Kerstin Casparij: ‘I love football – but it takes over your life’ ahead of Champions League trip to Milan
Manchester City full-back Kerstin Casparij spoke ahead of City's Champions League trip to Milan to face Inter on Tuesday, saying: ‘I love football – but it takes over your life’. She reflected on balancing that commitment with perspective after helping Manchester City secure the Double in May.
The 26-year-old Dutch defender described football as “my most important secondary thing in life, and I’ve found that such a refreshing way of looking at it,” and said that understanding keeps her grounded. In her fourth season in England she won a first league title and the FA Cup with City and had what has been described as arguably her best Women’s Super League campaign.
Casparij finished the season with three goals and seven assists, the joint-most assists in the league with Aston Villa’s Lynn Wilms, and credits a positional change under Andrée Jeglertz for her offensive output. “Now I’m allowed to really play on almost the whole right side,” she said. “And I’m allowed to and trusted with pushing forward and taking risks in the final third.”
Her performances earned her a place on the Ballon d’Or shortlist, where she finished 24th and was the fifth-highest defender. She stressed the role of those around her in that success, saying her teammates “work tirelessly to help me out” and praising her partner’s support: “Especially my partner, who is so invested in my career and has been such an incredible support and helped me out in more ways than I can count. There are so many incredible people around me and I’m just really happy I can give back to them as well, as much as I’m proud of myself for achieving it.”
Casparij’s openness on social media and advocacy work have increased her profile off the pitch; she is a patron of the LGBT Foundation and has shared her experiences growing up with ADHD. “I always want to be me and I want people that I knew 10 years ago to now speak to me and be able to be like: ‘Oh you haven’t changed a single bit, you’re still the same person.’ I have a lot of friends outside of football and it gives you such a sense of normality because football, the industry, is not normal and we are not necessarily normal.” She added: “We’re in the spotlight every three days at times. We’re getting judged on our performance, we’re getting judged on how we do our work, so I kind of need that sense of normality to make sure I don’t take things too seriously and really keep both my feet on the ground.”
City did not play in the Champions League last season and faced questions about their ability to manage a heavier schedule this term; after nine WSL games they sit top and unbeaten, two points clear of Chelsea, who drew 1-1 with Everton at the weekend, before their meeting on Saturday at Stamford Bridge. City recorded only their second clean sheet in Saturday’s 5-0 defeat of West Ham, and in the Champions League they have three draws from three matches so far. Casparij acknowledged pre-season doubts: “Late last season some were still thinking we were going to bottle it,” and added: “We see it. I’m not going to say we don’t, because we all follow the media, we all have social media, but it’s not something that gets really discussed very heavily. But it definitely adds fuel to our fire …
“It also allows us, as a team, to keep innovating, to keep thinking: ‘OK, what can we change? What can we improve? Where can we get better? Where do we sometimes need to tweak little things? What does the opponent do?’ And that’s the beauty of it and the fun part because it never gets boring.”
Casparij recalled her early steps in the game, making her debut for Heerenveen at 15, and referenced signing a new long-term City contract almost two years ago when she said she felt she had unfinished business at the club. Asked what securing the Double in May felt like, she said: “Incredible. It was such a long time coming and I’d been dreaming of that for so long.
“There was a big feeling of relief. We were very determined to win the league and I feel like we remained very calm for very, very long, pretty much up until the end. We just knew what we needed to do to get the job done and we made a big point of having a winning language. As a leadership team we started to talk about ‘when’ we win the league rather than ‘if’ to create an environment that believed and where everyone was going to do everything we could to win.” City travel to Milan to face Inter on Tuesday in the Champions League.