CHLOE MUSTAKI’S STORY is well-documented at this stage.
The Republic of Ireland international has beat cancer and serious injury to represent her country on the biggest stages, now finding herself on the cusp of realising the World Cup dream and enjoying Championship football with Bristol City.
Mustaki, who can operate in defence or midfield, made the move across the water from Shelbourne this summer; her first goal for her new club last weekend putting the wind in her sails ahead of Tuesday’s historic World Cup play-off against Scotland at Hampden Park [KO 8pm, live on RTÉ 2].
It’s fair to say it’s been a whirlwind few weeks, but the 27-year-old Dubliner is enjoying the journey, back to her brilliant best after a devastating ACL injury in 2020.
“It was a bit of a leap of faith to go full-time for me because, I don’t know, it was just never something I really thought I would do at a younger age,” she explains. “It was a big change for me but I’m actually loving it so it was a great decision in the end.
“When I tore my ACL, things changed for me a bit. I had to work really, really hard to come back from that. I think just the time and effort that I put into that made me think, ‘Why not go and try full-time football for a couple of years?’
“I just thought, ‘Flipping hell, why not?’ I’ll be working until whatever age I’ll be working to, so why not take a few years out and give football everything? Obviously if I hadn’t had my Hodgkin’s Lymphoma diagnosis, maybe I would have taken that leap of faith a bit earlier, but life happened the way it happened and I just found that this was the right time to give it a go.
“Obviously women’s football is growing at an alarming rate now. So it’s maybe something I might be able to do for longer than a year or two, depending on how the form goes.
“I have my undergraduate, my Masters, everything I needed under my belt to feel comfortable. I have everything I need to fall back on if it doesn’t work.”
They were the big factors. A smaller one was her feeling that full-time football was “necessary” for the progression of her international career, the standard having “sky-rocketed” of late. “We’re really far off at the moment in Ireland,” she frowns at one point.
But back to leaving the day job. Mustaki was working full-time in recruitment before her move to Bristol, having previously studied Commerce and French and International Management.
This is a free shot, of sorts.
“It definitely made me feel a lot calmer about walking away from a full-time job,” she nods.
“Being open and honest about it, my salary was halved walking away and that’s a massive thing to do. But you’re only young once and I won’t get this opportunity again. I’m coming into my late 20s now, so it was now or never.
“What harm in enjoying myself for a few years? And if I can save some money, fair enough. And if I can’t, then I’ll put in the work once I’m done with football to make up for lost time.”
She’s doing so at the minute on the flipside. Perhaps ironically, injury absentees may offer an opportunity to add to her four senior Ireland caps next week, while she has played in each of Bristol’s four Championship games so far this season, helping them to the top of the table.
The mental adjustment has been tricky though, Mustaki admits. You’d imagine she had more time before, but she weirdly had less than she had imagined while settling in.
“But now I have got used to my surroundings and I have most of my things set up, I’ll be able to have more time mentally to go out in the evenings and enjoy my time away from football,” she smiles, planning art classes and cookery classes, with her new car a help.
“That’s the main thing. It’s always a worry. Because my time was always split between academics and football, the idea of playing football full-time and having everything riding on how you perform, how you train, whether you win or lose on Sunday – that was a massive deal for me and kind of the reason why I didn’t push it early on.
“I need to be careful and to make sure that I have outlets outside of football that can keep me happy if a result doesn’t go our way or if I don’t perform the way I hope to perform.”
So she’s never wanted football to be the whole of her identity?
“Pretty much,” she nods. “The way I was brought up, my parents were very academically focused and were making sure I got that degree under my belt.
“If you think about it, I’m 27 and when I was finishing up school at 18, women’s football just wasn’t where it is now. That’s only eight or nine years ago. The idea of taking that leap of faith and not getting that degree under my belt was just not possible. The idea that I could make good money in football at the age of 18, it just wasn’t realistic. You were talking 0.5% of women who were able to make a life-long career and being able to save enough money. So for me, it just wasn’t even an option in my head.
“But the past five years, so much has happened in women’s football. It’s sad for me because I feel like I’m probably on the later stages of that and I probably won’t get the full rewards of it. But it’s fantastic for someone like Jess Ziu, at 20/21, and in four or five years’ time, there will hopefully be major money in the women’s game. So it is really exciting for girls who are finishing school now. But eight or nine years ago, realistically I felt I had to get a degree or two under my belt before I could even think about going full-time.”
Time and time again during the interview, she comes back to the fact that women’s football is “exploding” at the minute and that World Cup qualification would be a watershed moment for the game in Ireland.
It would mean a first-ever major tournament for the senior women’s team, Mustaki having skippered the U19s on their historic run to the semi-finals of the 2014 European Championships.
“My memories from that tournament are very mixed. On one end, I captained the girls to a European semi-final so it was definitely a defining moment of my career, something I’ll cherish for the rest of my life.
“But then on the back of that, I got a diagnosis of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. I’ve very mixed emotions when I think back to that tournament but it was a hugely proud moment for me and having the likes of Katie [McCabe] in that squad, and Clare Shine, and other girls as well. An unbelievable experience, I’ll never forget it all round but mixed emotions.”
Here’s to more positive ones. The World Cup odyssey reaches its climax on Tuesday, the Girls In Green potentially one game away from hitting unprecedented heights. With that comes pressure, but pressure is a privilege.
And Mustaki and co. will embrace it.
“We can’t shy away from the fact that it’s going to be the biggest game of all of our lives,” she concludes. “We dream of being in this position. This is exactly where we wanted to be when we started the campaign.
“We were so close with the Euros a couple of years ago. So much investment, time and effort has been put in that we’ll give it our best shot next Tuesday. I don’t think we feel too much pressure, we feel ready for it, we’re doing everything we can to prepare in advance of that.
“Look, it’s a game that we’ll cherish. Hopefully it will be a good result.”
Originally published at 06.45
