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