Karen Duggan: While Irish players battle for minutes at club level, Sweden’s stars demand titles

When Eileen Gleeson named her squad for these two Euro 2025 qualifying games against Sweden, it struck me how many of her players are coming in off the back of really positive seasons, lots of them, most importantly, getting plenty of game time with their clubs.

So often we worry about some of our younger players going away too soon and not getting enough minutes. It’s all very well joining a club at a high level, but if you’re sitting on the bench week in, week out, that’s no good to anyone.

But the season just ended was an encouraging one, especially for some of those young players. Jess Ziu was a regular with West Ham in the WSL once she came back from her ACL injury; Jessie Stapleton got a good run of games with Reading when she went there on loan and Izzy Atkinson and Abbie Larkin played their part in Crystal Palace’s promotion from the Championship.

Add in Courtney Brosnan – who, for me, was the best goalkeeper in the WSL this season – and the likes of Leanne Kiernan, scoring a hat-trick for Liverpool in their final game, and Amber Barrett who was banging in the goals in Belgium. There are a lot of good stories in the Irish squad now.

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But then I look at the Swedish squad and that’s when the gulf in standards hits you. We’re talking about being happy with our players getting game time. They’re not content unless they’re winning titles.

You have Fridolina Rolfö winning the Champions League and the Spanish league title with Barcelona. Zecira Musovic, Johanna Rytting Kaneryd and Nathalie Björn winning the WSL with Chelsea. Magdalena Eriksson and Linda Sembrant winning the Bundesliga with Bayern Munich. And so on.

And this, remember, is a Swedish side that only lost the last Olympic final on penalties and reached the World Cup semi-finals last year.

So, just like we did when we played France and England last month, we’re coming up against a much higher ranked team, with a much higher calibre of player. That, then, makes this another daunting task. As we’re learning, the jump from League B to A is huge.

But I think we acquitted ourselves well in that first window against teams of that quality. I was pitch side for the England game and you just see their players are at a different level to where we are. Their touch, they’re never fighting with the ball, they’re all just so comfortable on it. And they don’t make mistakes. That comes from consistently playing at that level. We have girls who are getting there, but it’s going to take time.

But the scorelines in those games – 0-1 and 0-2 – were very respectable, so I think our players will see that as a platform to build from. Defensively, we were reasonably solid, and Eileen has a bit of a selection headache there now because she has good competition for places.

Caitlin Hayes came in late last year, Anna Patten last month, and Aoife Mannion is back. You’ve got Louise Quinn, Diane Caldwell on the bench, and Megan Connolly who has played centre back too. We haven’t had that depth in the past, so that’s a real positive; it gives Eileen something to think about and that’s what you want.

The loss of Niamh Fahey and Heather Payne is big, though. Niamh not just for her ability, but for her leadership too, and Heather because she offers us so much in defence and attack, and gives that defence some respite by the way she chases every ball. I think we’re really going to feel her absence because despite her young age, she has been a mainstay in the Irish team for so long now, and she has an additional robustness after her first season in the WSL. That she won Everton’s Young Player of the Year award shows the impact she had.

Denise O’Sullivan will also be a massive loss too if she’s not fit to play. We don’t have another Denise O’Sullivan, a box-to-box midfielder of that quality. But whatever personnel is available, I would expect much the same approach to these games as the ones against France and England.

As much as we’d love to see free-flowing football, you have to be realistic – it’s not an option against teams of this calibre. Eileen has her head screwed on enough to know that. It’s not a negative, it’s just pragmatic. We’d like to be getting wins, but even a 0-0 at this level would be brilliant.

Ireland play Sweden again in Stockholm next Tuesday and it’s always interesting when teams meet each other twice in quick succession. Players try to get the measure of their direct opponents, and managers try to get the measure of each other as well. It’s a challenge to be the ones who learn most from the first game. I’m sure Eileen will be up until all hours before Tuesday, but she loves that sort of stuff. Her video analysis person will be the one who gets the least amount of sleep.

If we are to get something from either game, I suspect it will be from the second because that opportunity is there to learn from the first. There’ll be a little less pressure on the team, and there’s a chance Sweden will be complacent if they were to win in Dublin. That’s me perhaps using rose tinted glasses because the Swedes, in both games, will be a huge challenge. But you live in hope.