Man City's Tessa Wullaert: 'There are no professional women’s clubs in Belgium - I had to make a choice to leave everything'

Tessa Wullaert of Manchester City breaks past Hayley Ladd of Birmingham City
Manchester City's Tessa Wullaert previously balanced playing football with studying and working as a tour guide Credit: Action Plus

Before she became Belgium’s all-time leading goalscorer and received a gold-plated pair of her own boots -  the manufacturing process is documented in an oddly soothing Instagram video - Manchester City’s Tessa Wullaert was giving guided tours around Leuven, a city 17 miles from Brussels, counting heads and praying nobody would get lost and jeopardise the grand finale to her bachelor’s diploma in tourism.

Wullaert chuckles at the memories now - organising “a beer tour between two cities”, studying in Belgium as she balanced her four-month internship with the country’s tourist board alongside a burgeoning football career. But it doesn’t take long in the 25-year-old’s company to realise that she is grateful those gruelling days are over. She curls up in a chair at City’s pristine Football Academy, her ankle slung over her knee as she nibbles on a rice-cracker, looking remarkably serene for a player two days from a League Cup final against Arsenal.

She arrived in Manchester in June last year, on a two-year deal from Wolfsburg. Her snaking, whippet-like runs have helped City to 45 league goals already and since landing on these shores she has embraced life up north. She has made an effort to acquaint herself with Manchester’s history: she now knows “some of the songs by Oasis", and four days after her arrival went to a concert at the Etihad. She can recall the date but not the artist - it was Foo Fighters - and she went to Cirque du Soleil with team mate Demi Stokes and former City striker Nadia Nadim.

After eight months she understands “almost all” of the the accents in the dressing room. “Sometimes they’re making a joke and you don’t get it. They’re all laughing and you’re like, ‘S**t!’ But I knew a girl in Germany who was from Iceland, and she went to the hairdresser, wanting her hair colouring, and the hairdresser started cutting her hair. She ended up spending eight hours there. I never had an experience like that.”

Leaving Belgium at 22, a nomadic route brought Wullaert to City’s gleaming Etihad Campus. She recalls the hours spent commuting to SV Zulte Waregem, her first club. “I had to drive two and a half hours to training - four, five times a week,” she says. “I went to school up until 3pm, drove an hour and a half alone, then we drove with the other girls, I took a nap and ate my sandwiches. I came back at 11pm. When I had to do the internship, I worked from 9 to 5, trained and was home at ten. I just couldn’t do both at 100%.”

Manchester City's Tessa Wullaert in action during training 
Wullaert, who arrived at Manchester City last year from Wolfsburg, is preparing for this Saturday's League Cup against Arsenal Credit: Getty Images

Women footballers in Belgium, even now, must go abroad to play professionally. Wullaert dreams of playing full-time in her own country but there are no professional women’s clubs in Belgium. “I think I’m born too early for that,” she says sadly. “I had to make a choice.’”

Prior to graduating, still aged just 22, she moved to Wolfsburg, getting by on the German she had gleaned from working on the tourist board. “It was the first time alone, away from home. It was hard. Surviving, sometimes crying. In Germany, they’re really honest with you. Sometimes harsh or rude. I had to find myself back, because I lost a bit of my game because of that.” How so? “The coach told me not to dribble anymore, to play one or two touches. That’s not my game. I’m really happy that here I can just be myself, trust my instinct.”

She never begrudged missing nights out - “If I’m out partying, I’m wasting my body, wasting my condition, wasting my sleep” - but misses her family greatly. She has the queen of hearts tattooed on her ribcage in homage to her boyfriend, who tried living in England with her but lasted just five weeks. “Now he’s living in Belgium again. We’ve been together for four years, always on a distance. I will see him on Sunday, a couple of hours in three weeks. But I chose to play soccer. I can’t lock him up here - he has to choose whatever he wants to do. I think we’ve found our way now but I always have to choose: family, friends, boyfriend. I rarely see my friends. That’s the hardest part of being a professional abroad - missing everything.”

Tessa Wullaert celebrates scoring to make out 1-0 during the WSL 1 match between Manchester City Women and Chelsea Women
The forward is Belgium's all-time leading goalscorer  Credit: Getty Images

Her foster brother Bram, 12, visits Wullaert twice a year and has lived with the family since he was one. “We chose to have a short period of being foster parents, but it turned out differently, and I think he will be with us for the rest of his time. We chose for it and we were up for it 100%. It’s been hard sometimes because he’s struggling with his own parents, but he’s part of our family now.” Bram is cognitively impaired - there is a picture on Wullaert’s Instagram of her teaching him to read - and “he is the link” that made her an ambassador for the Special Olympics in Belgium.

She has other tattoos: the word ‘Grlpwr’ on her left foot. “When I was little in Belgium, it was very rare to play soccer as a girl. You had to stand up for yourself.” She played on boys’ teams from the age of five, one club so accommodating they gave her and a female team mate their own locker room. “But when I was 15, it started to be a bit difficult for the boys.  The parents were like, ‘Why is my son on the bench for a girl? There’s no future in women’s soccer.’ I didn’t care at all. I was better than the boys, so why would I not play?”

Her resolve has brought her to her first final for City and the plan all along was to win big here - yet there is one award she may never see. “Living in Wolfsburg, I couldn’t go to school to get my diploma, so my mum had to go and collect it,” she says. “I’ve never actually seen it.” She looks momentarily concerned. “I mean, I hope she still has it.”

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