Image via Mikolaj Barbanell/Shutterstock
I don’t think it’s unfair to say Kamil Jóźwiak’s career hasn’t quite gone the way either he or most of us expected since he left Lech Poznań for Derby County in the summer of 2020. Both Jóźwiak and Derby were coming off good seasons: Jóźwiak had nine goals and seven assists in 39 matches for Lech, and Derby were only six points off the play-off positions at the end of the 2019-20 season.
Jóźwiak was brought in as a 22 year-old winger with plenty of potential, and he scored his first goal for Derby in December 2020 in a 2-0 win against Swansea. To this date, it is the last goal he has scored in club football, which sort of tells you the way his career has gone. Jóźwiak got plenty of time on the pitch for Derby, and registered three assists, but the story was one of a player who was lacking in final product, be it goals or assists from the left wing position he most frequently occupied for Derby. During that first season in England, he was regularly selected and starting for the Polish national team, and scored a fantastic solo goal against Holland as well as a goal against Hungary in Budapest.
Last summer saw the Euros, and Jóźwiak was a player favoured by then-Poland coach Paulo Sousa, who played him in every game at the tournament as the starting right wing-back, and Jóźwiak assisted Robert Lewandowski in Poland’s 1-1 draw against Spain.
Jóźwiak’s second season at Derby saw him more in and out of the side than he had been in his first season, although he still got a lot of time on the pitch and he did register one Championship assist, against Stoke in December.
Last season, plenty of players wanted to leave Derby due to the financial turmoil the club was in, and Jóźwiak was no different. He signed for MLS expansion side Charlotte FC as a designated player, where he is on the same team as Karol Świderski and former ŁKS Łódż player Jan Sobociński. So far, Jóźwiak’s time at Charlotte has been much the same story as at Derby, with him registering his first MLS assist last month.
To compound Jóźwiak’s misfortune, since Paulo Sousa was replaced with Czesław Michniewicz, he has not received one call-up for the Polish national team. It’s probably fair given that he has not performed at the level of the players he is competing for a call-up with, and for this reason it is completely justifiable that he won’t go to the World Cup.
So, how does he get himself back into the international reckoning, not to mention playing well for Charlotte and beyond? First things first, he needs to improve his end product. Jóźwiak is 24 years-old, and the time for talking about potential is in the past. Goals and assists are what he will be judged on, given he has so few of them since leaving Lech. If his numbers improve, there’s no reason he can’t fight for a spot on the national team. It’s also worth remembering the MLS is a more reputable league than it once was, and can often be a stepping stone to a top European league (see Przemysław Frankowski and Adam Buksa at Lens in France).
Let’s hope for both his and Poland’s sake that Jóźwiak can get his career back on track, and provide Michniewicz with another quality option in the position he so ably played under Paulo Sousa. It’s a big if, but if the goals and assists start coming on a regular basis, he will have plenty of options at club level which would aid his chances with the national team.
I’d already written a little bit about Jóźwiak, and some other players who have slim chances of making the World Cup squad, yesterday. If you’d like to read that, click here.
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