“I had a proposal from Nottingham Forest but I rejected it because of my allegiances to Derby.”
Grzegorz Rasiak chuckles as he reflects on his playing career and fond memories of wearing a Derby County shirt.
The former striker still has an affinity for the club today as he waxes lyrical about the players he shared a pitch with, Wayne Rooney in a Derby County strip, the club’s current youth system, and he also gives a glowing review of his countryman and fellow striker Bartosz Cybulski.
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“He is a name to watch out for. I know his family very well and I have seen him play a lot. Hopefully, he can get into the first team and score more goals than I did,” says the former Derby striker.
High praise considering Rasiak’s lone season at Derby finished with him as the club’s top goalscorer in the 2004-05 season with 18 goals (17 in the league). It’s the club he described as the place where he had his “happiest time” in England. He sampled a few in England’s top two divisions, with his journey taking him from Derby to Tottenham, to the Southampton coast, to the old cotton capital of Bolton. He also wore the colours of Watford and Reading but he always felt most at home in the black and white of Derby.
But his move from Dyskobolia Grodzisk in September 2004 almost didn’t come about. The former Polish international had already agreed a contract with Serie A team Siena but due to European Union regulations stating that a team could only have two non-EU players, Rasiak had to be left out of the squad.
“Poland had joined the European Union in May. I signed a contract in June, so I thought I was going to Siena. But then, in June, Italy said that for people coming from countries which are new (EU) members, there is a period of two years in which they will not be considered European Union workers. Siena already had two players from that quota so they couldn’t register me. So I was training with them but couldn’t play.”
Heading into the international break, Poland met England in a 2006 World Cup qualifier match in Chorzow (England won 2-1). He played 69 minutes and after the game, he spoke with his agent who told him of interest from a number of clubs across Europe, including Derby and Millwall. Uncertainty surrounded Derby at first.
Rasiak knew very little about the club and was initially reluctant to go to the Championship after believing he was on the verge of playing in Italy’s top tier. Milan and Rome whet the appetite much more than Plymouth and Crewe, the prospect of battling against Reading’s Ibrahima Sonko or Wolves’ Jody Craddock far less glamorous than the prospect of pitting his wits against Lilian Thuram or Alessandro Nesta. However the in-limbo striker did his research and came to a decision which he has never regretted since.
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“I remember looking up the stadium, the training ground and all the squad on the internet. I saw that we had Inigo Idiakez, Morten Bisgaard. Even Jeff Kenna, who was a legend, for me, of British football. I remembered him from Blackburn and Southampton. And also because of the manager (George Burley).
“Then, I flew over and stayed for a few days, and had a look around everywhere. When I saw Pride Park in real life, at that moment, I was sure I wanted to stay in Derby.”
Upon meeting his new manager for the first time at Moor Farm, Rasiak felt confident of engaging in conversation. He had learnt English for several years at school and felt confident in his ability to communicate. The problem would come in the form of Burley’s thick Ayrshire accent.
Nevertheless, the universal language of football helped him settle. There were no goals in his first three Championship games but then, he flung himself at a Kenna cross five minutes from the final whistle in the fourth. His diving header dragged Derby level with Watford to secure a 2-2 draw. The hosts had been 2-0 down after 14 minutes. It was the first of his club chart-topping 18 strikes in all competitions.
Not all goals are created equal, however. In the annals of Derby folklore, he’ll perhaps best be remembered for his four goals in two games against neighbours Nottingham Forest, a brace which capped off a thumping 3-0 victory and another pair of goals at the City Ground to rescue a point in a 2-2 stalemate.
“I remember a fan coming up to me in the hotel where I was staying before I moved into my house. He told me, ‘You know what we have in December, don’t you?’. I didn’t know but then he told me we had Forest and he said ,’We have to win’. I knew, at that moment, that it was the biggest game of the season for the supporters. I knew those games would give me a chance to be remembered by the fans. If you play a good game in front of 30,000 and you can score goals in a victory, then you’ll get good feelings from the fans and respect.”
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The magnitude of those goals will certainly hold more weight with those who have seen the paint turn from fresh to faded around Pride Park. However, none were to be his masterpiece. He saved that for Stoke. A goal which the fans then voted as their goal of the season.
“To be honest… during the games, sometimes I tried to do some tricks. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. Out of all the goals we scored that season, that one got voted goal of the season. It’s the goal that probably gave me the most satisfaction.”
The goal in question saw Rasiak sandwiched in between two Stoke defenders inside the box but, as quick as a hiccup, he put a devastating nutmeg on Gerry Taggart with a dragback before spinning away to meet the ball around the other side and sliding the ball past Steve Simonsen in the Stoke goal.
There were plenty of highs but the season would end in a significant low, with Derby crashing out of the play-offs at the hands of Preston, losing 2-0 on aggregate. They had only beaten them a week earlier but the Derby team was now severely undermanned. Idiakez was missing through injury and Rasiak had only just returned from a quite significant problem of his own.
“The last five weeks of the season, I was playing with a hernia,” he tells The Athletic. “Finally, the painkillers stopped working and I had to go for an operation, so I missed the first leg. I only had one training session before the second one and played 90 minutes. I was told the recovery was two months but I played after 13 days. It was the most important game of my life. I couldn’t miss it.”
The injury, the uninspiring playoff defeat and Derby’s mounting debt had all put a sour note on the target man’s first, and only, season at Pride Park. The bill at Derby’s door was around £40 million. The Co-op bank, to whom much of the debt was owed, applied pressure on the club to find resources to pay them back.
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Funds had to be raised and the squad knew that. Phil Brown had come in as manager and Pride Park was about to undergo a period of serious transition. Yet Rasiak was happy in his surroundings and initially dug his heels in.
Eventually, on deadline day, a move to Tottenham surfaced for around £2.25 million. All parties were satisfied. Derby got some much-needed money and a player off the wage bill and Rasiak got to test himself at Premier League level.
“The club found an agreement with some clubs, which I respected but I was very happy at the Derby. I went away on international duty and I got a phone call from my agent, who told me that they had reached an agreement with Wolves. I told my agent, ‘No’. I wasn’t going to leave for another Championship club because Derby was my home. I rejected the offer. I didn’t want to leave Derby but I couldn’t reject Tottenham because they were in the Premier League.
“The club pushed me out, too. They needed the money. But it was a big move for me,so I couldn’t reject it. But honestly, I preferred to stay at Derby.”
That sour ending didn’t alter any feelings for the club. Fifteen years on, he can still be spotted at Pride Park on occasion, his last visit there being the 1-1 draw with Cardiff City in September. He even planned on coming to the East Midlands derby at Pride Park on April 4.
It’s not just the first team that catch his eye. He’s kept abreast of Derby’s under-19’s European adventure in the UEFA Youth League and says former England captain Rooney’s presence at the club will help their development.
“You saw they (Derby’s under-18s) beat Arsenal in the Premier League final to win that trophy for the first time ever,” he raved. “Last year, in the first team, Frank Lampard brought a breath of fresh air but we know Phillip Cocu is a legend of football. It is a season of transition. You’d like to see Derby in the play-offs but they have a lot of youngsters doing well.
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“Now, with Rooney, playing and being on the staff as well it’s very good for the young players. I played a few times against him and I know how good he is. Now it’s his time to pass that example on to the young players and give them positive feedback and energy to fight for everything in their career, because your football life is not very long.”
Perhaps Rooney will be giving more tutelage to a striker Rasiak rates so highly in the academy: Cybulski. Rasiak made his Poland debut eight months before the Derby scholar was born in October 2002. There is a fierce competition for places up front, with Jahmal Hector-Ingram netting 16 goals in 20 Premier League 2 games this season. At under-18 level, Jack Stretton has scored eight league goals and four more in the UEFA Youth League. But Cybulski has managed five in 12 — not bad for a first-year player.
“He is one of the highly-rated players in Poland,” Rasiak tells The Athletic. “Right now, he is only a first-year scholar, so he has some way to go but he is on track. Hopefully, in the next couple of years, we will see him scoring in the first team. He is a big lad already for his age (6ft 4in) and once he gets stronger, he could be very dangerous.”
Though his playing career spanned nearly 400 league appearances for 12 different clubs, Rasiak somehow always makes his way back to Derby, casting a keen eye over their first team and youth affairs as if he were an opposition scout or a coach at the club. Perhaps it’s of no surprise when he described it as the place he felt most at home.
(Photo: Nick Potts – PA Images via Getty Images)