Manchester Metropolis striker Khadija Shaw says her facet are properly ready because the Cityzens journey to Stockholm to face Hammarby within the UEFA Girls’s Champions League on Thursday night.
Matchday 4 of the Champions League arrives with added motivation for Metropolis, as a win or a draw towards Hammarby might be sufficient to safe them a spot within the quarter-finals.
Star striker Shaw was agency in her perception that the staff’s “strategy to each sport is similar” regardless of the stakes, including “we wish to win each sport”.
Metropolis got here away with a 2-0 victory over Hammarby on the Joie Stadium final week, because of objectives from Laura Blindkilde Brown and Aoba Fujino.
Shaw mirrored on the bodily battle that Hammarby imposed on her on the prime of the pitch, noting “for the kind of participant I’m, I count on these challenges and people battles”.
“I take pleasure in them to be honest,” she added. “I feel for me, I simply attempt to do the most effective that I can on the prime finish of the pitch to assist the staff. In the event that they [Hammarby] are specializing in me for these sort of causes, then different gamers could also be free and open in several positions. On the finish of the day, it should profit the staff.”
Following the unbelievable travelling help from the Hammarby followers final week to England, 21,000 tickets have been offered for the upcoming sport at Tele2 Area in Stockholm.
“For us as a bunch, we have been in a number of totally different positions the place we’re enjoying in entrance of huge crowds,” Shaw admitted. “We now have that have, and I feel we’re form of used to it. It is their house, it should be totally different in fact, however I feel we have now the standard and expertise in our group to deal with these sort of conditions.”
“Even the final sport that we performed, they introduced the gang and we have been speaking about it amongst ourselves that the subsequent week goes to be loopy. However we have been on this place earlier than and we’re simply going to go on the market and attempt to do what we at all times do, which is get the job achieved”.
Metropolis are again on the European stage after failing to qualify for the Champions League final season following a fourth-place end within the 2022/23 Girls’s Tremendous League (WSL) marketing campaign.
The facet at present occupy the highest spot of their group standings, having crushed reigning Champions Barcelona 2-0 on matchday one. Regardless of the optimistic begin, Shaw famous the problem of the match is in it is unpredictability.
“What we takeaway from these video games is that we face various kinds of model of play,” Shaw defined. “Within the league, we all know what to anticipate as a result of we watch these groups and we see these video games being performed. These video games, it’s important to be extra detailed in the place you wish to damage them and the place they may very well be harmful. It is unpredictable extra so.”