There are a lot of questions you could ask Keira Walsh. The 28-year-old midfielder has won it all with Manchester City, Barcelona, and Chelsea, was the first female English player to command a world-record fee, and is a double European Championship winner.
That might be why she chuckles slightly when The Athletics first question is: how was the summer?
Very good, actually, Walsh says. It finished better than it started, obviously, with the first group game. But yeah, just absolutely incredible, the parade and everything it was a bit of a pinch-me moment again.
It is telling that the first thing Walsh mentions is Englands only defeat of the summer and that she does not bother to mention that she scored Englands only goal in that 2-1 loss to France, a superb strike and her first at a major tournament. What sticks in Walshs mind is the loss.
For her, after almost every trophy possible, winning is still everything.
The last time Walsh spoke to The Athletic, she was dissecting her player-of-the-match performance in the Euro 2022 final. A lot has happened since, which she rattles off as most people would recount a day at work another European Championship, a domestic treble at Chelsea, two Champions Leagues at Barcelona.
In football, you dont have that much time to reflect, Walsh says. Weve won three trophies at Chelsea, but then have a week off, but Im still training to get ready for the Euros. You win the Euros and youve got pre-season, getting ready for the season with Chelsea.
It is relentless, but Walsh is genuinely excited for the season ahead, which starts when she faces old club Manchester City at Stamford Bridge on Friday in the Womens Super League (WSL) curtain raiser. It will be her first full WSL campaign in three years: she left City for Barcelona in the summer of 2022 for a world-record fee of just over £400,000 and only returned in January, midway through Chelseas unbeaten domestic season.
I loved my time at Barca, Walsh says. I loved the girls. It had its challenges Id always lived in Manchester with my friends and family. I was going to a country where I didnt know anyone. I knew one person in the changing room. I didnt speak the language. It was really, really difficult, but I made some incredible friends.
It was a difficult decision (to leave), but obviously Chelsea are renowned for winning and the WSL is such a competitive league. I wanted to come back and to get good game time before the Euros, feel good, ready to go into that. Chelsea was the right fit.
Barcelona are serial winners. Like Chelsea last season, they secured a sixth consecutive domestic title. They have won the Champions League three times between 2021 and 2024, but they are subtly different to the Londoners, Walsh says. Barcelonas winning mentality leans on their confidence in their trusted style; at Chelsea, the core is mentality, graft and relentlessness.
It feels odd to talk about a team who went unbeaten across three competitions and broke the WSL points record having to graft, but Walsh is right. Chelsea won 10 games by just one goal last term in the WSL, and eight points from losing positions. Several times, it looked as though their unbeaten record would fall.
It is clear that the satisfaction of having to work for wins lights Walsh up never more so than when asked for her standout moment from this summers Euros.
It was probably the Sweden game, she says. 2-0 down with 11 minutes to go, and having that real belief and relentlessness that we were still going to win.
The quarter-final Walsh is referring to, which went to penalties after England clawed back a 2-0 deficit, was so gruelling that she and Leah Williamson were forced off in extra time and Lucy Bronze had to strap up her own thigh. Sarina Wiegman called it one of the hardest games Ive watched. For that to be Walshs tournament highlight shows that she does not just love winning. She relishes a challenge.
Theres probably a bit in myself where I always like to prove people wrong, she says. When I went to Barca, people doubted that I was even going to play and I played in two Champions League finals and won them.
I dont know whether its because Im northern or the way Ive been brought up, Im not sure. But theres always a little bit of grit to me. I get angry in training if I lose. Maybe even to myself, I want to prove to myself that I can compete with the best and be up there.
Walsh has proven it over and over, but not without challenge. I did lose a little bit of confidence in myself sometimes, she says, reflecting on her time at Barcelona where she faced stiff midfield competition from the versatile Patricia Guijarro and the teams two Ballon dOr winners, Alexia Putellas and Aitana Bonmati
What I was good at, I went there and (the players at Barcelona) were incredible at. Sometimes thats difficult to see. I feel like Im finding that again. I do feel confident, sharp and good in my mind to go this season. Its difficult because people see the success of it all. As a player, mentally, it does take its toll on you sometimes.
People just think about your body, the biggest thing for me is always my head.
Walsh works with a psychologist and is learning ways to switch off: walking her dog, keeping a journal. When I was younger, I was maybe too intense with it, she says. My entire life was football. I never switched off.
Even when I went on holiday, in the back of my head Im thinking I need to be fit for when I go back, when I just needed to let my body take time and recover.
But sometimes there is no room to pause. She reflects on a whirlwind week in April, where Chelsea, in her words, crashed out of the Champions League with an 8-2 aggregate semi-final defeat to Barcelona. That was a Sunday. On the Wednesday, they had to return to WSL action away to Manchester United, and Arsenals surprise defeat that evening gave them the chance to clinch the title.
You have to dust off and go again, Walsh says. This is what it means to be at this club winning. Its still tough when youre in those moments and you see the media and the fans, and youre suddenly a bad team.
But its just remembering that again what are you doing, why are you here, what are the objectives and coming back to that. After the Barcelona game, we knew our objective was to win the league.
And they did. A draw would have been enough but Bronze scored a late header to seal three points. It was a taut, scrappy match, and for much of it Chelsea were not on top but they still won.
That will sound familiar to anyone who watched Englands late-scoring, nerve-shredding run to the European title in Switzerland. Proper England a mix of tenacity, desire, and togetherness was the buzzword in the Lionesses camp. Proper Chelsea, Walsh says, is similar.
Its (being) relentless in the way that they go on in the game. Its never say die. Even when I used to play for City and we played Chelsea, we could be having a comfortable 45 minutes and you come out and its just a totally different team.
Even in the 90th minute, theres always a chance that Chelsea would score. It still feels like that now.
And what is proper Keira?
Again, very similar, she says, with another laugh. I love the technical and tactical aspects of the game but, fundamentally, it is hard work. My dad (one of Walshs first coaches as she grew up in Rochdale, Greater Manchester) wouldnt let me come off the pitch if he didnt think Id worked hard. Hed be the first to tell me.
Its been like that since I was five or six. Where Im from and the jobs that they do is very humble and it was instilled into me.
The graft, the grit, are what fuel Walsh and the winning. When asked what keeps her spark going, after collecting every trophy in domestic football, that is what she comes back to.
I ask myself that question a lot, she says. And its something that I talk about with my psychologist. What is my why? Why do I get out of bed every morning to come here and play football and try and win? I think its the feeling of winning. Im still digging for the answer.
Whatever fuels her, it shows no sign of running out. Walsh has her sights set not just on the coming year with Chelsea, but on the Womens World Cup in Brazil in 2027.
Ive won a lot of trophies, but I want to win four more this season, she says. Yeah, weve won the Euros, but I would love to win the World Cup.
(Top photo: Harriet Lander/Getty)
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
Chelsea, Barcelona, England, Women’s Soccer
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