Alessia Russo celebrates the winning goal that took England to the World Cup final. Photo: AP/Abbie Parr
There is nothing extraordinary about Alessia Russo's introduction to football. Like many of her contemporaries, she was dragged out of her local club after she got bored of watching her older brother play.
“Her brother Giorgio played in the men's team, which I managed. She would show up and ask to borrow a soccer ball, and that's when I first noticed her,” recalls Colin Whitfield, Russo's first coach at Bearstead Football Club in Maidstone. “I spotted her off to the side and she was hitting that ball. I spoke to her father and said, «Look, we have a girls under 10 team that she will be eligible to play next year, playing a year ahead.» That's all. She started playing for the under-10 team when she was eight years old.”
Rousseau, whose paternal grandfather was from Sicily and emigrated to London in the 1950s, showed all the qualities of a notorious striker. With power and range that few her age possessed, in one memorable game for Bearsted, she hit the ball into the top corner from her own half.
Alessia Russo of Bearstead Boys FC
«The pitches were obviously small-sided, 60 yards long and 40 yards wide,» Whitfield explains. «So she could play from the center of midfield and just dominate from there.»
“She was a very positive player. She had fast legs. She didn't have such long legs as she does now, in my time she was shorter, but before she just walked past the players as if they weren't there. She always thought three or four steps ahead of any defender.
«If I left her out of the starting lineup, I knew I could tell her, 'Go and win the game for us.' «. It would invariably happen if she was that talented.”
The Russo was used primarily as a strike submarine during the Lionesses' Euro winning campaign last summer, but ended up ahead of Chloe Kelly in the pecking order at the World Cup. The change in striker order is expected: Rousseau never waited in the shadows.
She only lasted one season at Bearsted before working her way up the ranks, first joining the youth ranks at Charlton and then at » Chelsea, where at the age of 15 she found herself restricted by the English league system. At the time, players could only sign for a senior club at 18, not 16, so Russo, a risk-taker, looked for opportunities elsewhere.
By accepting a scholarship to the University of North Carolina, a respected football institution where England coach Sarina Wigman and Russo's international teammate Lucy Bronze played and studied, she honed her skills in a way that few of her Liones peers did during their formative years. . throw yourself into America's famous college system. Her move across the ocean also served as a wake-up call for the FA, which risked setting a precedent, a drain on young talent.
«She went to America and things like that made all the English clubs say to the FA, 'Look, we can't go on. send our young people to America,” says Emma Hayes, Chelsea manager and Telegraph Sport columnist. “So we had to keep challenging the status quo — we still have to do it now.
“We all had to create the best conditions here so that they could stay in England. And I think that this group has caused so many changes in our English system to go and create an academic league, to move towards better funded academies so that we try not to lose them to America.
Alessia Russo (center) with her parents Mario and Carol received a scholarship to the University of North Carolina at the age of 16. Photo: News Limited/Tim Stewart
In 2020 she returned to England with a degree in sports and exercise. science and seeks to apply her knowledge at Manchester United before bursting into the England senior team, where she is catapulted into the spotlight.
Her 11-minute hat-trick in a 20-0 thrashing of the Lionesses in November 2021 remains the fastest of any England player before she became nationally famous after her outrageous heel strike against Sweden at the Euro last summer. Her string of impressive performances for club and country has led to her long-awaited move to Arsenal ahead of the World Cup, arguably the most talked about move in women's football this summer.
Sarina Wigman talking to Georgia Stanway, Alessia Russo and Lucy Bronze (left to right) at World Cup practice. Photo: Getty Images/Naomi Baker
For Rachel Yankee, the former England and Arsenal striker, Russo is the perfect fit for her former club, which has faltered towards the end of the season. “The way she holds the ball is fantastic,” Yankee says. “At a club like Arsenal you need a scorer, but you also need a player who does more, who plays for the team and Alessia definitely fits that mold. Playing as different managers and in different styles will only make it better.”
Bearstead, meanwhile, is all too happy to cash in on Rousseau's success. The Kent Club nearly closed during the pandemic and would almost certainly have gone broke had it not successfully applied for a £10,000 grant from the National Lottery, which has poured over £50m into the community game over the past 10 years. But the club has grown in other ways as well.
“The number of women's teams has increased, but now we see a lot of girls playing in mixed teams,” says Whitfield. “In some local leagues, there are a lot more girls playing on men's teams, which has never happened before. It was very rare to get a girl to play on the men's team. Now you will see some teams with a 50:50 girls-to-boys ratio.
So, what would he say to his most successful student ahead of the World Cup final, which will undoubtedly be the biggest match of her life? «Forget the stage you're on, Alessia,» he says, as if he's delivering one of his pep talks. «Use your instincts and you're sure to score.»
World Cup Final: England v Spain
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