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Damaris Egurrola (22) is not a talking point, but when the midfielder speaks of her love for the ball, she is unstoppable. She is especially grateful, she says. Grateful that she plays for a top club like Olympique Lyon. Grateful that she can represent the Netherlands, the country where her mother was born and where a large part of her family still lives. On Saturday evening, Egurrola plays against Paris Saint-Germain in Paris in the return of the semi-finals of the Champions League. Lyon defends a 3-2 lead.

In April, she made her debut in the World Cup qualifier against Cyprus in Groningen, where she often spent her summer vacations as a child. About forty relatives and friends were in the stands. Her parents had come over from Bilbao. “They were crying,” says Egurrola. “That made me emotional. My parents are a great support. Like me, they have been waiting a long time for that moment.”

Last summer, Egurrola was approached by national coach Mark Parsons. With Lyon, she played a match in the United States against his former employer Portland Thorns (he still had a job share at the time). “It was a first acquaintance,” she says. “After that, we talked more often about the possibility of playing for Orange.”

His ideas about the team and its possible role in it appealed to her. What also helped is that Daniëlle van de Donk, her teammate at Lyon, was very enthusiastic: how great would it be to play for the same club and the same country. “In September I decided that I wanted to play for the Netherlands,” says Egurrola. “At that time, only some practical matters had to be arranged at FIFA.”

Champions League Returns semi-finals

The returns of the semi-finals in the Women’s Champions League will be played on Saturday evening. Seven-time winner Olympique Lyon won in the first game at home against Paris Saint-Germain (3-2). The Dutch internationals Damaris Egurrola and Daniëlle van de Donk are expected to participate in Olympique.

In the other semi-final FC Barcelona won 5-1 against VfL Wolfsburg. The Dutch players Jill Roord, Dominique Janssen, Joëlle Smits and Shanice van de Sanden are under contract at the German club. At Barcelona attacker Lieke Martens was missing, she will not be there on Saturday either. Martens suffered a hamstring injury during her rehabilitation. The return seems like a formality; Wolfsburg coach Tommy Stroot already congratulated Barcelona on reaching the final battle.

The final of the Champions League is on May 21 in Turin.

It was not obvious that she would choose the Dutch national team. Egurrola was born in Florida and moved to the Basque Country when she was six, where her father is from. She has played in all the Spanish youth teams – from Under 16 to Under 20 – and seemed to have a good chance of making it to the national team. Until something unexpected happened. Something she doesn’t like to be reminded of.

Egurrola says she played her last game for the Under 20s when she was visited by Jorge Vilda, the senior national team coach during halftime. “I don’t like you as a player,” he said. I don’t like your game. And that while I was in the middle of an important game.”

It touched her, she says. Why was this man—not even her coach—behaving so disrespectfully? After all those final tournaments she’d played for her country. “I was a young woman. He was trying to hurt me, that’s how I feel. I still don’t know what got into him.”

She would play one game in the Spanish national team, a friendly against Cameroon. Painful, she says, because many of her Under-20 teammates moved on. “The years ticked away. I didn’t feel like I was getting a fair chance.”

Perhaps that’s why it did her so well that Parsons immediately expressed his confidence in her. “He wanted me to be there and I needed that,” she says. She calls the national coach a ‘people person’. Caring and attentive. “In my first days with Oranje he constantly asked how I was feeling, whether I was enjoying myself, whether I could settle in well in the group. That gave me confidence, also on the field.”

In her second game for the Orange squad, an exhibition game against South Africa, she scored twice: once with a header and once with a goal in the rebound in stoppage time. “It doesn’t happen often that I score,” she grins. “Scoring is one of the things I work on at my club. Who knows, that could yield a lot in the future.”

No vistas

Despite the setbacks she faced as a youth international, Egurrola has developed rapidly. She says that she played football with older boys in Spain until she was thirteen. For five years she was the only girl; There were no girls’ teams in the area of ​​her hometown Guernica. “That has shaped me as a person and as a player. Boys are stronger and faster. I had to constantly adapt.”

For five years she played for Athletic Club in Bilbao. When Everton checked in, she thought it was time to leave. She would only play in England for four months, because then the French superpower Olympique Lyon began to attract her. It is true, says Egurrola, that the French paid a ton for her, that amount was included in a clause in her contract. “There are only two players for whom they paid more.”

Egurrola is not fond of vistas. She lives from day to day. Olympique Lyon likes her. She hopes to win the Champions League this year. And if possible, the European Championship with Orange next summer. “We don’t have a flawless team,” she admits, “but we have time to work on things. Look what we have to offer: veterans such as Stefanie van der Gragt and Merel van Dongen, great talents such as Esmee Brugts. Why shouldn’t we succeed?”

She hopes to speak Dutch fluently when the European Championship starts in July, says Egurrola, who already speaks Spanish, Basque, English and French. She follows an online language course and forbids her Dutch family to text or call her in English. Maybe it’s because of all those beautiful childhood memories, but she really feels at home in the Netherlands.

Damaris Berta Egurrola Wienke (22) was born in Florida, America, where she mainly remembers the long, wide streets. Her father earned his money with pelota, a ball game that resembles the Frisian bowling. Her Dutch mother worked in Mexico for a while and then settled in the US.

When she was six, the family moved to the Spanish Basque Country. Egurrola went on to play in Athletic Bilbao’s youth. She says that she plays with number 13, because her father wore the same number in his sport.

She made her debut as a sixteen-year-old in the first team of Athletic Bilbao, which that year finished first in the Spanish Eredivisie. She caught the eye and was acquired by Everton in 2020. She would only play there for four months; Olympique Lyon paid 100,000 euros for her, a high amount at the time.

At the beginning of this month, Egurrola made her debut for the Dutch national team in an international match against Cyprus in Groningen, the city where she played soccer with her cousins ​​during the summer holidays as a child.