GLASGOW City and Scotland midfielder Hayley Lauder admits she and her team-mates have been amazed by the level of consistency shown by 16-year-old schoolgirl Carly Girasoli since she broke into the first team in May.
The central defender, who is a fifth year pupil at Lourdes Secondary, scored on her first start against Rangers, having made her debut as a substitute against Aberdeen last year when she was only 15. She had to get special dispensation from her school to make the trip to Cyprus for the first leg of the Champions League last-32 tie against Somatio Barcelona a fortnight ago.
Girasoli will also have tomorrow (Thursday) to prepare for the evening's televised home leg at Petershill Park. Should the Scottish champions, who won the away game 2-0, close the tie out, there will be the round of 16 – potentially against one of the top clubs in Europe – to look forward to in October.
“Carly has been brilliant,” Lauder said. “I don't think anybody expected this level from her so consistently. I definitely didn't.
“She had two or three top games when she came in and you're thinking – right, maybe next week she's going to have a shocker. But it's not happened and for a 16-year-old to play so well in the heart of defence in the Champions League is amazing to be honest.”
The player herself appears to be taking it all in her stride. Encouraged by her father and brother, she played football with boys from an early age at Harmony Row – the club where Sir Alex Ferguson kicked off his career.
She was then at Celtic's girls academy for eight years before joining Glasgow City last year. “I moved because City train four nights a week and I'm trying to better myself,” the teenager pointed out. “I want to be a professional player one day – that's my aim.”
Girasoli is one of three school pupils – Karsey McGlinchey and Jenna Clark being the others – in City's Champions League squad. All three had to take homework to Cyprus for the away leg, which was played in 33 degree heat at Limassol's Tsirion Stadium.
“I did some of it on the plane and some at the hotel,” Girasoli reported. “Back at the school they make sure I'm not slacking off!”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here