on the books with the Championship club for nine years, and during that time he only appeared in 33 games across all competitions, 22 of which came in the 2020/21 Championship season.

It was a very frustrating time for the player at the football club and will have also been a frustrating one for QPR, as for whatever reason he wasn’t given more chances, and when he was, he vanished from the first team and was sent out on loan.

There was obviously a player there that the club liked, but for whatever reason it didn’t work out, even though he was with them for a long time. It will be a signing and a player that fans look back on with frustration, as it could have turned out to be a lot better than it did.