Natasha made her debut for Adelaide United in the A-League Women in Adelaide’s first win for the season. While Natasha only played for a minute or so and didn’t have time to touch the ball (lucky for Canberra United) it is her 3rd top league she has played in at only 20 years of age. She has played Barcelona U19 (Spain) U19 first division, Eredivisie Vrouwen (Netherlands) first division and now A-League Women (Australia) first division. She was happy for the teams win and is working hard to adapt to the Australian conditions and looking forward to more game time.

After months of dealing with the craziness of our current world, Natasha finally got to train with her new team. Although she was rusty she got a really good feeling and thinks that she will adapt alot more quickly to everything then she did in the Netherlands. She was happy with her first session and is extremely glad to be able to get into the daily routine of training and playing.

​And so the adaptation begins. What many people don’t realize is the big challenge when changing countries for football and the adaptation process that the body has to go through. For Natasha changing from the super hard artificial grass surfaces in Spain to the soft grass surface at Adelaide puts a huge strain on her legs. The key is to control your training load. Everything is focused on adjusting training so she can arrive at the game in good condition. It will take her legs about a month to adapt but she can still train and play in that time but she needs to be clever and patient with increasing her training loads. It takes alot of work and clever management to avoid any injuries yet still play well.

​This is a video of Natasha’s training partner (Tim Caroutas) scoring a goal against FC Barcelona U19A on the weekend for a 1-1 result. Tim came to live with us as a 12yo because he was given an opportunity to play in Spain but his family could not make the change. We refer to him as a step-brother or step-son because he has become part of our family. These two have trained with each other nearly every day for about 5 years and they follow each other closely. Two outstanding young football talents.

​Natasha continues with her longest pre-season ever as she navigates the process of getting flights to Adelaide and all the rig moral that goes with it now she hammered out an INCREDIBLE new Personal Best on her Single Leg Partial Squat. She easily belted out 3 repetitions at her previous 180kg on each leg before nailing 200kg for one rep. In fact the weight was so heavy that we could not fit all the weight onto the bar so we had to tie the extra weights onto the bar.

​Cathrine Paquette of https://thewomensgame.com has written a great article on the new recruits for Adelaide United including Natasha. Natasha is soooooo pumped and is busting to get to Adelaide and begin training with her new team. This has been the longest pre-season ever for her and she is just keen to get playing. The current Covid restrictions are making things challenging but she is working hard to get to Adelaide asap.

Natasha finishes her first season with top level football in the Netherlands and what a fantastic season it was as she overcame sooooo many challenges to have an incredible influence of the teams game results. Some of the challenges included exiting a 3 month house arrest lockdown in Spain to move to the Netherlands and a first week of training that included a mountain of old school running as well as a change of country, culture,  climate, football styles, training styles, professional level training and so much more….. but there were two changes that required much more adaptation then she ever considered. One change was that the Dutch female players are much taller and much more solid structure than the Spanish players and therefore that makes training and games much more physical and the other is that the artificial grass pitches in the Netherlands are much softer than the hard Spanish pitches. This was very difficult and took Natasha many months to adapt especially after coming out of a 3 month lockdown.

While VV Alkmaar had a difficult season, Natasha’s goal for the season was to adapt to top level football and to influence game results and she did that extremely well. In fact VV Alkmaar only won league or cup games when Natasha played. That is an entire season where the first team only won when Natasha played. That is amazing ? !!! While Natasha would have liked to play more games and did play in some losses the fact remains that the team only won their league and cup games when she played. See the above video for a more detailed analysis. An incredible season for Natasha and she will look to build further on influencing game results next season and now VV Alkmaar will always hold a special place in her heart.

Natasha scores her first goal in the Eredivisie League in only her second game as striker to help VV Alkmaar to their second win of the league over 5th place Heerenveen. Natasha constantly troubled the defence in scoring a goal taking several shots, keypasses and attacks as VV Alkmaar were cruising to a win before two late goals by Heerenveen meant that Alkmaar had to score a late goal to win 4-3. 

Image by: Mike Schoonenberg Photograhy – https://mikeschoonenberg.com/