Daniel Heikkinen

Heikkinen's route to Lahti has run through six clubs since he left HJK's youth ranks in 2014, taking in spells at PK Keski-Uusimaa and Käpylän Pallo before a breakthrough at KäPa, where he scored eight goals in seventeen appearances in 2020. That form took him to FC Honka the following year, though first-team minutes there were scarce and most of his football came with the reserve side, Honka Akatemia, where he scored ten goals in thirty appearances.

The years that followed were shaped by loan spells rather than a settled home. At PEPO in 2022 he added another goal in thirteen games, and after joining AC Oulu in 2023 he was sent out again, first to Oulun Luistinseura, where he scored seven times in twenty matches, and separately back to his old club KäPa for a further nine appearances. It was a stretch of Finnish football's lower and middle tiers that gave him regular game time even as his parent club stayed AC Oulu.

Since arriving at Lahti, Heikkinen has made thirty-three appearances and scored three goals, numbers that suggest a player who has found a more settled role after the shuttling between loan spells. He has not been capped at senior international level for Finland.