‘My goal was to be best in the world – I am getting closer’
Fresh from becoming the most expensive player in the women’s game, new Chelsea forward Pernille Harder tells Katie Whyatt the move to England is ‘just perfect’ and will help realise her ambitions
Aged 10, Pernille Harder, inspired by her elder sister Louise’s passion for writing, penned an essay. “I wrote how my life would be 10 years later: I was the best in the world, a professional footballer in Germany. I knew what my dreams were.” She awarded herself a grade A.
She chuckles at the memory. It is a fitting anecdote, representative of the confluence of factors – her admiration for her older sister, also a keen footballer, as well as her unshakeable self-belief – that have put her among the world’s most renowned female players. She will not call herself the best just yet, merely saying that she is “getting closer every season”, but she is “sure it will happen at some point”.
In the interim Harder is a bona fide superstar. Her move to Chelsea from Wolfsburg, announced on Tuesday, made her the most expensive female footballer in history and the latest high-profile arrival to the Women’s Super League. “The English league has developed a lot over the past years, and, in this moment, might be the strongest in Europe – or maybe the world,” Harder says. “Of course
I want to be in that league. This move is just perfect for me.”
The goals alone, 103 of them in 113 Wolfsburg matches, justify a price tag thought to be in the region of £250,000, and she has scored so many that, she confesses, she cannot remember all of them.
Harder, 27, smiles into her laptop from the London home she now shares with her partner and Chelsea team-mate, Magdalena Eriksson. This is the first time this week she has paused for breath. On Sunday she played against Lyon in the Champions League final – Lyon marched to their fifth successive European crown – in San Sebastian, Spain. Then she flew to Germany to clear her apartment. She arrived in England on Tuesday morning, and was unveiled at Stamford Bridge at 5pm.
“It has been going fast this week,” she says, “but for me, the thing is being present.” She watched Chelsea’s Community Shield win knowing she would be joining them in three days’ time, and told her former team-mates of her departure before the Champions League restarted.
Did she think about the final being her last game for Wolfsburg, where she has spent the past four seasons? Her voice goes higher, as if just realising. “No, I didn’t. I just had this big game in front of me. And after, I didn’t really understand it either, that it was my last game. Because everything went so fast.” Harder and her manager, Emma Hayes, are united in their desire for the trophy Lyon have repeatedly denied them. The Champions League is the only thing Hayes has yet to win; Harder has two runners-up medals but no cigar.
Can they, to borrow Sir Alex Ferguson’s phrase, knock Lyon off their perch? “I believe so,” Harder says. “The goal is that we should be the team that can end their winning streak.” She asks me if I have ever heard Hayes speak.
“You get motivated when you listen to her. I like that she dares to say, ‘Yeah, we want to win the Champions League. We want to be the best club in Europe.’ I said, ‘Yes, I want that, too.’ If the coach was like,” she drops her shoulders, her face a mask of indifference, “‘Maybe’, I’d be, ‘Do you really believe in the team?’ She really believes we are good enough to win the Champions League.”
Chelsea first established contact at the start of the year but through Eriksson Harder was already well-acquainted with the WSL champions. They lived out their long-distance relationship on Facetime, leaving it rolling as they pottered about their apartments, and Eriksson would gush about the club she joined from Linkopings in 2017. “[She would say] that it’s so professional, that they have everything,” Harder says.
“Nutrition, menstruation, your physique – they really take care of the players and give them the package to develop. So I knew a lot. They didn’t have to say anything, actually. I knew I wanted to join.”
Harder’s parents were keen footballers – her mother Annie a centre-back, her father a midfielder – in her hometown of Ikast, Denmark. “My mum was my coach for the local girls’ team until I was 13,” Harder says. “It was natural my mum was the coach because we were a football family. She loved to do it. She was good at it, has a good personality to take care of young kids. She could be relaxed and strict.”
Harder’s trophies and medals reside in her bedroom at her parents’ home. The young Harder was a prolific, snake-hipped forward with whippet-like pace, habitually watching Youtube clips of Marta, widely considered the greatest female player of all time. As young as five, Harder’s natural talent was evident and she outpaced and out-thought her peers. “When I was little, I dribbled past lots of players and then put the ball in the goal,” she grins, undulating her right arm in illustration.
Harder’s sister “could have been professional” but chose university instead. Shortly after Pernille, 16, was scouted for the Denmark national team. “I was super
nervous. I was like, ‘Oh, my God. I can’t believe I’m doing this’. I was really shy when we were not on the field. Didn’t dare say anything. I was maybe five years younger than the youngest girl. But on the pitch, I didn’t think about where I was.”
She marked her debut with a hat-trick that betrayed no inhibitions, and her playing style is similarly instinctive. “You think about what you have to do to get to the space where the ball will come, but the thing is that you don’t think too much in the moment,” she says. “When the ball is coming, just shoot.”
Her relationship with the Danish federation, the DBU, has not always been so harmonious and in September 2017 she uploaded a video to Instagram requesting that players refuse to represent the national team. Female players wanted increased investment, better salaries, bonuses, improved travel conditions, more off-field staff. “We knew that we deserved better because it was not so good at that point, and we all agreed – everyone – to fight for something good that we deserved,” Harder says.
The dispute escalated to the point where Denmark refused to play a World Cup qualifier against Sweden. Consequently, they needed to win two play-offs to stand any chance of reaching France 2019. They fell short. “Obviously, that was not cool, and we wished – we thought – that it didn’t want to go that far. That was nothing we wanted from the beginning. We thought we would fix the agreement before, but sadly the federation was not so cooperative at that point.”
She does not see the World Cup as a necessary sacrifice. Rather, it saddens her that she had to make the choice at all. “When I look at how much has happened as a result of the conflict, I think it was worth it. But then again I don’t want to miss out anything in the future like that. But I think everyone got a lesson out of this conflict, especially the federation. The agreement in general is much better, more professional. It’s still not 100 per cent equal with the men’s, but that’s where we are getting. The mindset of the federation is much better. We have the same goal and we’re working together, and that’s maybe the most important thing.
“Every year, we should try to get closer to equality in the federation. The fact that the federation wants this is important – that we go together, in the same direction, [rather] than fighting to get equality.”
Harder speaks four languages but the tattoo on her right wrist is in English: “Love My Way”. What does it mean? “The way I see the world and want to make it better, my way in my football, the choices I’ve made,” she says. “I love my way of doing things.”
And so, it seems, do Chelsea.
‘I like that Emma Hayes dares to say we want to win the Champions League – we want to be the best club in Europe’
‘We should try to get closer to equality in the Danish federation, go in the same direction rather than fighting’