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Emil Jaaskelainen, St. Louis City SC’s first-round pick in the MLS SuperDraft, figures he was just a few weeks old when he went to his first English Premier League match. His father, Jussi, was the goalkeeper for the Bolton Wanderers, and it was the start of a childhood that would be any English kid’s dream.

“When you’re a kid, you don’t really think about it, you just enjoy it,” Jaaskelainen said, “but now I understand how cool it is and how cool it was to go to every Premier League game at home and some away games as well. It was a great experience.”

He started running through the list of his dad’s teammates — Nicolas Anelka, Jay-Jay Okocha, Ivan Campo — and then gave up.

“There’s too many to name,” he said. “And obviously seeing the opposing players as well in the Premier League. Every week, there’s a new superstar you’re watching. It was a dream to grow up in Bolton and watch all the games.”

Jasskelainen is now chasing his own dream. After playing in the academies at Bolton and Blackpool in England growing up, he played four seasons at Long Island University (including a loss to SLU in the second round of the NCAA Tournament in 2021). He put up solid numbers — 43 goals in four seasons — but was passed over in the MLS draft.

So for his final year of eligibility, he transferred to a bigger school, Akron, which plays soccer in the Big East, to show what he could do on a bigger stage. He proved it by scoring 23 goals and being chosen with the seventh pick overall in the MLS draft by City SC.

“Soccer’s my whole life,” he said. “Growing up, I just loved it. Just being brought up, soccer’s been everything to me; it’s all I ever wanted to do, really. My parents, they wanted my education. They got me to a good school back in England and everything. So I had to respect them, and obviously it made sense to come to America for that reason as well. Soccer for me is everything.”

“Just a very good goal scorer, a guy that’s really clever inside the 18 to find spots,” said Akron coach Jared Embick, a Granite City native who once coached at Missouri Baptist. “He can score with either foot and score with his head. We thought we’d get a guy that could score a lot of goals, which he’d proven. But I think what we didn’t know we were getting that we got was an underrated playmaker.

“He had eight assists. His passing ability, link-up game, I think, is overshadowed by the number of goals he scored in his career. He was a lot more of a complete player than we anticipated. I told him when we were trying to recruit him, that I think he’ll score at least 15, maybe 20 goals with us. He scored 23, so we got that right.”

While Jaaskelainen is Finnish by heritage, he’s British by birth, born in England while his father was playing there. Listen to him talk and he sounds like any other Brit. (“Born and raised in Bolton, up north,” he said. “That’s why I’ve got the northern accent.”) His parents spoke to him in Finnish, and he’d respond in English.

But Jaaskelainen is a Finn at heart. While his time there has mostly been limited to summers, he dreams of living there when his playing days are over. (“Hopefully, in many years,” he said.)

“It’s the nature,” he said. “It’s beautiful. So clean, and the people are awesome. It’s really quiet, it’s very peaceful and I kind of like that part of it. There’s 5 million people, and it’s a pretty big country. It’s so peaceful, that’s what I like the best. I like fishing. I go fishing a lot in Finland.”

He’s also a forward at heart.

“He’s a complete striker,” said City SC sporting director Lutz Pfannenstiel, who admits that Jaaskelainen’s father was a better goalkeeper than he was. “Meaning, what I liked is that, obviously, he can score. Most important, he can hold the ball up well. I would call him a traditional center forward. But I like the mentality a lot: very calm, very collected, just gets on with things.

“And I think he fits very well, No. 1, into our playing style, and also No. 2, into the guys we have together from a character, from a way of presenting himself on and off the field. Just fits very well.”

Though he comes from a family of goalkeepers — his older brother Will got into the family business and plays goal for a lower-division English team — Jaaskelainen loved to score. He didn’t shoot on his father all that much — “He’d be training all day. The last thing he really wanted to do was soccer,” he said — or his brother, but he did learn from his father. The tips Emil got ranged from the practical, like how to properly hydrate before a game and to not play video games the day of the game, to the technical.

“Like where to be in the box,” he said. “He always tells me back post is where you get the goals. And that’s what I do. I just go to the back post. Then I can go either way. That’s been working, so I’m going to stick to it.”

Jaaskelainen still has to sign with City SC and, because he’s not an American, get the necessary visas and work permits to join City SC. He was in St. Louis the past weekend for the Hermann Trophy presentation and had a chance to check out CityPark (“The facilities are like a Premier League level,” he said) and meet the staff.

“When I first got (to America), that was the dream (to play in MLS),” he said. “Obviously, I knew it was going to be hard to get there, and I’m still not there yet. Still a lot of work to do. Just taking it one step at a time.”