Exactly when is unclear, but at some point during the training session, Ana-Maria Crnogorčević hit her boiling point. The Barcelona star had had enough. So she marched over to manager Jonatan Giráldez and delivered him the ultimatum.
“She told him, don’t put them two on the same team again,” Keira Walsh recalls while speaking at a McDonald’s Fun Football session in Rochdale to celebrate the opening of sessions in the Lionesses’ hometowns during the FIFA Women’s World Cup. “And since then, we’ve never played in training together.”
The slightest glint of mischief in Walsh’s smile threatens to bely the otherwise straight-talking walk down memory lane. We’re chatting about her relationship with Spanish midfielder Patri Guijarro and, more pressingly, how that relationship over the course of a single season has blossomed into the type of terrifying midfield synergy upon which Barcelona dynasties are forged, and Walsh blossoming into one of the greatest players in Europe.
