Twenty-year-old Emma Coolen cared little about the game. She knew nothing about the teams. But she was there, in Stockholm, on 14 November 2013 to watch the Danish side Fortuna Hjørring’s visit to Tyresö FF in the women’s Champions League, to impress another girl.

“She was a huge fan of Christen Press, who was playing in Sweden at the time with Tyresö FF,” Coolen says. “I had no idea what she was talking about but I thought: ‘OK, I’ll go there, get Christen Press’s autograph and she’ll love me forever.’ That was the plan.”

Did it work? “No!” But the flirting tactic changed her life. A day after she watched Marta, Press, Ali Krieger, Caroline Seger and others playing, the Dutchwoman – who was playing casually in the eighth tier in the Netherlands – decided she wanted to make it to the top, in five years.

“It was surreal, it’s really cliched but I was sitting in the stands and all these people were cheering for female footballers?” Coolen says. “I was just really impressed. They weren’t your stereotypical girls, they were fierce strong women and incredible athletes and I immediately thought: ‘I want to be like this.’ So that’s where it started. I vividly remember thinking the words: ‘What have I been doing with my life up until now? This is what I should have been doing.’”

Four years, nine months and 25 days later, she pulled on the shirt of KSK Heist and came on at half-time to make her debut in the professional Belgian Super League.

When she began her journey it required quite a lifestyle change. “I was about as bad as they come as a teenager,” says Coolen. “At that time I was very rebellious; in school I was skipping classes and was known as the party girl, basically because I was insecure and trying to fit in.”

She was playing football but not seriously – it was an excuse to hang out with a group of girls and drink on Sundays. “I never believed that I actually could make it to the top level. Which sounds kind of weird because on the internet I’ve always been very confident and vocal about reaching my goal.

“When I started I was playing in the lowest league, I was smoking, drinking. But I just tried to focus on the next step ahead of me which always seemed do-able. It was a strategy that worked for me.”

A week after her trip to Stockholm she decided she needed to switch clubs and approached a player she knew at FC Eindhoven: “I knew they had three or four women’s teams and were playing at all levels of football. I thought that would be perfect and I could hopefully work my way up from their fourth team to their first team.”

Coolen in action for KSK Heist. Photograph: Jeroen Coolen

Coolen stayed at Eindhoven for two years but found it difficult. “I was mainly there with their second team,” says the 25-year-old, who has blogged about her journey since 2015. “I was doing a lot of training on my own, a lot of work on technical stuff, but the gap between the second team and the first team was too big for me at that point. I travelled to games with the first team, posted cool pictures of the bus, but I never really played with them and that was tough.”

She decided to move on and in Belgium, with VC Moldavo, she rediscovered the joy of playing, partly because the style was more suited to her skill set.

“I was suddenly improving so quickly and that’s when it really started being fun for me again,” she says. “In Holland the main focus is on a player’s technical ability, but that is just one approach and for me it was always going to be my biggest weakness because I hadn’t had any technical training until I was 20.

“In Belgium there’s a lot more focus on the tactical and physical ability of players; it’s why I feel so good playing in Belgium. In Holland I’ll always be the worst player on the team technically, which is not a lot of fun.”

However, her rapid development stalled when injury struck and she got stuck in a mental rut. So, when KSK Heist contacted her about joining them in the Belgium Super League this summer, she was surprised. “I had a hamstring injury that I didn’t really take care of because I wanted to play so badly. I spent the last year and a half being constantly injured. I was struggling to take a step back. I ran into the wall. It was physically and mentally a tough year.

“Usually when you transfer up a level it’s because you’ve had a brilliant season and I had just had the worst possible year. I didn’t really know what to imagine. I signed completely blank, having not met the girls or seen them play. But it’s been everything I’ve ever wanted from playing at the highest level. It’s the life of a pro player.”

It has not been easy for Heist – after three games they have three defeats and have conceded 23 goals – but that has built a dogged unity: “We went into the season with 16 incoming transfers and everyone knowing we’re the underdogs. For some reason that creates a strong bond in the team.”

When Coolen knew she might appear in Heist’s first game of the season – a 9-1 defeat at Gent – what it meant did not sink in straight away but then “four days before the game I lay awake in the middle of the night and it hit me that my journey from the lowest to highest level would be complete”.

Talking points

• England’s under-19s began their European Championship qualifying campaign with a 9-0 defeat of Malta, including a hat-trick from Tottenham’s Jessica Naz and a clean sheet for Manchester United’s Emily Ramsey. They face Croatia on Tuesday.

• Chelsea have been drawn against Fiorentina in the Women’s Champions League last 16 while Glasgow City will play Barcelona. Atlético Madrid face last year’s runners-up, Wolfsburg.

• On Friday the Euro 2017 winners, the Netherlands, play runners-up, Denmark, while Belgium face Switzerland in the first legs of their ties for a place in the Women’s World Cup play-off final, which will decide the last European spot. England have qualified for the World Cup and host Brazil on Sunday, then Australia two days later at Craven Cottage, as they get their preparation under way.

• Julie Fleeting, the Scotland and Arsenal great, is to be inducted into the Scottish Football Hall of Fame on 21 October. Fleeting captained her national side for eight years, scoring 116 goals in 121 games.

• Piteå ended Linköping’s hopes of a third straight Swedish title by beating the Champions League contenders 4-2. Rosengård, who are also in the UWCL, stayed within three points of the leaders with a win at Vittsjö. With three games to play Piteå are close to a big upset.