Skip to main content

Keira Walsh: ‘Everyone’s going to love you or hate you. I had to learn that’

England midfielder on regaining her self-belief, learning at Barcelona and why she still feels like ‘just a girl from Rochdale’

Ask quietly who in the England squad is irreplaceable and the likely answer you will get is Keira Walsh. Sarina Wiegman’s defensive midfielder is the increasingly not-so-secret jewel in England’s crown. It was Walsh’s pass that elicited more oohs and aahs than Ella Toone’s sumptuous finish to open the scoring in the final of the Euros against Germany last year and Walsh’s £400,000 move to Barcelona from Manchester City broke the world record for a transfer fee.

Since that move Walsh has won a treble – La Liga, the Supercopa and the Champions League – and lifted the first women’s Finalissima trophy with England. Yet four years ago she almost walked away from football, the heavy toll of the criticism she faced during the 2019 World Cup almost too much to take. Walsh had looked out of sorts in France, like the youngest of rabbits, frozen in the road, caught in the headlights of the first car they have seen.

Continue reading...

from The Guardian https://ift.tt/1iW8k9C
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How Rico Lewis helped harden up Manchester City’s treble challenge | Jamie Jackson

Guardiola believes advent of the teenage talent sowed seeds of change that turned his side into champions again Mid-January, the Etihad Campus. Before Tottenham’s visit a discontented Pep Guardiola is addressing a Manchester City team meeting that includes Erling Haaland, Kevin De Bruyne, John Stones and Ederson. The champions are in second place, eight points behind Arsenal, each having played 18 games. Performances have dipped and so has the attitude of his players. The final match before the World Cup was a 2-1 home defeat by Brentford . Since the tournament, City have beaten Leeds and Chelsea, drawn with Everton and lost their previous outing , 2-1 at Manchester United. Seven points from 15 is not championship-defending form and, when being knocked out of the Carabao Cup by Southampton is factored in, Guardiola can see City’s campaign derailing. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/h8WjbMX
Post a Comment
Read more

Wandsworth escape accused says it was ‘foolish’ to jail him with his ‘skill set’

Daniel Khalife, 23, says he absconded because he was ‘terrified’ of being locked up with dangerous offenders A former British soldier has told a jury he did not hand himself in after he escaped from prison because he was “finally demonstrating what a foolish idea it was” to imprison someone with his “skill set”. Daniel Khalife, 23, told the court he absconded from Wandsworth prison while on remand because he was “terrified” of being locked up with “serious sex offenders” and “terrorists” who wanted to kill him, and that he did not think his imprisonment would be in the public interest. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/vRZHkaw
Post a Comment
Read more

Bodies of Men: the love story taking on toxic masculinity in a time of war

Nigel Featherstone’s new novel tackles traditional conservatism and patriarchy through an unconventional romance How can you be a man and be anti-war? This is the question that Sydney-born novelist Nigel Featherstone, who is a pacifist, considered while he took up a three-month writing residency in a military library. He set out to discover what happens to very different expressions of masculinity placed under military pressure. “Australia does have a very defined, toxic brand of masculinity,” says the bespectacled Featherstone, seated by the window at his local pub facing the railway station at Goulburn, north of Canberra, while men on stools at the nearby bar sink beers and televisions on the walls screen horse racing results. Continue reading... from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2N8piOc
Post a Comment
Read more