It's the reward for everything
Monday, March 20, 2023
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Valentina Giacinti on being a new striker in a Roma team that has made it to the knockout stage of the Women’s Champions League for the first time.
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Roma’s women’s team was only formed in 2018; five years later they are in the quarter-finals of the Women’s Champions league for this first time. They’re also the only new face in the last eight. How did that happen? Valentina Giacinti has a theory.
“We tackle challenges using our experience,” she says. “Elisa Bartoli is a captain with whom we resonate, but our team is made up of many former captains. I thought about this the other day when Vicky Losada arrived, a former captain of Barça. There’s Carina Wenninger, former Bayern captain, there’s me from Milan, Linus [Elena Linari], Andressa Alves… all former captains.”
Giacinti also leads the way on netting goals: she’s been Serie A top scorer on three occasions and in this, her debut season in the Women’s Champions League (and with Roma), she’s already notched up four strikes. Her team qualified second behind Wolfsburg in Group B, and it’s against the same side that she scored her “favourite and most important goal”. She’s referring to a laser-guided left-footed strike into the bottom corner in Roma’s Matchday 3 game against the two-times winners, which “gave us the awareness that we are a strong team”.
They will need to be when the quarter-finals get started this week, but Giacinti will look to add to her tally by channelling the talents of her favourite player growing up. “I always liked Bobo Vieri,” she says of the man whose actual Christian name is Christian. “I didn’t care which team – I was interested in him because I exulted in his strength, his urge to score a goal.”
She’ll also have the thrill of playing in a competition that means so much to her on a personal level.
“You work the whole week – and maybe not only for weeks but for years, all the time wishing to take part. So when you find yourself there, with the music, you get all the energy you need – and I don’t know where it comes from. You want to run three times faster, you want to score a goal, because playing in those matches is the reward for everything.”
This article originally appeared in the Champions Journal - Issue 14.