If Ireland are to get anything out of their immensely difficult EURO 2025 qualifying group, there is no doubt that Kyra Carusa will play a big part.
The draw for the EURO qualifying group has dumped Ireland with the #2, #3 and #6 sides in the world - England, France, and Sweden respectively.
American-born Kyra Carusa spoke to Balls.ie and the Irish media this week ahead of the first round of qualifiers. Carusa was fresh off the plane from California, where she continues to enjoy great success with San Diego Wave. On joining us, in typically upbeat fashion, Carusa says she has just about perfected managing jetlag on the journey back over to Ireland and enjoys her best sleeps of the year in the team hotel.
Ireland will soon be on the move once again for the first games of the qualifying group, with France up first in Metz on Friday before the Girls in Green return home to welcome England to Lansdowne Road.
It is a comment from two of Carusa's Swedish clubmates, however, which perhaps best sums up the level that the Ireland WNT have reached.
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Comments from Kyra Carusa teammates show level Ireland are now operating at
5 December 2023; Kyra Carusa of Republic of Ireland celebrates with Caitlin Hayes, right, and Heather Payne after scoring their side's third goal during the UEFA Women's Nations League B match between Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland at the National Football Stadium at Windsor Park in Belfast. Photo by Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile
Speaking on Monday ahead of the EURO 2025 qualifiers, Carusa was asked if she had discussed the draw with her Swedish club teammates Hanna Lundkvist and Sofia Jakobsson. The 28-year-old revealed that the Swedes were just as unhappy to draw Ireland as Irish fans might have been to land in such a challenging group:
Funny you say that. When I came into the locker room everything had been announced earlier in the morning for us so when we came in we got the news and we chuckled because we were 'you know what of course we are going to be in the same group together and of course we were going to be joined by France and England. Why would it be any other way!'
That game in Gothenburg [in World Cup qualifying] is one that we still remind ourselves about as it wasn't too long ago. My teammates talk about that game as well which is funny though that they look at that as, 'this is why we didn't want to have you guys in our group.'
They understand first hand the difficulty to play a team like us, especially now when compared with when we played them in that.
Ireland do have experience to draw on when they play Sweden in a double-header later this year. Perhaps the best result of their 2023 World Cup qualifying campaign was their 1-1 draw in Gothenburg, which laid the groundwork for qualification for the finals in Australia.
12 April 2022; Katie McCabe of Republic of Ireland celebrates with teammate Denise O'Sullivan, right, after scoring their side's first goal during the FIFA Women's World Cup 2023 qualifying match between Sweden and Republic of Ireland at Gamla Ullevi in Gothenburg, Sweden. Photo by Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile
Carusa's comments echo those of Eileen Gleeson when the scarcely believable draw was made in February. Head coach Gleeson said that, though the draw was going to present an extreme challenge for Ireland, the other three teams in the group would have been hoping to avoid Ireland from the fourth seed options.
Though Ireland are undeniably the firm underdog in their group, there is hope that the recent experience of playing bigger teams at the World Cup and in recent friendlies are indicative of where this team is going, as Carusa rightly suggests.
Carusa remembers Ireland being unfortunate not to be 1-0 up before falling to a 3-0 defeat to France in the buildup to the World Cup, and there were encouraging performances in last year's friendlies against the USA and February's against Italy.
There is the guarantee of a playoff at the end of this campaign regardless of how Ireland fare, thanks to the newly-introduced Nations League-style qualifying format.
The Irish players, however, do not feel as though they are out of place in this group, and Carusa says that they are hoping to ruffle a few feathers in the group.
These are the games you want to be playing in and the positions you want to be in, though challenging and daunting to some but being at this level as a professional if you are not wanting that what are doing? How are you going to get better? Our group is quite an exciting group.
They say iron sharpens iron is what they say so in order to become better, sharper and step up you have to play against the best. It has to be normalised with that competitiveness, the level of play, the speed of play and all of that. That is why I look forward having come off the games we played at the World Cup, coming into these games, I feel we have a much more larger experience under our belts.
We are more competitive and our mentality is we want to be hard to beat. We are Irish.
We always want people to think 'Jesus, this is not going to be an easy game for us' but at the same time while simultaneously being a competitive team in that environment and understanding where quality in what we can do and what we can get done. That is something I'm looking forward to in these games this week.
Kyra Carusa and the Ireland WNT face France in Metz in the opening game of their EURO 2025 qualifying campaign on Friday night, with the game live on RTÉ 2.
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