Karen Carney: Leaving a club can be hard. You have to take the emotion out of it
When I knew it was my final season at Chelsea, I didn’t tell anybody. It was 2019, I was captain, and we were trying to win the Champions League for the first time. I’d made the decision that I was going to retire after the World Cup in the summer and, while my future played on my mind during that last campaign, the focus was always on the team and the job at hand.
Winger Guro Reiten will have had her Chelsea future in the back of her mind this season, knowing her contract was expiring in the summer. She’s now cleared up that uncertainty with her transfer to Gotham, which is a brilliant move for her. Reiten spent the best years of her career at Chelsea and has won 13 trophies — a remarkable haul.
But a club and player deciding to part ways is all about alignment as opposed to emotion; are you both going in the same direction? Do your ambitions match? What do you want?
These are questions I asked myself throughout my career. During my final year at Chelsea, the club were driving for more and more success, and I had to consider: can I get to the line at the next pre-season? Can my body and mind do it all again?
I knew I wasn’t in a position to give everything anymore, so my decision was made. When I left Birmingham City in 2015, even though it was the club I’d grown up supporting, progressed through the academy at and won the FA Cup with, I had to take the emotion out of the decision and ask: am I going to win the league here? The answer was not right now, and I had an offer from Chelsea waiting.
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