'This is where you want to be' - no fear in France for Kyra Carusa

The striker says team should be worried about facing the Girls in Green.

Tue, 02 Apr, 2024 - 07:35

John Fallon

Successive 12-hour sleeps are the cure to Kyra Carusa’s jetlag challenges but she isn’t losing a wink over the might of France lurking on Friday.

The US-born striker – now a teammate of American World Cup winning poster girl Alex Morgan for hometown club San Diego Wave – finally found a scoring groove for Ireland during the dominant Uefa Nations League campaign.

A miserly return of two goals from her first 15 caps swelled to seven by the end of the perfect six-game, 18-point return last December.

Success, in the form of topping League B, brings bigger challenges and the Stade Saint-Symphorien in Metz will provide the evidence when she squares up against eight-time Champions League winner Wendie Renard.

Her namesake, Hervé, restored the veteran defender as his backbone of the French side for last year’s World Cup following an fractious fall-out with his predecessor Corinne Diacre.

Carusa has enjoyed her moments too, notably during her Champions League duels for Danish champions HB Køge against Barcelona and Arsenal, but after drawing a World Cup blank, the 28-year-old realises the window for upsetting the big guns has arrived.

“I kind of feel like that that you have to remember that there is something to be feared in playing us,” she said, turning the psychological tables on the French team they lost 3-0 to in their final World Cup friendly.

“We frustrated them for the first 35 minutes of that game. Playing teams at this level, you have to take advantage of every little piece of it, the physical piece of it, the mental piece of it. Why would you fear playing these games? This is where you want to be.”

All sounds reasonable but what can Ireland under Eileen Gleeson do against Les Bleus that the version led by Vera Pauw couldn’t in what proved to be a cakewalk at Tallaght?

“When I think of that game, and most against top opponents, there are always key difference makers,” she explains.

“We call them the ‘big five’ moments. Five minutes before the beginning of a half or a game. Five minutes before the end of a half or a game. Five minutes after a goal.

“These five-minute periods are hugely important and can make or break teams.

“That’s when the teams most tuned in score a goal or don’t concede. Against France, we conceded those twice before half-time. And in the Canada game at the World Cup, their equaliser before half-time changed the game.” “Those were so crucial for us. And in the recent draw against Italy, we were really sound, playing consistently the whole way through and holding the game.

“Those little moments that can be determinants between getting or not getting results.

“Players will be reminded that those moments are the difference between being able to compete at this level or not.” Carusa is doing just that at club level. After ending her European journey between Denmark and England last August, the National Women’s Soccer League Challenge Cup was recently added to the NWSL Shield.

The Irish striker started against Gotham in the season curtain-raiser settled by Morgan’s late winner.

“It’s wild to think that sometimes there is an aura and presence of a player that is very much earned,” she says of her teammate.

“That is kind of manifested too, keeping their shoulders back and walking on a pitch like that as well.

“As a someone in the same position, you take those little notes to your game. That’s something controllable for myself that I can bring to the table.”

Spoiling the predicted French feast would be a nice starter.