It's 4am. Cyriel Dessers is in Indonesia and doing all he can to ensure his move to Rangers goes through. One moment he's on the phone to Michael Beale, the next to his agent as a summer holiday turns long-distance negotiation. There's even personal discourse with the Cremonese directors who are playing hardball. But for Dessers, who has had contact with Rangers since 2020 and long been lined up to arrive when Alfredo Morelos leaves, this is a move that has to happen. It’s a disruption worth interrupting his rest and recovery.
The deal had been dragging on across the summer of 2023. Already, he'd met Beale in Italy earlier that year and decided it was "Rangers and only Rangers". Now, in Southeast Asia, after one particularly stressful taxi journey where his signal kept dropping as work went into a transfer deal being accepted, it remained on a knife-edge.
"The contact with Rangers was there already for a while,” he recalls. “I think in 2020 during Covid, there was some contact with Rangers when I was top scorer in the Eredivisie with Heracles. Talks always went to a certain level, and the message was, 'If we can sell Morelos for a good fee, then maybe you can be the next one for us, the next striker'.
"I can see that day in front of me now. I had calls in the middle of the night, four o'clock in the morning with my agent because of the time difference.
"I was calling with Mick Beale - because Cremonese were being really tough - and I was saying 'No, you have to push one more time! I'm sure now they will maybe open the door a little bit more and we can push through and I will do my part too.’
“I had to push really hard from my side to make it happen. So when I finally could sign the deal, I was over the moon, so happy that we all made it work."
What followed over the next two seasons was a true journey. After a start where Dessers admits he was almost 'dead and buried', a 22-goal season followed when a title under Philippe Clement felt so close. Fine margins in cup finals, and one or two Old Firm referee decisions he still disputes and harbours regret over, four managers, European highs and devastating domestic lows all feature.
The near-misses and what-ifs still weigh heavily, etched onto a face that beams when talking of the good times in Glasgow. His pride is clear after the goals scored and moments provided, and ability to recover from one of the toughest individual Ibrox starts in recent memory.
Dessers will also explain - at length - why he left last summer, offer his take on the Russell Martin spell, express the vitality of an experienced core at Ibrox, and why Rangers, and indeed Scottish football, in comparison to other significant European clubs he's played for requires just that little bit extra.
"I've been very, very lucky to have the chance to play in a top team like Feyenoord, at Rangers and now, at Panathinaikos. Three quite similar teams in terms of the history, the fans, the pressure to win every game.
"I learned that at Feyenoord and thought 'Ok, maybe Rangers will be similar, maybe one step up from Feyenoord. I've experienced this, I know how it works.’ But when you arrive at Rangers, it's still a different level.
"Sometimes when you speak to people about this they say 'Ah, the Scottish league it's not too big or too good'. But I explain how big and how worldwide it is, that you can only know and feel it as a player when you arrive there.
"When my family and friends visited me across the two years and came to the stadium, went to the bars, they would say to me 'This is not normal, this is crazy, something we've never seen before. A different level.' In those terms, Rangers is different."
A turbulent start and inside Dessers’ recovery
"If I think about one word, it's intense."
Now facing a new challenge with Panathinaikos in Greece after a frustrating season that’s included surgery, Cyriel Dessers is a safe distance from the Glasgow glare and in reflective mood. Sufficient time has passed to decompress and reflect.
"It's actually nice to have this chat now, a few months after I left and I got settled in Greece, because in the beginning there was obviously a lot of emotions after leaving," he begins. Always coming across authentically at Ibrox, Dessers' honesty offers a unique peek into life behind the curtain.
"Intense in the good sense and sometimes also in the bad sense, because you get pulled into this club and you feel it everywhere you go. You feel it on the pitch, you feel it outside the stadium, you feel it in the city. Also when I look back now, there's some sense of pride. Something I didn't have too much in the period when I was at the club or just after I left, but I feel that that's coming now a little bit."
That's justified. Dessers was not without critics, but in a period of history where so few players have provided consistency, his 52 goals over two seasons is highly respectable in hindsight. There were misses and bad moments, and he doesn’t hide from them. However, his ability to come back from the brink after a start where many wrote him off remains an impressive feat. To show durability and availability in a way few have replicated of late. Ibrox can supercharge players, but the uphill battle to prove yourself has proven too much for too many.
Dessers says it was a sheer hunger to recover that helped him overcome those opening months. The steepest of learning curves. The 3-1 defeat against Aberdeen, which consigned Michael Beale’s tenure to history, was a particularly rough moment. Those first months were very tough: “You start thinking too much, you start maybe making the wrong choices at the wrong moments.
“I learned after these difficult moments, after these difficult first months to kind of start zoning out and being focused only on myself, on my job.
“But like I said, the difficult moments means that maybe you lose the game and at Rangers that is a catastrophe.”
An opening-day defeat against Kilmarnock and Old Firm loss before the end of August turned fans against Beale and once that pivot begins, it’s near impossible to reverse.
"There's the infamous opening game against Kilmarnock away on the dry artificial pitch where we dropped points immediately. And that's the first time when you feel that you're at Rangers - how the team played against you, the circumstances, the pressure, the reaction of the fans, which is understandable, of course."
Later, he became the country's in-form forward under Philippe Clement. The following season, working under the Belgian and then Barry Ferguson, he would end the campaign as the country's top scorer.
But there’s still a sense of remorse at not scoring more for the man who brought him to the club. Dessers created a goal for Kemar Roofe in that Old Firm defeat that was chopped off by VAR with the forward adjudged to have fouled Gustaf Lagerbielke despite the Celtic defender in fact kicking him. One of many fine margins that shape history, the plans for Beale’s rebuild were hamstrung by early results. The vision was never really realised.
Beale envisioned that duo as a front two. It didn’t work but had VAR not intervened, and that goal offered an example of success, might history be different?
"In my life, I don't try to think too much about what if, but for me, this is a big, big what if moment,” Dessers says, leaning forward as the passage of play flashes in his mind’s eye.
“In my view, and maybe I'm too biased, this is never a foul. If it's a foul, then he is kicking me because I'm playing the ball. I'm in control of the ball. I think we made a nice team goal and it gets chopped off. And one minute or two minutes later, it's Celtic that scores.
“This was a big mental blow for us. But I'm still thinking - imagine if we could have won that game, if we lead there 1-0 going into half time, we win that game. A lot could have changed because in a certain season you always have turning points where everything can change. And I felt that this was one of those."
Sliding doors and many managers
Much like the current season under Danny Rohl, there was a time under Clement where a league title was very possible. A 2-1 win at Rugby Park in February appeared a positive sliding doors moment until what Dessers brands as the 'worst days' of his Rangers career: a 3-2 loss at Ross County and a draw away at Dundee in the same week.
Clement had simplified approaches, and much like Beale, those fine margins in cup finals across the Belgian’s next 18 months in the job still frustrate. Abdallah Sima’s disallowed goal in the 2024 Scottish Cup final and a failure to award Vaclav Cerny a penalty in the next year’s League Cup final.
"We've been close so many times. That's the crazy thing about it. Sometimes it's easier to accept when you just lose 3-0 and the other team is better. But if I remember the disallowed goal from Abdallah Sima in the Scottish Cup final - still now, if I see images of this, I cannot understand what happened there, why there was a whistle, why nobody looked back at it.
"There was a penalty foul on Cerny, if I remember. There were so many close calls, so many what ifs, not even in the season, but in a game things could have switched around."
By the end of 2024, though, things under Clement were starting to turn. More change was on the horizon and Dessers clicked well with Barry Ferguson during his interim spell in charge: “He was there in a very, very tough moment, very difficult moment because the atmosphere in and around the club was really tough at that time, a little bit toxic.
Read more:
- Leon Balogun exclusive: Supporting Rangers in Cyprus and Ibrox memories
- Steven Gerrard exclusive: Why I made James Tavernier my Rangers captain
“You could feel in him and also in Neil McCann, Billy Dodds, like they are true Rangers, true and true and true. And they could transfer that as well to the group.”
The 31-year-old also spent pre-season working under Russell Martin and retains that “there is a very good manager in there”. Perhaps the timing and circumstance was not right.
"I think this is something inside of Rangers that it's so hard to control,” he adds. “You cannot control it as a player, but you feel the energy from outside. And I think in the period between Philippe [Clement] leaving and the end of the summer, things got a little bit toxic around Ibrox, which is understandable."
What Dessers accurately identifies is not every change in the dugout is a fresh start. There are years of pain and frustration playing into short patience spans.
"It is probably a pain in the fans that has been building there for, and I'm ballparking, maybe 15 years already with a lot of difficult moments for a big club like Rangers and maybe not enough highs and not enough trophies to balance that out.
“In a certain way it's understandable as a fan. But the circumstances make it so difficult and you try to block it out. When you arrive at the club, to block this kind of energy out is not easy. It's not easy for a coach. It's not for new players. It's not easy even for old players."
Rangers ‘can’t be about development’
Dessers continually returns to the intangibles it takes to play for Rangers, and this is notable. An intelligent thinker and vastly experienced player, he knows development can only exist at Ibrox within the prism of winning. An experienced core is essential to achieving that, he states.
"If I look at the team I arrived into, this was a very strong side with a lot of experienced guys who knew the things that were asked in the Scottish Premiership, which I think is also very important at a club like Rangers.
"The European games, the Old Firm games, the play-off games, the finals — it's easy to understand what they mean and what the consequences are. But for me, the real base of winning a league title in Scotland is those difficult away games against - I don't want to say smaller teams because I respect them a lot.
“I know how difficult it is to go there in a small dressing room, on a difficult pitch, wind, rain, and win that game. I felt that group, we didn't win the league at the end of the season, but that group understood that so well. I'm thinking of Connor Goldson, Tav [James Tavernier], Jack Butland, John Lundstram, Borna Barisic.
"They knew this and they could transfer it to the new guys. I remember being told - 'When you arrive here in Scotland and go to one of the top two teams, everyone thinks, Oh, this is going to be fun. We will be one or two in the league and we're going to score a lot of goals.' It's normal for people to think like this when they arrive, but after the first two games you feel it doesn't work like this in Scotland. You have to be 100 per cent every time."
This is a hot talking point. James Tavernier's imminent exit will see the final member of the 2022 Seville squad leave the club. The core that existed under Steven Gerrard has eroded away in recent years, perhaps without sufficient reinvention.
"I think for a team like Rangers to be competing for league titles and trophies, having an experienced core is essential. You see a lot of clubs with the business model of buying young players, developing them, selling them. For a lot of clubs this can work.
“At Rangers it can also work, but it has to be in balance with that core of experience - guys who understand the league, who've been there for a few years, who've been through the difficult and good moments and who can guide those young, talented players."
Chairman Andrew Cavenagh, to his credit, has immersed himself in the nuances and novelties of this club since sacking CEO Patrick Stewart late last year. 'Getting it' is not all it takes to become a success at Ibrox, but a deep understanding and respect is essential.
"This is the main part of being at Rangers. There is no such thing as only development," Dessers adds. There’s your banner.
"Every weekend you need to win. If you don't win, people don't care about development; they don't care about how much money they get for you when they sell you, it's only about winning on the Saturday, winning on the Sunday. And this is the number one at Rangers.
"I like this mentality. But it helps if you have the core of players that understand this and can transfer it well to a group in a dressing room, not only in training by putting the bar high, but also on game days to let the group know, 'Hey, today we cannot drop anything'."
The story of his Rangers exit
If the seeds of Dessers’ arrival were sown long before his arrival, the same could be said of Dessers' departure. Although he felt the trust of the coaching staff last summer, he didn't feel the same from those above them. Indeed, it was in 2024 that a long goodbye actually began.
"I got injured in the Scottish Cup final [of 2024]. But I remember that summer, I went home and thought '22 goals. I fought back from a situation where I was almost dead and buried'. I thought I showed that at least I deserved the chance to be the number one striker for Rangers in the next season.
"Then I got a little bit of a confusing message from my agent a few days before the pre-season. The club had said, 'We're happy with Cyriel. He's professional. He's working hard. He's correct. But if he wants to leave or if a good offer comes, then he's allowed to leave.'
"I thought that was a very strange message to give to a player who had scored 22 goals, finally found rhythm, was happy and could do better. That summer was weird. Some clubs came in, but it never really worked through because I didn't really want to leave. I said, 'No, I want to fight for my chance at Rangers'. But from this moment, I'm not sure I felt the full confidence from the coaching staff or club, but I thought I will fight and see."
The 31-year-old was never one to hide from his faults in real time, but throughout this season many have justifiably asked whether the striking position has improved. Certainly the output of Dessers, Vaclav Cerny and Hamza Igamane hasn't been replicated (they managed 81 goal contributions in 2024/25, 35 of which belonged to Dessers), although the Nigerian is very complimentary of the man who took his number, Youssef Chermiti.
In the summer of 2024, a strong start to the season cemented his place in the team, and when Atlanta United came in with an offer at the end of the window, he rejected the chance to leave and move to a new continent with only 48 hours to decide. "I said I was good at Rangers. I'm scoring. I want to build on this. Let's go. This is our season. We want to win the league."
Then, as individual and collective form dipped into the winter months, Dessers began to feel "a little bit frozen out".
"In January [2025], it was again complicated. The club told me I could leave on loan but it didn't really [materialise]. So I stayed and then there was like an agreement - 'OK, after two seasons, the cycle is a little bit wrapped up. You did your job. You scored your goals. If a good offer comes in in the summer, we will let you go'. Then everything changed with the new ownership, new directors, new coach.
"In the second half of last season, I think I scored 17 goals, became the Scottish top scorer, so my value went up to double of what it was before. And then it was a long summer of speaking."
A lot of those talks took place with Russell Martin, not just about his own future, but the club's direction. Dessers felt alignment with the coaching staff, but not the implicit trust of those above him. It was not so much that he wanted to leave, more he wasn’t sure if Rangers wanted him to stay.
"It was confusing. They never wanted to say to me, 'You are going to be the number one striker'. But I think I did well in training. I think I did well in the games I played. I remember Victoria Plzen at home, for example.
"And then at the end of the summer, it accelerated. I said it will take a very beautiful or a big club for me to depart from Rangers because I don't think a lot of clubs can be put in the same or a similar category. Panathinaikos came through and I thought maybe this is the moment for me to take this step.
"When you come in and score 52 goals in two seasons at my age, 30 years old, you have to look at a lot of things: the duration of your contract, the situation at the club. A lot of things were changing and I didn't feel the full confidence from the board, but I had it from the coaching staff.
"So I said if they try to push different players in my position, then maybe I'm on the bench for a full season after a season where you score 29 goals. That would be very sour. Maybe for everybody, this is now the good moment to make this step. And until today, it has been a difficult season for me with some injuries. But I'm still very happy with the step I made because it's a beautiful club, beautiful fans, pressure, atmosphere - all similar to Rangers.”
Dessers believes Chermiti is a player who is 'very complete'. If able to replicate his impact in big games across the board - which chimes with Dessers' point of the squad being 100 per cent at it for every single game - the Portuguese 21-year-old could be a weapon to win the league next season.
Dessers adds: "I think [Youssef] is very complete. He has the size, he has the speed for his size. He can drop into those pockets.
"He scored some beautiful goals in big moments. Of course that's very important for being a striker at Rangers, sometimes you need your striker to do something magical.
"I remember his bicycle kick in the Old Firm, thinking 'Wow, this guy really has something for sure'. Everybody can see the potential. You saw him improve during the season after a difficult start. The qualities are there and I hope he can stay at least one more season at Rangers and improves even more. If that happens, you have a very, very big weapon to win that league."
His highlights and what Rangers need
"Imagine my stats if all those close offsides also went through, that would have been amazing!"
With tongue planted (sort of) in cheek, Dessers is referencing what was perhaps his best game for Rangers. A 3-1 win over Jose Mourinho's Fenerbahce saw him score once, create a Vaclav Cerny goal, play a hand in the Czech winger's second and fall foul of VAR lines twice to deny a hat-trick. Mourinho said he looked like ‘the best player in the world’ that night. "VAR, yeah… it was for a toe, a toe offside - I've had a few times," he smiles.
Having discussed the sliding doors moments, the regrets, the intensity and the future requirements, what of the highlights? Because in two seasons that only delivered one trophy collectively, there are more than a few individually.
The individual strike away at Real Betis and what he calls "the most beautiful goal of my career" at Old Trafford spring to mind. What about his double against Hearts in the Scottish Cup semi-final? Fenerbahce is right up there and Olympiacos.
"I remember the support [in Betis] when I looked up after scoring. We were on the third ring with our fans and it was full of blue. An amazing moment. And Old Trafford, that’s probably the most beautiful goal in my career."
The memory he really cherishes is the one he ought to. Winning the League Cup: "That's a moment I will never forget. Celebrating without fans at Hampden, at that time you think, 'Oh, we will have a lot more of these moments', but unfortunately, we only got one out of six in those two years. And that's not enough for a club like Rangers."
So how do you get Rangers back on top? It's a question Cavenagh must spend a healthy chunk of his waking hours pondering - something many managers have attempted with contrasting methods. Having been in that dressing room, Dessers' vantage point is valuable.
"In terms of quality, there is a good base in this squad for sure,” he believes.
"I used to play with [Tuur Rommens] when he was at Genk as a very young player. He used to train with us and we could all see his quality in that moment already. I'm very happy to see that he made this step and that he's doing well and feeling well at the club.
"Dujon [Sterling] has come back from injury and you have Manny Fernandez. He also had a difficult start, but now shows his quality, which we could all see from the first day by the way! But we also had to tell him that things at Rangers don't come easy. He picked those things up and he made incredible progress."
Again, though, the need for a core - the importance of a unit to manage matches, guide new arrivals and offer stability - remains essential. To navigate the midweek away days in conjunction with the set-piece, headline fixtures. Whether grown organically from this campaign or identified in the market, with Tavernier leaving, there is a gap to fill.
"There is a good core, but with Tav leaving and guys like Goldson and Lundstram leaving in recent years, you need some guys who played in the league, who know how important these smaller, trickier games are and who are vocally strong in a dressing room and in training - who put the bar high.
"In my first year, we had a very good core. Roofe, Goldson, Tav, Balogun, Borna Barisic, every day they were in the gym. Every day when I went, they were already there or coming in, and you'd speak a little bit about football, about the game, say 'Maybe this weekend we can try this.' And you're just building something together.
"That's something I maybe missed a little bit last season. When I was going to the gym, it was a little bit more empty. Robin Propper was always there, John Souttar was always doing his stretches. You still speak, but the core was a little bit different. And then it's also more difficult to transfer that to new guys, to help them understand what it means to play for Rangers, to play in this league, and to be 100 per cent ready in these - I say smaller with respect - but very tricky away games."
Memories to last a lifetime
Dessers still has a RangersTV login that's now in regular use, with matches at night in Greece opening up afternoons to keep up with his former club. We speak a couple of days after the 2-1 defeat against Hearts, which he was watching alongside his wife. The less said about that the better.
"Yesterday evening, somebody asked, 'do you miss Glasgow?' And we said, yeah, we miss it. We miss it so much. We loved living there,” he adds. “We loved the club. The club was amazing. And it's like I said at the beginning of the interview, it really pulls you in."
He plans to return to Glasgow at some point soon. Disco, the club masseur of 25 years, is one individual he namechecks, among other staff who provide that continuity that makes Rangers what it is, just like the fans: "The people around the club are for me the real core. All the players come and go, coaches come and go, directors and owners come and go. But the real core of this club are the people who are there every week in the stadium, and the people who work there for years.
Read more:
- The concerning Danny Rohl big-game record and core reason behind 6/15 record
- Chris Jack: Why Danny Rohl cannot defend the indefensible in Rangers mentality debate
"Even if you try to stay cool and say no, the club will pull you in. I think that's the beautiful thing about Rangers. You have to go through it and it will push you down, but it will also pull you up again. Those are the things that I will remember forever in my career and in my life after my career.
"OK, now I play in green. But [when you play for Rangers], you start hating green. You don't even want green things in your house anymore.”
Dessers didn’t write a perfect Rangers story, but he did write his own after early tumult. Rangers pulled Cyriel Dessers in, up, down. From jeers to cheers. And amongst highs and lows remain memories to last him a lifetime.
Share