'I’m super stoked about it' - Van Wyk relishing Champions League debut with Glasgow City

Janine Van Wyk is looking forward to realising her ambition with Glasgow City as they face Wolfsburg in Thursday's Uefa Women's Champions League quarter-final clash in Spain.

Banyana Banyana captain completed her return to Europe after joining the Scottish champions on July 14 and united with her teammates two weeks later in the build-up to their European campaign.

Van Wyk missed fulfilling her dreams with Danish side Fortuna Hjorring, who were bounced out by Lyon, due to injury but is now hours away from achieving her Champions League ambitions with Glasgow.

After arriving in San Sebastian with her Scottish side on Wednesday, South Africa's record cap holder with 170 appearances, told The Guardian: “I’m super excited to compete in the Champions League. 

“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 Africa 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.”

After parting ways with Fortuna in January, the former Houston Dash defender did not abandon her quest to make a return to Europe while recovering from her injury during the lockdown.

And the 33-year-old, who led her country to a debut Women's World Cup finals last year, has opened up on how she earned her move to the Scottish outfit.
 
“I wanted to stay in South Africa and play with my team in the National League,” she continued. 

“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.”

Having claimed a 2-0 first-leg win in Denmark, Glasgow lost by the same scoreline at home to Brondby but squeezed past Danish giants 3-1 from the spot to reach the quarter-final of the competition.

Going up against the German champions, the South Africa international feels her Scottish club are the underdogs but is not ruling out their chances of staging an upset in their last-eight showdown.

“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," she enthused.

“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.”