Prague Raptors, the Czech side on a mission
The Czech side was set up by Leeds-born Daz Moss in 2018. Now, they're a game away from the second tier, but they have offered both a home and hope to many players from around the world.
“A lot of luck and circumstance,” says Daz Moss, a man from Leeds who ended up setting up a football club in Prague.
That was five years ago. Moss, who runs his own digital marketing company, has ploughed his own money into a venture dreamed up by his five-year-old son in front of the TV – Prague Raptors.
While their men’s team sit in the sixth tier of the Czech football pyramid, the women have raced into the third division since 2018 and now sit just a point away from promotion to the second division, which will put them in the top 16 teams in the country.
Initially a bit of fun for both local players and ex-pats in the country, things are getting serious, and the club has attracted some good level Czech players, as well as footballers from around the world who love the idea of an “English-speaking” club based in the capital, with players coming from as far and wide as France, USA, Italy, England, Spain and more.
Moss met his Czech wife while they were both working for the same marketing company. After they moved to London and then Barcelona, coincidence struck as Moss was head-hunted for a role in the Czech Republic and after just giving birth to their second child, they moved to his wife’s home country to be close to family.
“We have a football team, we’re stuck here now,” he laughs.
The Raptors though is no ordinary football team. With a whole host of foreign players, they have experienced resistance at away games, racist comments towards their players and their head coach, Luis Pereira, and they are fighting back, partnering with the likes of Her Game Too, Football v Homophobia and Common Goal among others.
In just five years, they are now on the verge of the second tier and things are moving quick. As of now, they have no permanent home, merely renting training facilities and pitches from others, but he hopes that will change.
They have no major sponsor bar Moss’s own marketing company, but they have talent, both in the squad and the staff, and their aspirations aren’t to just get to the second tier and stay there, they want more.
“I actually knew a couple of people out here running a recreational academy because Lucas [his son] was playing there,” says Moss. “I asked them if they knew any players. The plan was to just join an ex-pats league. Somebody mentioned to me joining the Czech league is quite easy, so we contacted the FA who said as long as we applied by May the rest was up to us. We advertised on Facebook, originally for the men, but we agreed we wanted a women’s team.
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“The plan was to play friendlies for a season, move the men into a league and then do the same with the women a year later. What happened was a lady called Sascha got in touch with me the same day and asked for a meeting. She was a striker who played in the Belgian second tier and she easily convinced me we should start straight away and she could help find players.
“She was determined and I agreed with her. We got players really quickly so we started right away. Sometimes it meant we had a defender in goal, but some of those players like Anna [Ostherthun] were with us then stuck with us and she’s been our captain since the first game. It’s crazy how far some have come and we’ve added players along the way.”
Ostherthun is one of the many foreign players who have been taken in by the Raptors. Born in Germany, she is the oldest player in the team and came to work in Prague before she found the club through social media.
“The club has always had a strong presence on social media, a lot of players find us that way,” she says. “I moved to Prague seven years ago and was looking for something…you know? Something to join. My Czech was poor and it’s not an easy language to learn and integrate into, so an English-speaking club was ideal.
“The club started with let’s say…high ambitions. That’s what Daz has always gone for. We were pushy, we wanted to play and not just train for a year. It was challenging, no one really knew each other. People have come and gone by the nature of having a lot of international players, but I love the idea of mixing cultures. We have a number of Czech players, but so many different cultures. It builds a lot of bridges between people.”
Diversity was one of the club’s most important values from the outset, a club for everyone, whether Czech or not. That hasn’t always been accepted, but the club joined the FARE network, an organisation which focuses on inclusivity in football, whatever their race, sexual orientation or beliefs.
“We are not professional. Everything comes out of Daz’s pocket…”
“We have lofty ambitions,” says head coach Pereira, who is from Portugal originally and has coached the team from the start and outside of football works for an entertainment company as a talent acquisition team leader.
“We want to build a community football club and not become a Sunday league team, but of course we can only do that with the backing of our partners, fans, players and staff.”
Pereira worked in the UK for six years before he too got in touch with Moss via Facebook, who invited him to take a session. He played in Portugal as a goalkeeper but “was not that brilliant”, before going on to study in the UK for his coaching licence.
“Now I’m here! In my second season I got an offer to go to Dukla Prague as a ‘B’ team coach, which I rejected. Like the girls say, our environment is amazing and I want to be part of a club that for sure will reach the high levels. The first division, hopefully Champions League, there are just 16 places between us now.”
Ostherthun chimes in, “Then I can retire finally!”
Pereira adds, “We are not professional. Everything comes out of Daz’s pocket. He sorts travel, hotels, renting pitches, everything comes from him. We can attract players from big teams, which has happened with Gabi [Frolíkova], Alice [Boučková] and Theresa [Vytlačilová] as examples.
“Many others are starting to join, one coming from the second league. They come from outside and study here, we fill our social media channels with advertisements and we attract players that way.”
That ethos has stretched to attracting recent signings from Dukla Prague, Nela Houbova, who quit the club due to losing her love for football and almost retired before finding the Raptors, and Anna Procházková who has dropped down from the second division because of the Raptors set up.
Moss, Pereira and co believe they will compete in the second tier and are planning for life after another promotion, with the club sitting six points clear at the top with two games to go.
“This team showed me again the beauty of football…”
Boučková is one of the players who is Czech born and bred, and indeed Prague born and bred. She played for the Czech Republic at under 17 level before stopping because she wasn’t enjoying football.
“I said to myself that I wouldn’t play football again,” she says. “I had a friend who played at a tournament and that’s where I met the Raptors. There was Luis and all his players and I was so intrigued.
“The Raptors means a lot to me. This team showed me again the beauty of football. I have received offers, but this team is so special for me, I don’t want to leave. I love this club, not just on the pitch but off it too. I’m really glad I came here. Here, if there is a problem, someone is there for you.”
Goalkeeper Frolíkova has a similar story, admitting she “needed some change” after coming out of the Dukla academy and for a period playing in the first league, as well as the under 17 national team.
“Like Alice said, there’s a big difference. I like Czech football, but the Raptors are so friendly. Everyone is so nice and kind and it was only on the Raptors Instagram I saw they wanted a goalkeeper, so I asked to join. I was one of the first professional players to come down and Luis was really surprised I wanted to join when I could have been I the top division.
“I said I needed a change and I liked the vision. When I was at Dukla, we beat Raptors 13-0. I love the team spirit, love the club. We can be the worst team, but we still win because we are a team. We play together, that’s our power.”
Vytlačilová’s story is similar, and it’s becoming clear even for those players from within the Czech Republic, the Raptors have offered something different to their lives.
She has lived in Prague for eight years after giving up athletics professionally. “I was looking for something fun, because it wasn’t fun. My ex-girlfriend knew Daz and I asked if I could join the club.
“I knew nothing about the Raptors and the English was challenging for me at first, but Luis and Peter were so nice to me. I enjoy so much being a part of this group and this family.”
The Peter she speaks of is Englishman Peter Williams, Pereira’s assistant, a former teacher who coached girls at school back in England and joined in 2020 after a spell living in Malaysia.
“It probably means my English is the worst of everyone,” he says, to laughs from the plyers. “I’ve been involved for 40 years, either as a shitty player or as a coach!”
Williams contacted Daz in June 2020 before arriving in August to work alongside Pereira, and admits the lure of an English-speaking club was key for him.
“It’s been brilliant,” he admits. “I came during COVID-19 which caused us a bit of a problem, there was no promotion for a couple of seasons which hurt us, I think we’d be at least in the second division by now.
“The atmosphere is brilliant, I wouldn’t want to go back into the men’s game now. The women are like sponges, they take on everything, whether praise or criticism. My experience with men is they all think are Messi, whatever level you’re coaching.”
Under their group of dedicated staff and players, including Moss’s wife Petra who has taken on the role of Chief Operating Officer, the club’s rise has been remarkable, given for the first few years creating a positive environment has almost become more important than winning.
There are 16 nationalities within the first team right now, and they were promoted from the fourth division after missing out twice during COVID-19 cancelled seasons.
Last season, they were finally promoted, winning 11 of their 12 games, scoring 70 goals and conceding just four, plus a remarkable run to the quarter-finals of the Czech Cup, where they beat top division side Slovan Liberec and at one stage were level 1-1 against Viktoria Plzen in the quarter-final.
The run showed they can already mix it with top level sides and with only Prague duo Sparta and Slavia ruling women’s football, the third Champions League is generally open, and while still in the third division, the Raptors believe long-term that is a realistic proposition.
“We still have a long way to go and some people might say we are too ambitious or even delusional, as some of our opponents call us, but everyone in the club is aligned on our main goal, which is to reach the first league as fast as possible and fight for the Champions League places,” says Pereira.
“What happened last year astonished us,” adds Williams. “We were able to compete with a first division side while in the fourth division. We don’t talk about the last half hour against Plzen! It shows the quality of the players we have and that they aren’t bothered about our level, it’s about our ethos.
“We have players who wanted something they could enjoy and the enjoyment side of it contributes to the success they have on the pitch. Me and Luis always joke there are three teams who get Champions League, there are eight teams in the top division, beat six and you’re there, but we have to get there first. It’s possible, I don’t see why we wouldn’t set it as a target.”
The Raptors are also now looking at new ways of attracting players. The Erasmus programme, which sees students come from other European universities, means they can sign players studying in Prague for a year because of their English-speaking philosophy and Williams describes that as a “massive unique selling point”, while they are also offering dual positions with Mayalukas, Moss’s marketing company named after his two children, to get a full-time paid wage during their time in Prague.
“In terms of where we are, we’re looking pretty good,” says Moss buoyantly. “If we get promoted we will be one of the top 16 teams in the country. We have a community Luis and Anna helped to create. They’ve made a family here. A lot of ex-pats don’t stick around so we do have a constant turnover of players coming and going.
“Quite often I get players coming to me who say they’d have probably left Prague by now if it wasn’t for us, that’s the best thing we can ask for. The top two clubs are a world away from anyone, to get near that we’d need a miracle.”
Two years ago, the club made the decision to stop charging the players to play, but academy players pay for each lesson which pays the coaches, but everything else has gone on sorting kits, renting pitches.
Moss admits he knows at some point they will need a proper sponsor and he’s already turned down offers, joking he keeps promising his wife Petra they will make the money back they have invested in the club.
His motivation for an ex-pats club came during his time in Barcelona where he worked for Vistaprint in what he puts it as “an office with 50 different nationalities”, a different world to where he grew up.
“In Leeds, everybody was English, everybody was white, so it was a culture shock for me and I really loved it. We didn’t set out just to be an ex-pats club, but everything we do is in English, so we’re the first people players find if they Google English clubs here. We get people asking why we don’t want Czech people and that’s never the aim. We have Czech players, my wife is Czech, my kids are part Czech, it’s about being a club for everyone.”
It is a prejudice they have faced regularly though, especially outside the main city where the view of foreigners in the country is less open than in Prague itself.
“Amazing results does not mean everything goes our way,” says Pereira, who himself has faced racist comments at away games. “We suffer a lot of unfair treatment. Racism and xenophobia, especially outside the capital.
“It’s something we are mentally ready for but it should not be like that. Football is a beautiful game and no players should have to suffer these kinds of ugly situations.”
Harriet Marshall, the only English player on the team, is the vice-captain and has been there since day one, though she laughs that she’s teased and not considered an “OG” because she was on holiday for the club’s first meeting.
Growing up in Bristol, Marshall moved to Prague when she was six and only ever played casual five-a-side football and hadn’t played 11-a-side until she joined the Raptors.
A photographer outside of football, Marshall has combined her interests to run the social media accounts for the Raptors on the women’s side, so she’s only too aware of the comments that can at times be aimed at the club.
“I also worked for Daz doing some social media for him, so that coincided nicely,” she says. “We don’t face as much racism as the men because our team is mainly white, but the men face horrible racism, especially in the villages. We get the ‘stupid foreigners’ stuff, but not to the same extent.
“It’s annoying and it riles us up. Luis has faced racist comments from people who are terribly uneducated and think he’s Arabic. It makes me really mad, but online we’ve only had one real instance of it. It was a private comment asking why are we updating the page in English and making fun of us for using English. We have English speakers, English supporters, the language of our club is English.”
“Those players don’t understand, they ask and you just want to protect them…”
It’s something everyone is passionate about speaking out on, because sadly they have all experienced it, and it is only making them more determined to get to the top to show what the Raptors is all about to a wider audience.
“I’m Czech, so I understand everything and I struggle,” says Bouckova. “Some people say really not nice things. Those players don’t understand, they ask and you just want to protect them. If I’m hurt, I can get really aggressive. We are all the same, we all play football, we want to do the same thing.”
Ostherthun, one of the foreign players the comments can often be aimed at, adds “The strange thing about it is you know it’s negative but you don’t know what they say. It bothers our Czech players more because they understand it and the negativity is towards their country.
“It’s towards our friends and teammates. What we can do is by having this club and being together, we show that as a positive thing. The more we go out and meet people, the more positive we make the conversation.”
Vytlačilová admits she also gets “angry” and has argued with fans during away games, even including a head coach.
“They have had some not nice words about homosexual people,” she says. “I hear from the fans in villages, they were arguing to Luis he is Arabic and he should go back there – he is from Madeira! We have new players from Kenya, it may be more painful for people. Like Alice said, I try to protect my team and my teammates, because it’s not nice.”
Williams adds, “I don’t think you’re ever going to change it. We go to villages where players are racially, places where they assume you’re foreign but more than half our team is Czech.
“I don’t think it will ever be eradicated fully. One thing we can do is show that togetherness, that ethos of the club and keep winning, because that nullifies the negativity towards us because we keep winning.”
That next step may come sooner rather than later, with promotion to the second tier and that top 16 group of teams potentially just mere days away.
With it though comes problems. While the ethos remains togetherness, with promotion will come competition for places and a reality of having to constantly improve and invest to get to their end goal meaning that ethos may at times have to shift towards the competitive level rather than maintaining everyone’s happiness.
“The coaches always say it’s a lovely problem to have,” says Marshall. “We have a lot of social events, so that’s a lot of respect and a level of understanding. Everyone brings something different anyway depending on the game.
“The three of us who have been here since the start, players talk to us. It’s nice to have that mix of the older players and the newer ones. Everyone gets on really well and we’re very careful to separate the two things. Tuesday training might be more relaxed, Thursday is more serious. Some are waiting for a ‘B’ team for example, to play more games.”
For Moss, the aim is simple, to keep growing on and off the pitch. He is realistic about what it will take, but by no means defeatist.
From creating a club based on the whim of his five-year-old son who suggested he should start a team while watching a game on TV, Moss has helped grow Raptors into one of Europe’s most intriguing clubs, and they are now just 15 teams between them and a spot in the Champions League.
The dream is to keep dreaming big.
“From the women’s side, we’re confident we can get there and hold our own without too much additional funding,” he says. “A lot of our players have played at that level, but then they will expect money and that will make a difference. We will need to find a way to generate funds. Some of it is like the chicken and the egg, once we’re there it will be easier to get that.
“In the third division it’s harder to persuade someone to give us money - we don’t have a Ryan Reynolds behind us! I think once we get to the first division and I think we have a team who can do it, then that makes those conversations easier. We sell shirts to USA, Brazil, Australia, every month we do one big order and they get sold everywhere around the world.
“We have lots of plans for how we look after ourselves, but we are not a super-rich club, we’re doing it based on a lot of people putting in their own work in their own spare time and outlay from myself.”