Euro 2025 will not decide Fishlock's Wales future

Wales’ record goal scorer Jess Fishlock says her international future does not depend on whether they qualify for Euro 2025 or not, but adds she would “never say never”.

Fishlock, 37, has previously said this campaign would “probably” be her last before retirement.

But in the build up to a Euro 2025 play-off semi-final double-header against Slovakia, she has told a new BBC documentary series, Iconic: The Rise of the Women in Red, that she does not “want to shut that door”.

Fishlock, who is also Wales’ most capped player, has won trophies in five different countries at club level, but has not played at a major international tournament.

“No, it doesn’t matter whether we qualify or not,” she said.

“When it all ends, if it doesn’t happen I’m not going to be someone who is like, ‘my career was pointless’. It’s not something that will define me and my career.

“There’s so much to our women’s team and women’s football in Wales that the story has been a huge success with or without qualification and I’m mature enough to understand that.

“It’s just that for the football side of my career, it’s just something that I want.

“My career is not something that I’m chasing anymore and it’s a really nice place to be in.”

Fishlock previously contemplated retirement after Wales lost in the World Cup play-off final in 2022, and will be 38 by the time the Euro finals in Switzerland come around.

In this campaign she has been Wales’ key player, reaching 150 caps and scoring her 45th goal to break Helen Ward’s all-time goalscoring record.

Fishlock is an injury doubt for the two-legged semi-final against Slovakia. The first leg is an away trip on Friday, 25 October with the return at Cardiff City Stadium four days later. A final against either Georgia or Republic of Ireland later this year awaits as a reward for victory.

In the final episode of the docuseries to be broadcast on BBC Wales and BBC Sounds on Monday, 21 October, she added: “Look, I’ll never say never.

“I get that all the time with the girls, they’re like, ‘you’ve said this’, and they’re right.

“I have said it because maybe there was a want to retire, but there was a need within me to not and those situations have flipped now.

“I’d never say never, I don’t want to be like a Tom Brady or anything, but I’m definitely leaning for sure towards this being the end."

Fishlock is in the 22nd season of her career and last year married her Seattle Reign team-mate Tziarra King.

“It’s getting harder with club and country and managing it together and obviously I have a beautiful wife, a great relationship, I’m extremely happy and married now and there’s just some other things that are in that [decision-making] process now," she said.

“I’m not a kid anymore now and I know that, but at the same time I’m just really happy and that’s why it’s like, ‘never’, because you never know what I will feel like in eight months’ time.

“I don’t want to shut that door because I know how quickly things change, going home and playing for Wales is so very different for me."

Connecting up with Wales for matches and training camps involves a 10 hour flight for Fishlock from her base 5,000 miles away on America's west coast.

“If I could just fly in for camps and have holidays in between things might be different," she adds.

“It’s not just about 'can you go for another campaign', it’s everything in between that, that’s difficult. Another campaign is another two years of everything in between that and do I want to do that is the question.

“Right now, it’s like I’m leaning towards I don’t want to do that, but like I said, things can change in a heartbeat in football.

“We could go through all this, it could be major heartbreak and I could be stubborn, I know that about myself. We could go through this, and it could be everything I’ve always wanted and I could be like, ‘I’m not going to beat this’.

“And so we’ve got to take each day and each game and each emotion and give it the respect that it needs and go from there really.”

Fishlock started her career at Cardiff City, making her debut at the age of 16.

She made her Wales debut in 2006 and has since gone on to play for clubs in the Netherlands, Australia, Scotland, Germany, France and in the US at her current side Seattle Reign.

A mural of her was painted in July in the Llanrumney area of Cardiff where she grew up and Fishlock says her achievements so far in football have still not sunk in.

“Yeah, I would have laughed at you [if you had said I would have a mural].

“There’s no way, there’s no chance, we’re not going to have that much pedigree.

“People who have lived in Llanrumney for years, people who know our family, people who take their kids down there.

“You don’t realise really and I never thought that would be the reach of my career.

“It was never a thought process that this is what it could be or this is what the end might look like, it was just always about me doing something that I loved and then whilst doing something that I love, fighting for better environments and better treatment and more respect.

“It’s a little bit surreal really.”

The final episode of Iconic: The Rise of the Women in Red will be broadcast on BBC Radio Wales and BBC Sounds at 18:30 on Monday 21 October.