By scoring a hat-trick, the midfielder illuminated Les Bleues’ first match at Euro 2022 with her talent, triumphantly won against Italy (5-1) on Sunday.
A point-blank shot after a bad dismissal from the opposing defense, a face-to-face victory by eliminating the goalkeeper with a hook and a cross half-volley with the right foot. All in the space of forty-five minutes, the first at Euro 2022 for the French women’s team, impressive winner of Italy (5-1), Sunday evening in Rotherham, England. Suffice to say that Grace Geyoro did not miss her entry into the competition.
Scorer, the number 8 also shone in recovery as well as in the orientation of the game. And she broke a record: before her, never a player had scored a hat-trick in the first half of a match of the euro.
And yet: the 25-year-old midfielder, who plays for Paris-Saint-Germain, almost missed the start of the tournament. We left her in tears on June 21 on the lawn of the Clairefontaine training center. That day, she had injured her knee while stepping on the ball and feared the worst.
But the medical examinations carried out in the process had proven to be reassuring, the small sprain diagnosed in Grace Geyoro having finally kept her away from the pitch for only ten days. Absent during the two friendly preparation matches against Cameroon and Vietnam, the person concerned was able, against all odds, to be lined up against Italy. With the success that we know. “She needs to get hurt more often!” had fun the coach of the Blue, Corinne Deacon, at the end of the meeting.
Essential in blue like in Paris
Pillar of the midfield of the France team, with which she celebrated her 50th selection this Sunday (for 14 goals in total), Grace Geyoro is also essential in the eleven of PSG, which finished second in the French championship this season, behind the inevitable Olympique Lyonnais.
The native of the Democratic Republic of Congo, who joined Orleans with her family at the age of 2, has worn the red and blue jersey of the capital’s club since 2012. In Paris, she went through all the youth groups before joining the first team, during the 2014-2015 season, and asserting itself as one of the great promises of French women’s football. To the point of receiving, in 2017, the trophy rewarding the “best hope” of the first national division.
Now captain of PSG, the midfielder is one of the centerpieces of her team, the only one able to compete with Lyon’s hegemony in France. With her teammates Marie-Antoinette Katoto or Kadidiatou Diani, also selected for the France team, in 2021 she won the first title of French champion in the history of PSG women’s version. Last spring, the 1.69m right-hander also climbed to the semi-finals of the Champions League, where the Parisiennes fell against… Lyon, in front of a large audience like never before – some 43,000 spectators.
“We will have to reproduce all that”
What give a new notoriety to the young woman, who welcomes it. “Playing football and being on television gives us a certain role. The little girls who play football in a club recognize themselves in us […]. We work hard for that.” came up in an interview with World Eleven, at the end of June, the one who does not hesitate to present herself as “an inspiring woman” for the young generation of football fans.
And plans, moreover, to interrupt her career one day because of a pregnancy. Others have done it before her, such as Lyonnaise Amel Majri, who last week became the first player of the French team in activity to give birth during her career. “Obviously, I want to be a mother, to be a mother at some point. It’s one of my dreams. At some point in my career, I may make a decision based on that dream.” explains the Orleans woman.
In the meantime, Grace Geyoro is determined to win her first success with Les Bleues, like a team that has never finished on the podium in a major international competition. At the 2019 World Cup, which France was playing at home, the midfielder had only played eighteen short minutes. A bad memory that she is determined to erase thanks to the Euro in England. “It is sure that if we had been told that we would start like this, we would not have believed it. We start strong. But we will have to reproduce all that, warned the midfielder, Sunday evening, following the match against Italy. We ask for nothing less.