Amber Barrett: ‘You’re going up against the likes of Bayern Munich and Wolfsburg, with absolutely world-class players’

Since reluctantly quitting Gaelic football to solely pursue a soccer career, Amber Barrett hasn’t looked back, becoming Women’s National League Player of the Season, top goal scorer three years running, international caps and a stint in Germany for 1 FC Köln amongst the high points.

Those achievements strongly suggest that the correct choice was made, but the Donegal native and her immediate family possess strong ties with their local club and the inter-county scene.

“I was playing GAA since I was five or six years old,” said Barrett when extratime.com caught up with the striker this week.

“I started out with Milford and worked my way up to county football. That’s the highest honour you can get and I was lucky enough to do that since I was 16. It was five or six years at that level before I decided to step away because it was such a big part of my life growing up and that’s why it was such a difficult decision.”

Earning notable personal honours with WNL outfit Peamount United, Barrett has subsequently witnessed a number of advancements as far as the domestic women’s football is concerned.

“Ever since I left Peamount, there’s now more teams in the league and even more applying to get in. Not just the seniors, but the U-19s and U-17s leagues also. There are so many underage teams that long-term it didn’t make any sense to only have seven or eight teams in the top league.

"Those underage national leagues have done very well to keep people interested and to have that stepping stone up to the seniors. The overall standard of players has improved. We’ve always had good players, but unfortunately they had to leave for cross-channel clubs.

"As disappointing as that was for the league, it’s a credit that we have players who are good enough to do that. I definitely think in the last few years it’s taken a big step in the right direction.”

Having stated early on in her football career that she would like to play abroad and test herself regularly against international contemporaries, the young striker did exactly that by signing for German side 1 FC Köln in 2019.

“As much as playing, I think even the introduction to training, from two to three nights a week with Peamount to nine sessions in my first week, which was nearly a month of previous training, was a challenge. That’s no disrespect to Peamount because for a long time Germany was ahead of most other countries, but maybe not so much these days.

"That training intensity, I didn’t think it was going to be as difficult as it was. Then in the games, you’re going up against the likes of Bayern Munich and Wolfsburg, with absolutely world-class players ... You get a rude awakening.

"You think you’ve played at a good level and against good players, but then they don’t just have one, but 15, with four of them who can’t get into the starting XI”

On the international front, with Ireland having missed out on competing in the 2022 UEFA European Women’s Football Championship in England, Barrett feels that a first major international tournament qualification has to be achieved sooner rather than later or risk current momentum being replaced with despondency.

“I think at the minute, we’re in a good place to get to a play-off position from our group for the World Cup. We got a couple of difficult games coming up against Finland and Slovakia, but after those we’ll know where we stand. If you do get into the play-offs, then anything can happen because every game is a cup final.

"It doesn’t matter who you’re up against, even if it’s the best team in the world because you always raise your game for these types of games. If this World Cup qualifying campaign doesn’t happen the way we want it to, I think we have to be looking at the next Euros as a must. We look at the teams we were in and around a few years ago like Austria and now they’ve reached the Euro quarter finals.”

At the time of speaking, Barrett was still tying up a few loose ends before being in a position to officially announce where she’ll be playing club football next after leaving 1 FC Köln at the end of last season.

“I’m still in the middle of trying to finalise a few things. I’m still not sure 100% what’s the best option for me. It’s not a very nice place to be, in a transfer window, because I’ve always had a contract ahead of me. It’s a little bit different and you really, really want people to be ringing you, but it’s not always as simple as that. Hopefully in the next day or two I’ll know 100%, but obviously I can’t say anything right now.”

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— Extratime.com (@ExtratimeNews) July 28, 2022