Teemu Pukki is calling time on his career. The 36-year-old Finland striker has announced he will retire when the Veikkausliiga season ends on 8 November, closing a career that took in Germany, Denmark, Scotland and the United States and reached its high point in Norfolk.
A Goal Record Finland Will Struggle to Match
Pukki stopped playing international football last year, and he leaves the national team as its all-time leading men's scorer, with 43 goals in 133 matches. His cap total is the second highest Finland has ever recorded. For a country that spent most of its football history on the margins of big tournaments, those numbers carry real weight, and they came from a forward who never made a fuss about them.
The Norwich Years
English fans know him best from his time at Norwich City. He arrived on a free transfer in the summer of 2018 to very little noise, partly because his earlier spell in British football, at Celtic, had been a modest nine goals in 38 games between 2013 and 2015. Norwich supporters were told by Celtic fans not to expect much. They were wrong. Pukki scored 88 goals in 210 appearances for the club between 2018 and 2023, helped win promotion to the Premier League twice, and sits fourth on the club's all-time scoring list.
BBC Radio Norfolk's Rob Butler described how the club's identity shifted in that period. Strangers used to answer a Norwich fan with a joke about Jeremy Goss; in recent years it became "Teemu Pukki!" His partnership with Emi Buendia was the heart of it, a pairing that head coach Daniel Farke called magical. Those two Championship title seasons are still the ones Norwich fans talk about first.
Why It Ends Where It Started
Pukki has played for HJK Helsinki in his homeland since 2025, so the circle closes where it opened. In his farewell message on Instagram he wrote that he had gained far more from football than he ever dreamed of as a boy, that it had not always been fun, but that the love for the game never left him. He also thanked every club and set of fans he played for, which in his case means a long list: Schalke, Brondby, Minnesota United, Celtic, Norwich and HJK among them.
There is no drama in the way he is leaving, and that suits the man. Pukki spent his career being underrated, then quietly proving people wrong, and he will head into retirement with a scoring record and two promotions that nobody in Norfolk is going to forget.
Career facts: Teemu Pukki, 36, Finland striker, HJK Helsinki. Retires after the Veikkausliiga season ends on 8 November 2026. Finland: 43 goals in 133 caps (all-time top scorer). Norwich City 2018-2023: 88 goals in 210 appearances. Celtic 2013-2015: 9 goals in 38 appearances.
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