The Big Interview: Chelsea Ashurst

The English-born goalkeeper has made a career for herself in Spain since moving there as a five-year old, including a successful spell at Barcelona. Yet few know her story.

West Yorkshire-born Chelsea Ashurst has made a professional career for herself in Spain. Image: Malaga CF

“I think the English league doesn’t really know where there’s an English goalkeeper playing in Spain,” says Chelsea Ashurst.

Having just been asked if she’s ever had the chance to play in the Women’s Super League, the Wakefield-born goalkeeper is reflecting on the fact not many people know of her career in Spain.

When Toni Duggan left Manchester City for Barcelona in 2017, many were quick to say she was the first English footballer to represent the Catalan giants since Gary Lineker, or at the very least she was the first woman to play for the club.

Neither were true. 32-year-old Ashurst, now of Sporting Huelva, spent two seasons there between 2013 and 2015, picking up two La Liga titles, and has made the country a home for herself since her family decided to move there when she was a child.

“When Toni came that’s when people started to realise she wasn’t the first English girl to play here,” Ashurst laughs.

“It’s normal, I guess. I’ve been here all my life, since I was five years old. But yeah, there is an English goalkeeper in Spain! Maybe it’s because there’s not many eyes on me, on us. The eyes are on Barcelona, Real Madrid, Atletico, Levante. It’s not just me, some of the smaller teams that don’t get a lot of attention have very, very good players.”

While she has been in Spain for over 25 years, her northern routes are unmistakable in her broad Yorkshire accent, one familiar to me given I was born just a few miles from the town Ashurst grew up in.

The Spanish twang which occasionally creeps into her voice mixed with her Yorkshire tones is a weird one to process at first, but it’s a definite reminder of where she comes from and where she was born.

“My mum and dad wanted to come over to Spain with my biggest sister and my brother, so we just came over,” she says with a smile. “They’re all still here. They just wanted the change, so they decided to come out.”

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Ashurst is quick to admit football wasn’t actually her number one sport at school, but now she watches it all the time in Spain, whether that be the Premier League or the Women’s Super League.

Growing up in a rugby region, Ashurst’s two brothers both played the sport so “football wasn’t big for me”, as she puts it.

“Football only really started for me when I came to Spain,” she says. “I moved to a small town in Granada and started playing in school with the boys until I was 12 when they created a girls’ team.

“I wasn’t a goalkeeper. I was a striker. We needed a goalkeeper in our team because we didn’t have one. I said ‘why not?’ I tried it, I liked it and 15 years here I am, still a goalkeeper!”

She adds, “It was difficult when I was young. There wasn’t a girls’ team here, only boys. I played with the boys and it was very difficult. You have the typical people who said girls can’t play with boys or someone shouting to their son ‘that girl can’t do that to you, she’s a girl’. It wasn’t professional at that time, so it was hard at the start. I didn’t know a lot of that world when I went into professional football.