We are very glad to announce that Deniss Rakels returns to Cracovia! The player joins Pasy on loan from Reading F.C. with a view to making the move permanent in the summer.

Deniss Rakels was born on 20 August 1992 in Jēkabpils, Latvia. He achieved success as a teenager at FK Liepājas Metalurgs where he became the youngest top scorer in the Latvian Higher League winning with his team the league title.

He came to Poland in 2011 when he signed for Zagłębie Zubin. In August 2011 he went on a season-long loan to a Polish second-tier club GKS Katowice, later extending the loan for another season. In his 47 GKS appearances he scored 16 goals.

His first spell at Cracovia began on 15 January 2014 and he netted his first Pasy goal on Ekstraklasa matchday 3 in the 2014-15 campaign against Jagiellonia Białystok. He played 61 games for Cracovia and scored 26 goals, 15 of them in the autumn of 2015 which made him 2015-2016 Ekstraklasa third-highest scorer even though he was not in Poland for the second part of the season.

In the winter of 2016 Deniss moved to the Championship side Reading F.C., where he scored 3 goals in 14 appearances. His 2016-17 campaign was cut short due to an ankle injury. He spent the first part of the current season on loan in the Polish club Lech Poznań and now he returns to Cracovia on a loan deal until the end of June 2018.

Deniss, welcome back! Good luck!