You never want to be injured, but I think I’ve come back as a stronger player."

How has the game changed in the time you’ve been playing? Going from having to play on bad pitches to now playing on practically carpet…

Yeah, it’s a big difference from what I was used to playing on. I played on… not even grass… I don’t know what you call it. It was like sand. That was my home pitch from when I was six to 15. I didn’t even know we had a local women’s team in the top division where I was from. I didn’t really know about them before. I was invited to a training session, and I was surprised by how good they were. But I didn’t know about them because they were not in the media so I didn’t really know much about women’s football before I started myself. It has changed a lot though, there’s a big difference. I’ve been in Germany and women’s football has been big there for a long time. I’ve been in Sweden where they have good traditions as well. But I feel that coming to England, now is when I can really see how big it’s getting, and how it’s growing, and that’s because big clubs such as Chelsea have got women’s teams that are really going for it and wanting to be the best. You see that in so many leagues now.

You were injured for a lot of last season, but there were still a lot of positives. Do you feel stronger from the highs and lows that you’ve had?

Yeah, absolutely. It was a hard year for me personally. Coming from winning the double with Chelsea the year before, but then at the end of that season starting to feel my injury. I didn’t think it was anything serious so I just kept on playing and had my summer holiday and thought it was going to go away, but then I came back and the pain was even worse. I tried for as long as I could to keep playing, from July to September, but it only got worse. Five months on the sidelines was hard for me because that’s the longest I’ve ever been out. It was hard because I didn’t really know when I was going to come back. None of the doctors or physios could tell me when it was going to be OK again.

I still feel it sometimes now and it was over a year ago. But I set a goal, and I had the World Cup in my head. The World Cup was my biggest goal when I was training, because I didn’t know if I was going to come back and play anything for Chelsea. At the same time I needed to come back and play games for Chelsea to be at my best for the World Cup. So my goal was to play in the Champions League. That was what I was aiming for and that was in March. I got two games before I played the quarter final against PSG. I think I had been preparing for that for so long. I couldn’t train so much with the team, but I did a lot of work with a mental coach, and that was helping me a lot. She’s Norwegian but lives in London and she’s been helping me a lot with how I could be my best when I finally came back.

I’ve had a lot of good support in general. I think when I was able to play again I forgot about those five months, because the work that I did was worth it. You never want to be injured, but I think I’ve come back as a stronger player.