{"id":256109,"date":"2025-07-11T12:00:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-11T12:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/256109\/"},"modified":"2025-07-11T12:00:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-11T12:00:11","slug":"euro-2025-wales-defender-esther-morgan-feared-she-would-have-to-retire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/256109\/","title":{"rendered":"Euro 2025: Wales defender Esther Morgan feared she would have to retire"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A popular member of the Wales squad, Morgan has completed her recovery in some style at Wales&#8217; first major tournament, Euro 2025, starting both of Wales&#8217; group D games against the Netherlands and France.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Morgan says she was always motivated by the prospect of returning in Switzerland during her lengthy rehabilitation, but admits she felt it was more of a pipe dream than an obtainable goal.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Being here has been amazing, to be fair,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I think I&#8217;m really grateful to have even made it on the plane. There was a long time that it was just something that I was trying to focus on in my rehab. I think it&#8217;s nice to have that end goal and I&#8217;m really grateful for the girls, firstly, for getting here and qualifying, because I wasn&#8217;t able to be a part of that journey.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I think I&#8217;d be lying if I said that I thought I was going to get back to playing and let alone playing for my country. I think it has put everything into perspective for me.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Morgan says her Wales team-mates have been a big source of inspiration as she has trodden the lonely path of recovering from two serious injuries.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I think I&#8217;ve had a rough journey through football so far,&#8221; she said. &#8220;I&#8217;m grateful it&#8217;s my journey and it&#8217;s something that no one can take away from me.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I think having two major injuries, I&#8217;m only 22, I&#8217;ve been out for the best part of two years of my career and it&#8217;s a hard thing to go through.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It&#8217;s hard to watch your teammates and your friends doing so well for club, for country. At times you do think, where am I going with this? <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;But at the same time, it&#8217;s these people that you look up to and it&#8217;s people like Sophie Ingle or Jess Fishlock who have come back from serious injuries, you have to rely on their experiences.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It&#8217;s just framed the whole thing for me that I&#8217;m so lucky to have the job that I do and I&#8217;m so grateful to be able to run, kick a ball and be with this amazing group of people, it&#8217;s really changed me, but I think changed me for the better.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A popular member of the Wales squad, Morgan has completed her recovery in some style at Wales&#8217; first&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":256110,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5010],"tags":[748,4884,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-256109","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wales","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114834494280915989","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256109\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}