Chelsea's Niamh Charles looking to emulate Liverpool's European glory

‘Istanbul final still gives me goosebumps… now it’s my turn’: Chelsea star Niamh Charles is pinching herself as she bids to emulate her Kop idols in Sunday’s Champions League showdown with Barcelona

• Niamh Charles is eyeing Champions League glory with Chelsea this weekend
• The 21-year-old was in Madrid two years ago to watch her beloved Liverpool
• Charles was relegated from the WSL with Reds in 2020 having signed at 14
• At Chelsea she has played a major role in the Blues reaching final with Barcelona 

Two years ago, Niamh Charles was making her own way to a Champions League final, happy to have a precious ticket in her hands and booking flights to see her beloved Liverpool play Tottenham in Madrid’s Metropolitano Stadium.

‘Getting a ticket was the main thing and I just went as a fan, everyone did their own thing,’ she relates. ‘It was because I’d had 2005 that I knew what the Champions League was. I just wanted to be there.’

Her story of watching Steven Gerrard and the miracle of Istanbul is something else entirely. Charles was a five-year-old, allowed to stay up to watch the game with her family, gathered around the TV set in their home on the Wirral peninsula, as Rafael Benitez’s side turned the game round. 

Niamh Charles is looking to secure Champions League glory with Chelsea against Barcelona

Charles was just five-years-old in 2005 watching as her beloved Liverpool won in Istanbul

‘I remember exactly where I was and it gives me goosebumps even now,’ she recalls. ‘It was such an end to such a crazy game and I was still up — still there — when they won it.’

This weekend she will be on the same stage herself, in Emma Hayes’s Chelsea side facing Barcelona at Gothenburg’s Gamla Ullevi Stadium.

‘I can hardly believe that it’s happening,’ she says. ‘If you’d told me when I was at that final in Madrid — let alone back in 2005 — that I’d be part of a squad playing in one, a few years later… well, I wouldn’t have believed you. It’s incredible to be preparing for this and to be with a group of unbelievably experienced players, watching how they approach a match like this.’

It has been some turnaround for her too, given that a year ago she was in the Liverpool team relegated from the WSL. Just two days after her 20th birthday, she then found herself heading to a Chelsea squad so packed with talent that some in the game were asking how on earth a wide forward like her would possibly break through there. 

As a wing back the 21-year-old shone in Chelsea’s semi-final second leg against Bayern Munich

As a wing-back, was the answer. Operating from both the right and left sides of defence, Charles has brought pace and strength to Chelsea in the defining past few months and was one of the outstanding players in the semi-final second leg win over Bayern Munich, which sent the team to Sweden.

‘When I came here, I just trusted Emma,’ she says of her manager, after one of the club’s last training days before flying to Sweden. ‘It was just me getting used to working hard and training with these unbelievable players and the wing- back role just happened naturally.

‘When you become a defender, the most important part suddenly becomes keeping a clean sheet so that has been different for me. But in our team, everyone defends, everyone attacks.’

The ice in her veins has also helped. An injury to Maren Mjelde, allied to Jonna Andersson’s struggle to cope with Hanna Glas in the Bayern first leg, created openings at full back which Charles and Jess Carter, another young English talent on the right of defence, have seized. 

Jess Carter also seized her chance in the Blues’ defence to help her side reach the final

Even for those of Charles’ generation, the route into the game has been vastly more challenging than for her male contemporaries. Like Nikita Parris, a Merseysider six years her senior, she spent much of her childhood playing in a boys’ team — Wirral side West Kirby Wasps — sometimes facing opposition who viewed the presence of a girl in the side with suspicion, to put it mildly.

‘When I got to age 12 or 13, it might be an issue for some opposing teams. “Oh there’s a girl playing, we don’t want to play”,’ she relates. ‘There might be words from some of them, but my team-mates would always be there to stand up for me.

‘The boys also started growing quicker than me and I had to adapt my game to try to deal with it. I was a defender at that time, having to make challenges, so I had to learn to look after myself. But my team knew I could play. They had my back.’

She still visits the Wasps, who became a huge part of her life.

Charles joined Liverpool as a 14-year-old and stayed there until the end of the 2019/20 season

Signing for Liverpool as a 14-year-old brought all-girls’ football and a chance to express herself more as a player. But at 18 she also began studying for a BSc in Sport and Exercise Science at Liverpool John Moores University — training with Vicky Jepson’s team at least four days a week and shoehorning academic work into the evenings, with flat-mates who were also juggling the early stages of a football career. 

‘Thursdays were my day off from football,’ she says. ‘I called them “uni days” when I could actually go in and finally be a student for the day.’

The academic workload, including a dissertation on psychological perspectives on long-term injury, reflects the need for a back-up in case a football career did not pay a proper wage. Young players like her have needed resilience.

‘She’s a good learner and that’s why she’s thriving,’ says the former Leeds United player Lucy Ward, part of tomorrow’s BT Sport commentary team, who has watched Charles’ progress closely over the years. ‘She’s got good pace, has physical assets and is strong. But she also doesn’t need to be told twice. When Emma Hayes says, “This is what you need to do”, she picks it up. She’s grabbed her chance with both hands.’

Lucy Ward believes Emma Hayes knows she can trust Charles as a quick learner at Chelsea

Charles’ development through the England youth ranks has helped. The FA provide their young players with the kind of strength and conditioning work not all clubs offer. It was in an England shirt that she finally scored a goal with her mother, Liz, in attendance. ‘I’d only ever seemed to score in front of my dad.’ 

The technical adjustment to becoming a wing-back has been picked up from team-mates. ‘I think technically you pick things up more from the players you’re with, watching what they do,’ she says. ‘Tactically is where the coaches come in, suggesting you shift very slightly to different areas of the pitch.’

The fact she has not been thrown straight into the first team perhaps helped, providing a chance to acclimatize and steer clear of the injuries which were a frustration at Liverpool.

Charles does not give much away about what a disappointment the way things turned out at Liverpool must have been. She joined the club as a 14-year-old, when they were the nation’s outstanding side: WSL champions in 2013 and 2014.

She played for Liverpool against Everton at Anfield in 2019 as she achieved a childhood dream

She played against Everton at Anfield, the stadium where she and her father, Nick, once posed for photographs beneath the legendary This is Anfield sign. As a girl, she pinned Steven Gerrard posters to her wall. As a Liverpool player, she met him. 

‘That was a childhood dream for me, to be able play for them,’ Charles says. ‘But in terms of my career, this seemed like the next step to challenge myself.’

In Madrid two summers ago, the pairing of Trent Alexander-Arnold and Andy Robertson told her all she needed to know about how to excel from full back, though Charles does not seem to feel the need to view Liverpool’s male players as role models.

‘They are unbelievable players, attacking as well as defensively,’ Charles says of the pair. ‘But of course there are so many other players, too. I take little bits from everyone. At the end of the day, I’m me. I’m not trying to be them.’

Charles does not feel the need to try and copy Liverpool’s male stars in the full-back positions

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