Chloe Mustaki has not fully accustomed to the reality that in just three days she will walk out on the pitch at sold-out Stadium Australia as a member of the first Republic of Ireland squad to feature in a Women’s World Cup.
The 27-year-old’s extraordinary journey to this point has been down a road rife with obstacles, from her cancer diagnosis at the age of 19 to a devastating anterior cruciate ligament injury in 2020 and the lonely Covid-19 lockdown recovery that followed.
But when the Republic’s plane touched down in Australia it all began to crystallise for Bristol City defender Mustaki, who hopes she can tune out the noise of over 80,000 majority-home supporters expected to attend her side’s July 20 opener against World Cup co-hosts the Matildas.
“I don’t think I have an idea of how insane it is going to be,” she admitted during a training session at Brisbane’s Meakin Park.
“I am trying not to think about it too much, trying just to concentrate on the football. At the end of the day, when you walk onto the pitch, everything around you just fades away.
“So, if we can just concentrate and focus and stay connected on the game, whoever is playing on that pitch, hopefully we can come out with the result.
“It will be surreal, and we won’t really believe it until we see it, because it is something that only (captain) Katie (McCabe) and a few others have experienced and we might never experience it again, that amount of people, so we have to savour it.”
Skipper McCabe, who plays her club football with Arsenal, has played big games at major venues like the FA Cup final at Wembley and a Champions League semi-final at the 60,704-seat Emirates, which the Gunners sold out for the first time in May.
It will be surreal, and we won’t really believe it until we see it, because it is something that only (captain) Katie (McCabe) and a few others have experienced and we might never experience it again, that amount of people, so we have to savour it
Chloe Mustaki
Mustaki, on the other hand, reckons the 12,123 who attended the Republic’s World Cup qualifier against Sweden in Gothenburg was the largest crowd to ever watch her play.
She was born in Ohio, USA, but spent most of her youth in Cabinteely, and previously captained the Republic’s Under-19 team that reached the semi-finals of the 2014 European Championship in Norway – where she experienced signs of what would turn out to be Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, a type of blood cancer.
Mustaki completed treatment in 2015, and has previously spoken about how that experience shifted her perspective and helped her get through the devastating ACL injury she sustained in training five years later.
Though she was first called up to Republic’s senior squad that same year, rehabilitating the injury meant it took two more before she finally made her senior international debut against Russia in the 2022 Pinatar Cup.
Mustaki took a huge risk last summer, quitting a comfortable job to become a full-time professional footballer when she signed with Bristol City. It paid off when the Robins earned promotion to the Women’s Super League and she signed a new two-year deal in June.
That dream fulfilled, another is now on the horizon as Mustaki’s side, ranked number 22 in the world, prepare to face two of FIFA’s top-10 nations in Group B, Australia and Canada alongside Nigeria, with the two best finishers advancing to the knockout stage.
She said: “Of course, it is in their home nation, they will have a massive support there and they will have prepared very well for us. It will be a battle but we will be ready for it and we love being the underdogs.”