BITTERSWEET. THAT’S HOW Chloe Mustaki describes her FA Women’s Championship-winning season with Bristol City.
The Republic of Ireland international can’t help but smile as she reflects on last Sunday, when she helped her club return to the top-tier of English women’s football — and completed another difficult injury comeback in the process.
“A massive, massive day, obviously on a personal note, but more importantly for the club,” Mustaki tells The 42 from her Bristol training base on Thursday.
“For a club that experienced the WSL for a few years, came back down and had to rebuild essentially from scratch, to get back up there now, it’s brilliant. Fantastic group of people and players. It’s not just a group of individuals and egos who got us there, it’s really a family vibe which has been lovely, and made it all that bit more sweet.
“My ambition was to make it to the WSL sooner rather than later. It’s a dream come true for me to be able to do it in my first pro season and a privilege to do it amongst great people.”
A day I’ll never forget ❤️
— Chloe Mustaki (@CMustaki) April 25, 2023
Huge dedication and class from every single member of the group this season, a privilege to be a part of it!
Back where @bristolcitywfc belongs! pic.twitter.com/sWwQ7UPv0N
What about the last few months, in general?
From that first professional contract, historic World Cup qualification and everything that went with it — she was thrown into the spotlight on Sky Sports after the Celtic Symphony controversy — to the frustrations of an injury-scuppered few months; a whirlwind doesn’t even begin to cover it.
And that’s on top of everything the 27-year-old Dubliner has been through in the past.
“It’s been a mental year, to be honest with you. Going from a full-time job and rushing off to training in the evenings to being in a full professional set-up — one of the best in the women’s game in England — I’m so lucky.
“Everything that happened with the international team was in itself top dream come true that you could ever imagine, qualifying for a World Cup and being a part of that.
“Unbelievable…”
At that, Mustaki pauses for a few seconds, before picking back up.
“I’ve heard something in the past, a saying – I might misquote it now but it’s like, ‘Don’t fly too high with the highs and don’t get too low with the lows’. I think that’s what I’m trying to go by.
“There’s gonna be highs and there’s gonna be lows, especially in this sport. It’s pretty cut-throat. In terms of your body, you never know what’s around the corner. I look back on the past nine months, and I’m over the moon with how things have shaped out. I could have hoped for a better first pro season, but this is the way things go and I’ve learned a lot from it.
“It’s a learning curve for for me and the staff here at Bristol City, and that’s not from a negative standpoint. It’s just the way it is. That’s life. No negative feelings around it, that’s just the way it’s gone for me.”
It’s remarkable really that Mustaki still holds that outlook on life, and indeed sport.
A lesson in resilience for one and all.
She stared death in the eye when she was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma — a type of blood cancer — at the age of 19, making a full recovery after intensive treatment.
With her football career back on track, she sustained a dreaded cruciate ligament knee injury on the eve of a potential senior Ireland debut in March 2020.
It was a long, and complicated, recovery, her 18-month timeline blowing the usual 9-12 out of the water. “It’s probably the toughest thing I’ve ever had to endure — given my medical history, that’s big to say,” she previously told this outlet.
Mustaki made another strong return, earning a move to Bristol City from Shelbourne last summer and winning five Irish caps as a regular fixture in Vera Pauw’s history-making squad.
She signed a one-year deal at City, given her circumstances, and everything was going swimmingly. Until disaster struck once more.
A niggling groin issue, which built up over time, worsened and by December, she was out of competitive action. Her body ultimately gave up after a relentless 11 months, and she returned home for a month or so.
It was an uncertain period, the osteitis pubis diagnosis only arriving in February.
Surely Mustaki was thinking, ‘Why me again?’ Particularly given the timing; Bristol City were flying high and the World Cup was looming, with competition in both camps heating up.
“I think I grappled with that a little bit too much in the early days. I did feel very hard done by initially, I struggled really badly mentally for the first two months. That was a very, very difficult time for me.
“I probably lost myself a little bit. I was finding it very difficult when we couldn’t get me on the right track, I had so many different thoughts going through my mind that I wasn’t really myself and I was very sad and frustrated.
“But I’ve been through different setbacks in my life to know that tough times don’t last. I did have to dig quite deep being away from home and finding it difficult to get on the right rehab programme for a while, but we got there in the end.
“To move away from home, let go of everything that I knew of and to throw myself into something and then for that to happen a few months in, you would have thought I probably would have derailed a bit more so I’m proud of myself but also very thankful for all the support that I had from everyone here, and my boyfriend Greg [Sloggett, Dundalk player] and my family at home that were only a call away most days.
“Once I got on the right track and we knew what had to be done, my mind kind of settled a little bit and in turn, my body started to adapt in the right way.”
Osteitis pubis is a groin condition common in male athletes, but rare in females. The lack of experience in the female game with the injury made it even more difficult, Mustaki admits. But support from the men’s side of the club at Bristol City, input from their staff and the ability to share world-class facilities really helped.
She leaned on sports psychologists and other staff members, while her loved ones remained her biggest support network — “Shoutout to my boyfriend who took a lot of hurt from me, maybe in times where I wasn’t kind of feeling myself and all the rest, and of course my family who did everything they could.”
“It was very, very difficult to take in the early days,” she says. “I probably faced the same amount of mental challenges I did with my ACL, despite being out for 18 months versus four-and-a-half or five months. But it was the whole uncertainty around the injury that made it so much more difficult for me this time around.
“I think with every different experience, you come across different challenges, and it just makes you a bit stronger for the next thing that comes around. You just have to dig deep within yourself. There’s gonna be good days and bad days, but I’m just in a way, lucky and unlucky that I’ve experienced quite a bit already to date that’s kind of helped me get over this difficult period again.
“Hopefully I can push on and hopefully as well, it helps everyone involved in terms of learning from it. I’m just glad it’s behind me and hopefully there’ll be no more setbacks now over the next few months.”
Future focused. Mustaki openly admits that her chances of making the Ireland World Cup squad were “slipping away” when her fate was up in the air and she was unable to prove herself at club level, but she’s happier about the entire situation now.
Twice in two weeks, she has featured as a second-half substitute, most recently in the 4-0 title celebration win over her former side Charlton Athletic — her family, friends and Sloggett watched proudly from home — and she’s buoyed by the Championship medal in her back pocket and promotion.
That said, she knows the clock is ticking and the World Cup push is on. Plans are in place for May and June, when she hopes to be part of an extended group competing for spots.
“Vera has kept in touch with me every few weeks or so, just keeping tabs on how I’ve been getting on. It’s been very difficult to look on obviously in the two international breaks that I’ve missed, and you’re thinking who’s potentially taking your spot. You can’t help your mind going there. That’s probably the hardest part for me, being able to control the controllables and not letting my mind kind of derail a bit. I’m definitely guilty of doing that.
“I’m probably a little bit more at peace now that I’m back playing and I know what I need to be doing over the next while to make sure I keep going in the right direction. If I don’t make it, I know that I’ll have done everything that I absolutely can and I think that will be enough for me to be able to see the girls fly off to Australia and be one of their number one supporters and be okay with that.
“It’s important that you’re happy in your everyday life as well. Although it will be very, very difficult for me to in a way to accept that this injury happened at a bad time and probably really damaged my chances of making it to the World Cup, I still have so many good things to look forward to next season, hopefully being a part of WSL squad that stays up and everything like that. I have so much to look forward to and I have so much to be grateful about. It took a while to get to that point mentally but that’s where I’m at now.
“I’m keeping the hope alive for the summer, but we’ll just have to see whether I’m still seriously in Vera’s plans and whether I can do enough to prove myself over the next couple of months.”
Whatever the outcome, Mustaki won’t fly too high or too low.
She’ll do her best to control the controllables.
Step by step, day by day.
“All I can do is look forward to a really exciting next year in what’s arguably the best league in the world,” she concludes, hoping to feature against an Irish-heavy Birmingham City this afternoon.
“I have been part of such an amazing year both with club and country. Hopefully there’s lots more to come. And whatever happens this summer will happen. I’m just glad that I’m back playing and I’m part of such a great club.”
