Player: Laura Bassett
Club: Notts County
Laura Bassett had one of the most eventful season imaginable in 2015, but for all the wrong reasons. The 32-year-old from Bulkington was a key figure in the rise of the England Women’s Football Team, their near fairy tail World Cup campaign moving them from not being worthy of the back page, to front page headliners.
However, the fantasy was brought back to reality with the largest of thuds, and this was felt harder by no one than it was by Bassett. As, on a beautiful sunny day in Edmonton, with the score poised at 1-1 in injury time, Nahomi Kawasumi whipped in a teasing ball. Bassett, left exposed, could only fling out a leg, fall to the floor, and watch, as the ball sailed, in near slow motion into the underside of the bar, and in.
She became the latest face added to a long line of English football heartbreak at major tournaments. And yet, the fact that her misery was national misery, showed how far the women’s game had come in her, and her England team mates, 3 week spell in the sun.
And for the six games Bassett featured in during the tournament, the centre half excelled, as she has for Birmingham, Arsenal and Chelsea during her career to date. She’s the model professional on and off the field, known by her team mates for her sensible, down to earth, attitude.
She followed up her World Cup with a red card in the Continental Cup final, and a runners up medal in the FA Cup, so close yet so far it would seem.
Yet Bassett will be expected to lead from the back for Notts County in the 2016 WSL season, and a player of her calibre is capable of making even the most meagre defences solid enough to compete.
Whether she can get out of the mini rut she finds herself in, and finally get her hands on some silverware, remains to be seen.
