“I wish I had played football like she plays,” Jonatan Giráldez, coach of the Barça club, confesses to EL PAÍS about Keira Walsh, a player on his team since she arrived in the summer of 2022. She did it at the last moment, and with a extra pressure: to be, at that time, the most expensive signing in women’s football for 400,000 euros. She also did it to cover the loss of Alexia Putellas after her cruciate ligament injury. She landed among the media noise that does not characterize or define her. If Caroline Graham Hansen is silent, Walsh is practically invisible. “Personality also goes with the position: we don’t want to be stars of the show,” the defensive midfielder confessed in an interview with The Guardian. That doesn’t make her any less key. On the contrary. “Keira is essential. She understands in three words what she has to do. She is super intelligent, but also a good person,” confesses Giráldez.
A simple footballer from Rochdale who first left Manchester and City, who saw her grow up. She shy looking, but a joker in her wardrobe. She jumped from not leaving her city to the most media club and arrived because of her ambition to want more. She wanted leagues, Champions Leagues and to play with the best. She achieved it in Barcelona, where she settled in the summer of 2022. She landed on the last day of the market, and did not do preseason. She had just won the Euro Cup with England, her national team, and was MVP of the tournament final.
His arrival at Barça surprised. On the one hand, it impacted the price. On the other hand, he came to fill the absence left by Putellas, but not his interior position. The plans were different, and it was Giráldez who was clear that the bet was on Walsh. “Since Alexia’s injury, people said that we had to sign an interior player. But at that time we decided what was best for the team, and after several options proposed based on the market, for me Keira was the player who could make us improve,” he argues.
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She was shocked by the physical level and intensity of the training. She adapted little by little, despite her problems with the language, which were solved with the support of her classmates. “She came from another country and has adapted in a historical way,” confesses Giráldez. Spanish football, from a very young age, influenced her game. Her father played Guardiola’s Barcelona games for her, and told her to pay attention to Busquets. She now shares the center of the field with Aitana, who before she was embarrassed to ask for a shirt. She is now the one with whom he understands best on the field, as well as Patri Guijarro, the third midfielder of the Barça axis. “Her way of understanding football is one of the best in the world. When I receive the ball and look for them it is much easier. Playing with them makes me improve a lot,” Walsh confessed to Mundo Deportivo last year.
“For me, Patri is the best player in the world, and no one talks about her,” he told The Guardian. “I’m looking forward to playing with her when she comes back,” he confessed to Sport about Alexia. The reality is that when the Barça captain returned, she stayed on the bench. The interior slot was occupied by Guijarro, and her ownership as pivot passed between her and Keira. The trident in the center of the field with Keira, Aitana and Patri was more than consolidated. “I knew that she, plus Patri with another role and depending on her adaptation, could improve us as a team. I think it was one of the best decisions I could have made,” explains Giráldez. And he remembers last year’s Champions League final in Eindhoven: “Patri scored, and there is nothing that comforts you more than a midfielder going on to play inside and scoring two goals in the Champions League.”
Since her arrival in 2022, Keira Walsh has played 75 games – 38 in the first season, 37 in the second -, in addition to scoring a goal last year and two assists, and two goals and four assists this year. His contract with Barcelona ends next year. Keira’s work is done in the shadows. In the Champions League final against Lyon this Saturday he will be fundamental. Keira has not known defeat against the French in a final of the highest continental competition as a Barça player. This Saturday, his undoubted eye for the pass will be key, and he will once again be the anchor that silently coordinates and directs the team.
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2024-05-25 03:15:00
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