Six years after she pondered retirement, the Norwegian superstar is looking for a third Champions League title as the Catalans prepare to face Chelsea
There has been no better women's player on the planet this season than Caroline Graham Hansen. The two-time Champions League winner has racked up truly insane numbers, 26 goals and 24 assists in 31 Barcelona appearances, and is surely the front-runner for the Ballon d’Or while the Catalans target a first-ever quadruple. But this stage of her illustrious career almost never arrived. At 23 years old, she was ready to quit.
After losing the 2018 Champions League final with Wolfsburg, subbed off at half-time due to injury, Graham Hansen called her family and told them she was done. “I was serious,” she explained. “I was so far down. I was injured again. I couldn't perform at my best level. I didn't have any fun anymore. At that moment, after so many rehabs, I didn't have any motivation to keep getting smashed in the face.”
Fortunately, it wouldn’t come to that and, in the six years since, the injuries have stopped slowing Graham Hansen down, allowing her to play a key role in Barcelona’s development into the best team in Europe, if not the world. As the business end of the season approaches and Saturday’s Champions League semi-final meeting with Chelsea looms, the Catalans boast so many world-class players who can decide a match almost single-handedly. None, though, are as dangerous as Graham Hansen is right now.
GettyGoing again
It’s hard to overstate how much bad luck Graham Hansen endured with injuries in the early stages of her professional career. That it led to her being on the brink of walking away from football while still only 23 perhaps paints the picture better than any words could.
Thankfully, a return to Norway as her season with Wolfsburg came to a close allowed her to reset, refresh and get ready to go again. Mats Moller Daehli, the Norway international who is one of her oldest and closest friends, was also injured that summer, and the two spent time doing some rehab together, which helped.
The influence of Graham Hansen’s family was huge, too. “They supported me, kept me calm and just said, 'Hey, take it easy. We will come back. Don't think so far ahead',” she explained in an interview with GOAL after Barca’s first Champions League triumph. “You can't always win, but it was the way it happened, always being injured. It was not because you weren’t necessarily the best player, or you weren’t performing at your best. I was not performing at my best because I kept being unlucky.
“Of course, that's also part of sport, but you have vacation, you get back and then eventually you find your way again. I did, luckily for me. It's a fun and nice story when you then win the Champions League three years later in the way we did. It makes all the hours you put down really worth it. It's also a motivation to just keep going, no matter what happens.”
AdvertisementGettyReaping the rewards
As Graham Hansen says, powering through those difficult times has certainly paid dividends. She has been one of the best wingers on the planet for most of her career, joining two-time European champions Wolfsburg when she was just 19 years old, but a move to Barcelona has helped elevate her game even further and added new elements to it.
The Catalans were not the dominant power they are today when Graham Hansen first signed in 2019, far from it, and so there were many who questioned her decision to join them from an elite side like Wolfsburg. However, she believed in the project and has played a significant role in its potential being realised, winning 13 trophies in five years, including two Champions League titles.
GettyMaking the difference
That’s despite her style of play not necessarily conforming to Barca’s. The Catalans are renowned for that iconic tiki-taka philosophy, and it is one that Graham Hansen has had the footballing intelligence to understand from day one.
“Her first day, I remember one player told me, 'She is an amazing player'. We were only five minutes in! And doing a very easy exercise,” Barca head coach Jonatan Giraldez told GOAL. "But when the rhythm of the pass, the precision of the pass and the movement before and the timing is so good, when you are coming from another country… It is not so easy for the foreign players. And Caro had it.”
However, it is Graham Hansen’s tendency to, in her own words, “break out” of that which makes her dangerous. “I think I was brought in to bring diversity, to break out of the passing style,” she told GOAL previously. “I'm a very vertical type of player that goes fast in transitions. I can dribble, get out of closed spaces when there's no space to create unbalance in the opposing team.
“When you have a style of play where it's all about controlling the game with passing, you need some players who can break out of that pattern. That's why I'm playing on the wing and I enjoy it so much because I also get put into a lot of situations where I get to contribute with the best parts of my game, too.”
GettyWorld-class
That’s been seen in spades throughout Graham Hansen’s time in Barcelona, but especially this season. Having had some time out with an injury last year, the Norwegian returned last March and ended the campaign in scintillating form to help the Catalans win the league and the Champions League. It is momentum she carried into the current campaign.
In Liga F, Graham Hansen has 17 goals and 16 assists from just 20 appearances, only 16 of them starts. Unsurprisingly, she leads the division for direct goal involvements by some distance. She tops the charts in the Champions League, too, thanks to her five goals and four assists from seven games.
Asked for the secrets behind such numbers, the 29-year-old told : “Having a good team, so I can enjoy myself. I'm very grateful to my team-mates because in the end, football is a team sport, and if your team plays well, it's easier for things to work out for you. Nothing has changed. I think I was playing very well in the other years too, but because people only look at the numbers, they didn't look at it as much. I've scored more goals and people take notice of that.”