Neither Janine van Wyk nor Glasgow City would be preparing for a Champions League quarter-final had it not been for brief visits to Denmark earlier in the season. For the South African it was a short spell at Fortuna Hjørring, where a knee injury restricted her appearances and ultimately forced her departure in January after less than five months; for the Scottish side it was the first leg of a last 16 tie against Brøndby, from which they emerged with a 2-0 win.
Two weeks later they lost the home leg by the same scoreline but prevailed on penalties, in the process qualifying for Friday’s match against Wolfsburg and making themselves a significantly more attractive prospect for club-seeking international defenders.
“I wanted to stay in South Africa and play with my team in the National League,” Van Wyk says. “With this pandemic that happened, the situation in South Africa is quite disastrous. We don’t know what’s going to happen to women’s football, when sport will return to our country, and I had to make a decision to try to find a club overseas for me to play. I’m 33 years old and I’m not getting any younger and I can’t just be sitting around waiting for something to happen.
“And during that time I was just scrolling through my social media pages, following all the women’s teams and leagues, and I happened to follow Glasgow City and Laura [Montgomery, the club manager] sent me a direct message straight away asking if I was interested in coming over to Glasgow. I was looking for a team to play for abroad and they were looking for an experienced defender and the pieces of the puzzle just came together.”
Van Wyk certainly has experience: of success at club level with Palace Super Falcons in South Africa, playing in Denmark and for Houston Dash in the US, and with 170 international appearances she is the most capped player, either male or female, in South African history. Glasgow will need all of her nous – and perhaps a miracle or two – if they are to contain a Wolfsburg side whose two ties en route to the quarter-finals were won by an aggregate score of 22-0. “We know that we’re the underdogs in the last eight and the teams we’re going to be facing are giants in European football, so they would come out and probably underestimate us and the quality we bring,” Van Wyk says.
“We’re working extremely hard in training to get the best out of each other, to get as fit as possible, to be able to maintain the level that Wolfsburg will bring. But we’re putting no pressure on ourselves, we’re going to learn as much as we can from this game and the pressure will basically be on Wolfsburg to try and break us down. It’s a one-off game in a neutral venue, anything can happen, football is unpredictable.”
There may be no pressure on her team, but Van Wyk has felt a certain amount of it personally since she arrived in Scotland last month, becoming perhaps the most high-profile foreign signing in the history of the Scottish Women’s Premier League. “I won’t lie, I was a bit nervous when I came over,” she says. “Because I just see myself as a normal person, a normal player, and people were writing headlines about the biggest signing in the world. All I want to do is play, but now I know all eyes are going to be on me, and at training I have to impress my teammates and my coach and make sure I live up to the standards everyone expects of me.
“I can live up to the challenges. I’ve faced challenges since I was six years old and playing football in the garden with the boys, so it’s not that I’ve never been challenged. In the beginning it is a bit nerve-racking but you tend to just grab it and go for it.”
The challenges that face aspiring women footballers in South Africa are such that Van Wyk eventually felt it necessary to set up her own club, JVW, which was formed in 2012 and won promotion to the Women’s National League, South Africa’s top flight, last year.
“When I grew up it was very challenging for me to just play the game that I love,” she says. “So establishing my club was purely because I wanted to give talented, young girls an opportunity to play in a comfortable, friendly environment where they can express their talent. It was really a struggle to get the club up and running, and it was always me who was the coach and player of my own team. I think I learned a lot from that, and how to manage different players. It’s been a long road but I wouldn’t change it for anything.”
Van Wyk sees her long-term future back at her club on the outskirts of Johannesburg, bringing through a new generation of South African talent. First, though, she has a few more ambitions to realise on the pitch.
“I’m super excited to compete in the Champions League,” she says. “It was always something I wanted to achieve, so I’m super stoked about it. I’ve played in the World Cup, I’ve played in the Olympic Games, in the African Cup of Nations for Women and now another major tournament in the Champions League. It’s a real accomplishment for me just to play in this game.”
