Wales' greatest female footballer Fishlock achieves career dream

Jess Fishlock has 162 caps and 47 goals for Wales

When it comes to Welsh women's football, there is no question that Jess Fishlock is the greatest of all time.

Debates would rage over the greatest men's player. It is easy to make the case for John Charles or Gareth Bale but perhaps you preferred Cliff Jones or Ian Rush - or maybe you were a Neville Southall enthusiast.

However, any conversation over Wales' greatest female footballer would be a short one.

Fishlock has won it all at club level, lifting league title trophies in six different countries, twice winning the Champions League, and she has also starred in the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) for Seattle Reign over a prolonged period, winning the NWSL most valuable player award in 2022.

Yet despite clocking up more air miles as a player than many pilots, Fishlock has always remained available for her country, having represented Wales 162 times since her debut in Switzerland in 2006.

Fishlock has been there for Wales for 19 years, always setting the standards, always trying with all her heart to drag Wales on to football's biggest stage.

Sometimes, getting closer to a dream you cannot obtain makes things harder. So it was for Fishlock and for Wales. Three successive near misses in qualifying for major finals.

It seemed highly possible, probable even, that Fishlock would join the list of the greatest players never to play at a major international tournament, a list already brimming with Welsh players such as Gary Speed, Ryan Giggs, Rush and Southall.

However, after a glittering club career, Fishlock, now 38 and one of the greatest female footballers in history, will finally play international football on the biggest stage.

The dream is to become a reality for a trailblazer of women's football who has represented Wales with distinction for more than two decades, smashing records and raising her team-mates, as she has done throughout her trophy-laden club career.

"You don't play for this long unless it means so much to you," Fishlock told BBC Sport Wales.

"I don't think I can put into words how much playing for Wales means to me.

"We have had some times when we should have qualified for a major tournament but we didn't.

"A big narrative around my entire career internationally has been, 'Can I get to a major tournament? Can we get to a major tournament?' We've been so close so many times.

"When you want to achieve something and you get to do it with some of your very closest friends, there's really no comparison to that feeling."

Born to play for Wales

Fishlock's journey to professional football would be a familiar one, if at the time a pathway had existed for a football-mad girl from Cardiff to play the game professionally.

"She was a very little girl who grew up in Llanrumney just kicking a ball about with her brothers in the garden. That is where it all started," brother James recalls.

Her love for football developed further at a soccer camp in Cardiff during the summer holidays.

"My older sister wanted to go to the camp and my mum said for me to go along with her," Fishlock recalls.

"From that moment, that was what I wanted to do."

"Jess would be up and she would want to be in the garden, she'd be over here, over there, wouldn't matter if it was a mud pile, Jess would be out in it," Fishlock's mother Sharon remembers.

When Fishlock wasn't playing football, she was dreaming about it.

"Jessica was the one who used to go to bed with a football, she was dedicated from an early stage," her father Kevyn said.

With her talent increasingly clear, Cardiff City Ladies fast-tracked Fishlock, who joined the club aged seven, making her first team debut at 15.

"When she was a 14-year old girl she used to say she wanted to be a professional footballer and I used to mock her, as older sisters do, because there was no such thing as a female professional footballer at that time," sister Kathyrn says.

Fishlock's Wales career began when she was an amateur, before a move to the Netherlands to play for AZ Alkmaar in 2008, becoming the first overseas player in the Eredivisie.

Back-to-back titles followed but it was far from easy for a young woman who had never been away from her family.

"She went to AZ Alkmaar and when she wasn't playing, she was washing dishes in the stadium," Kathryn added.

"The things she's had to do to reach where she has got to, you can't even put it into words, how hard she has worked to create and carve out this life that she has."

Success everywhere… except with Wales

Fishlock has won it all in her career, playing across the world to achieve her ambitions.

In 2011, she swapped the Netherlands for Bristol, helping them to an FA Cup final appearance and ending her second season with the club as the Women's Super League's players' player of the season.

Fishlock then joined Melbourne Victory in Australia, leading the team to two Grand Finals, including the club's first title in 2013, with Fishlock named player of the match in the final.

Since joining Seattle in 2013, Fishlock has helped Reign to three NWSL Shield titles, as well as winning honours across the world during loan moves when the NWSL has been out of competition.

Fishlock won the Scottish title with Glasgow in 2014, the German league and Champions League with Frankfurt in 2015, before again winning the Australian league in 2016, 2017 and 2018 with Melbourne City.

In 2019, Fishlock helped Lyon win both the first division title and the Champions League, meaning she won league titles for seven successive seasons.

"As a football fan, I think she is the best player I have ever seen play the game," her brother James says.

The constant for Fishlock at club level has been her semi-permanent home for over a decade, Seattle, the place where she met her now wife, ex-team-mate Tziarra King.

Fishlock and King were married in 2023 and LGBTQ+ advocacy has always been a big priority for Fishlock, who says she was bullied at school because of her sexuality.

Fishlock was awarded an MBE in 2018 for services to women's football and the LGBT community, while she was honoured with a Fellowship of Aberystwyth University in 2024.

Only last week, a mural of Fishlock was unveiled on a pitch in Splott (Cardiff).

"You are proud, proud of her for achieving what she's achieved - nobody else has done it. I'm more proud that she's now able to be her true authentic self no matter where she is," sister Francesca says. "You can't really ask for more."

However, while Fishlock should be at national treasure status, former Wales captain and UEFA executive committee member Laura McAllister says she has been celebrated less than she deserves.

"I've tested this with my friends who are football fans and not all of them know who Jess Fishlock is and that tells you a lot about the invisibility of the women's game for the past two decades," she said.

The dream becomes a reality

Fishlock's desire to compete at the top with Wales has seemed like less of a fantasy in the past decade with increased spending from the Football Association of Wales leading to steady progress for the international side.

Twice under manager Jayne Ludlow they almost qualified - first for a World Cup and then for a European Championship. The latter disappointment, when Wales missed out to Northern Ireland on away goals scored, despite an identical points tally and a vastly superior goal difference, still hurts.

It was a similar story in 2022 - Wales beaten in a World Cup play-off final in (again) Switzerland, losing 2-1 to the Swiss in the final seconds of extra time, with a penalty shootout looming.

At each failure, Fishlock has considered, often publicly, retiring from international football.

"After Switzerland I didn't know what to do. Can I do two more years? Can I deal with any more heartache? It took a long time to get over that defeat, it was a bit soul-destroying to be honest."

Yet she continued, never stopped chasing the dream and eventually, it came to fruition.

Wales won their Nations League B Group and qualified for the Euro 2025 play-offs, drawing Slovakia in the semi-finals.

Disaster struck with Fishlock sidelined for a month leading into the match with a calf injury, fit enough only to start as a sub in the away leg. With Wales 2-0 down and facing a crisis, Fishlock entered the fray and created a goal for Ffion Morgan.

It was Fishlock - of course - who scored the goal that levelled the tie in Cardiff, playing 120 minutes as Wales eventually triumphed 2-0, with Fishlock creating Ceri Holland's injury-time winner.

Fishlock also provided the assist for Lily Woodham in the first leg of the play-off final as Wales drew 1-1 with the Republic of Ireland, before the dramatic second leg in Dublin when a 2-1 Welsh win saw them finally make history and qualify for a major tournament for the first time.

After the match Fishlock told the pitchside BBC reporter that it was "the proudest moment," of her career.

With the benefit of hindsight, another emotion has been added to the euphoria. A feeling of relief.

"There was a big element of, you know, oh my god, finally," Fishlock said.

"Finally this has happened. And there was relief, which I wasn't expecting. Maybe I just hadn't realised how kind of big it had been weighing on me for all these years until that moment. And so there was obviously joy and euphoria but there was also relief for me specifically.

"I can't believe that we have done it."

Finally the greatest female footballer Wales has ever produced will represent her country on the biggest stage.

The dream has become reality.