Chloe Logarzo is thriving for Western United this season and, more importantly, is loving football again. The star midfielder chats to aleagues.com.au about the last two years and having fun on the field once more.
A day after one of her best games in Western United colours, Chloe Logarzo took to Instagram to post a gallery from their 4-1 win over Melbourne Victory.
It was accompanied by a strong caption.
“I haven’t had that much fun in years,” she wrote.
“Sometimes you just need a little reminder that you still have love for this beautiful game.”
To understand why that caption is so important, you have to only look back at last two years of Logarzo’s football career.
A torn anterior cruciate ligament in her right knee during a Matildas friendly against Ireland in September 2021 ruled her out of action for a year, before a foot injury hampered her comeback.
Ultimately, these setbacks robbed Logarzo of a place in the Matildas’ 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup squad, but she looks back on this period with a glass half full approach.
“It just puts into perspective, all the things that I’ve worked towards,” Logarzo said, reflecting on the last two years to aleagues.com.au.
“It’s quite difficult actually… to have gone through the last two years, to make the sacrifices that I’ve made and put a lot of effort into something that I really hoped that I’d get into.
“I’m finding it hard to be able to put as much effort into that, with the idea of failure, so it’s something I’m working on at the moment.
“But I mean, for me, I did find it enjoyable. There were things outside of football that I would have never done if it wasn’t for this opportunity and people that I met and experiences that I’ve had that can lead me into my future.
“So, for that, I’m extremely grateful. For football, I think it just reminds me that it’s something that I love and it’s something that allows me to be free while I’m doing it and that’s what I should be doing.
“Not so much necessarily worrying about the expectations of being able to play, not as just my career, but just enjoy the thing that I’ve enjoyed for more than half of my life.”
It’s easy to see why she’s having fun on the football field again after finally returning to not only consistent football this Liberty A-League season, but her best form in quite some time.
“The fun side is probably the most important part for me because if I’m not enjoying it anymore, I’m going to retire,” she said.
“I think with the last couple of years and the sacrifices that I’ve made, the reward isn’t outweighing the sacrifices and normally that’s what happens for you to continue.
“I’m at a point in my career where I like my life outside of football and I have so much to look forward to and at this current, present moment, those sacrifices aren’t being rewarded with the things that I would have wanted them to.
“If I don’t find it fun anymore, maybe it is time to hang up my boots and look for life after football and, I’ll be ok with that.”
Initial return to the Liberty A-League & second setback
To sum up the last two years in Logarzo’s career as a whirlwind would be an understatement.
In September 2022, Logarzo looked to be putting her first injury setback behind her when she joined Western on a short-term loan deal before the 2022-23 season from NWSL side Kansas City Current and was appointed vice-captain of the then newest side in the Liberty A-League.
It was around a year after she had torn her ACL and a home World Cup was drawing nearer and nearer.
The key was getting minutes in her legs, having already made her comeback in a friendly for the Matildas in 2-0 win over South Africa in September 2022; an eight-minute cameo which, as things stand, was her last on-field appearance in green and gold.
Logarzo would debut off the bench in Western’s historic first-ever game in the competition, as they defeated Victory, and it looked like she hadn’t missed a beat in the weeks to come, scoring three goals, including a match-winning brace against Melbourne City in December 2022.
Unfortunately, six substitute appearances and 218 minutes was all she was able to muster.
In the opposite leg to where she hurt her knee, Logarzo was diagnosed with plantar fasciitis, which significantly hampered her ability to get up for games on a week-to-week basis and ultimately, caused extra damage in her left foot.
“It was interesting, coming back from my knee and then having something like that occur was annoying because I could play, but it would take me two-three days to recover from playing,” she said.
“I couldn’t walk for the first five or ten minutes after getting out of bed.
“It wasn’t so much necessarily the plantar fasciitis that was the issue. I was doing my rehab, but it wasn’t getting any better and we found that I had a pinched nerve from the plantar fasciitis.
“I actually had this little minor procedure where they went in with a needle and they did a thing called an ablation where they burnt off the nerve because it wasn’t necessarily a functioning nerve.
“It was just a sensory nerve. They burnt it off, which allowed me to not have the feeling that I was having or the pain that I was having, so then I could actually continue to do the rehab properly and progress with the rehab.
“I think the first month, two months of not knowing what was going on was probably the worst part and then I finally was able to stop everything and rehab properly and then get that journey to start again.
“It was just the two months of unknown of if it was actually going to happen, if I needed surgery or if surgery was even going to work, so being in that grey area for me was the most difficult part.”
It left Logarzo having to make a choice in the opening months of 2023: play every week and risk making the injury worse or keep the dream alive of playing at a home World Cup.
This was all happening while her loan deal had ended in February, and she was released by Kansas the following month, leading to her return to Western on a permanent deal on the eve of the Liberty A-League finals in late March.
It was essentially short term pain for long term gain.
“It was increasingly getting worse, the field that we trained on was quite hard so it wasn’t helping me at all, but it continually got worse over the games that I played and then it got to the point where I couldn’t play. I had to make the decision,” she said.
“If it wasn’t the World Cup… and this is the hardest part, I was put in this unique predicament where I could have potentially continued to keep playing in the league and just dealt with the side effects that had happened with it and I would have taken half of the week off to get back.
“But then I would have been in this other position where I wouldn’t have been at 100% leading into camp, so I had to stop, to help myself get into the World Cup, but then stopping didn’t necessarily help me.
“It was my decision, [a] kind of situation where I just needed to make a decision on whether I wanted to continue or whether I wanted to stop.
“If it wasn’t the World Cup, if it was the Asian Cup, if it was anything else, it would have been a decision to keep playing, but it wasn’t worth the risk of making it worse and needing surgery later on, which would have left me no time for the World Cup.
“It was a stressful five months.”
Despite being named in Western’s extended squad for both finals, Logarzo wouldn’t feature either, including a 4-0 loss to her former side Sydney FC in the Grand Final.
World Cup experience
Logarzo’s lack of minutes and decision to focus on her recovery throughout the opening months of 2023 still yielded a place in the Matildas’ provisional World Cup squad, entering camp in Melbourne for one last push at a second appearance on the world’s biggest stage.
However, she fell just short and was left out of Tony Gustavsson’s final team.
“It didn’t work out and I think that’s potentially why I’m in a position now where I’m trying to relearn and have that faith of putting all my effort in and being disappointed if I don’t make it,” she said, reflecting on that period.
“Because for two years of my life, I gave up everything to be able to be at the World Cup and it didn’t work out.
“Unfortunately, sometimes that is the way that it is. I just ran out of time and that’s something that I’m going to have to learn to live with for the rest of my life.
“But I think it will help just being able to fall in love with the game again, I just have spent so far detached from the Matildas and detached from playing that I forget how enjoyable it is.”
Logarzo found a way to make her mark at the World Cup in a different way, linking up with Optus Sport to be part of their coverage throughout the tournament.
“At the start it was quite difficult. I mean throughout the whole entire thing I spent most of it crying behind the camera or underneath the table,” she said.
“Which are things that people didn’t get to see which it was half disappointment, half excitement for the girls and mostly just the unbelievable feeling you have of not being able to affect anything that happens.
“I found it enjoyable because it’s something that I’ve never done before and I really enjoyed analysing the game and being in the seat with all the people that we had there.
“I think the panel that we had was incredible. Optus did an amazing job, but day to day it distracted me from what was going on, which was really good and I was extremely busy.
“In those moments when you’re singing the national anthem, I think that was the hardest part for me.”
Logarzo had a front row seat as the Matildas went on an historic run all the way through to the semi-finals of the tournament.
She couldn’t hold back her tears when Cortnee Vine scored the winning penalty against France in the quarter-finals, famously saying to the people of Australia: “Please keep coming. You were the reason that we were able to keep going all the way into that penalty shootout.”
And the people have kept coming, as this Liberty A-League season has seen a groundswell of support and attendance records being smashed.
Reflecting on the tournament and its impact, Logarzo said it was “really cool” to see how much of a groundswell of interest the tournament had on the general public.
“That’s probably the biggest thing that I’ve taken away from the World Cup was that I actually got to experience something that I’ve never got to experience before,” she said.
“Which is, as a footballer, we live in our hotels and then we go to the stadium and we’re out on the field for 15 minutes, we warm up, we play, then we get back on the bus and we go back to the hotel. Our experience within the World Cup is completely different.
“But for me, at this World Cup, I got to experience the feeling and the buzz was around the stadium. When people would rock up three hours before the game and we’re sitting in the stadium and people are turning up and they’re staying and you can feel just a different feeling with the energy that’s within there.
“It was really cool to be able to see grown men wear Matildas jerseys or if I’m traveling from one game to another that there’s men in suits who are like 45 years old, talking about specific players.
“When we set out to inspire the next generation, we wanted to inspire young girls to be able to play football, but I think in that, we inspired everyone in Australia.
“Being able to see that first hand day to day, I think that’s the biggest thing that I get to take away because we did so much more than what we ever thought we were going to plan to be able to do.
“The girls got a glimpse of what it was like and the fan interactions that they had, but I actually got to experience it outside on the day to day with the average person which is even cooler.”
What’s next?
The World Cup came and went in winter, but the show went on when the 2023-24 Liberty A-League season kicked off less than two months later.
Logarzo has since returned to Western and put together a barnstorming start to the campaign, free of the injuries that hampered her impact over the last few years.
She has started all 10 of her appearances this season, playing as more of a striker or false nine at times, instead of her usual role in midfield, scoring five goals to go with an assist.
It’s been a rollercoaster start to the campaign for the club, with head coach Mark Torcaso resigning in December and being replaced by Kat Smith.
Western find themselves in fifth place on the ladder following an inconsistent opening 12 games of the season – where they are still yet to string together consecutive wins – backing up the win against Victory with a loss 1-0 to Sydney FC last week.
But Logarzo is confident the best is still yet to come as they enter the second-half of the Liberty A-League season.
“Kat’s done a really good job coming in and in implementing her style of play and getting us to understand and get on the same page that ability and for her to be able to do that in a short period of time, I think is pretty good,” she said, prior to their clash with Sydney FC last weekend.
“That’s a reflection of why we haven’t had consistent wins with her yet. We’re all still trying to work out how we play in the system that we play.
“I’ve been very pleased with the girls and their ability to be able to change formations and the amount of formations that we’ve changed during games and even through the back to back games, I think is amazing to know that they’re absorbing the information that she’s giving.
“Halfway through the season, I think we’re only just starting to hit our stride.
“Last year we had this desire to never really give up and I think we won a lot of games in the 80th minute, 81st minute, 90th minute… I feel like we were mostly just riding off the high of having a lot of firsts and in survival mode.
“This year, I feel like coming and having to backup off such a successful inaugural season is hard to do, but I think the way that we play and the people that we have… is so much better than what it was last year.
“The confidence that I have in every single person to execute their plan is tremendous.
“We’re building towards that consistency that we need to be able to be a successful team through the hard times, even if we’re not playing great football that we’re going to be able to get the results.
“I think that’s slowly building, so by the time final series comes around that will be flying.”
A return to form always meant that she would be linked with a return to the national team setup, especially with the Paris Olympics looming this year and qualifiers for that tournament just over a month away.
But Logarzo doesn’t want to look too far ahead, with her focus on performing at club level and more importantly, enjoying her football.
“It’s funny because I have my assistant coach who’s been challenging me to think about it because I’ve been in this up and down phase of not really knowing what I want do and what my career is going to be like after this season,” she said.
“I’m unsure. I think I need to sit down and really think about what I want. Whether I want to be like maybe, if I want go to the Olympics or if I want play overseas again (Logarzo is out of contract at the end of the season) or if this is it after this season, I just need to find that and highlight what I want do.
“But at this current moment I just want to play and enjoy and if that’s a by-product of how I’m playing, then that’s amazing, but I think I’m in this phase of not wanting to disappoint myself.
“I just want to enjoy playing every single game instead of worrying about what it means if I’m playing well.”
Unfortunately, if Logarzo is to receive a recall next month, there will be one familiar face missing in camp, after long-time Matildas teammate Sam Kerr ruptured her ACL at training with Chelsea last week; the same injury Logarzo suffered just over two years ago.
It’s the second time in her career that Kerr has sustained an ACL injury, having done so in 2011, along with suffering serious leg injuries in both 2014 and 2015.
Logarzo, who is all too familiar with the rehabilitation process that follows, said she’s reached out to Kerr to offer any support she may need, and is also confident the Matildas star will bounce back to her best once she returns to the field.
“I’ve said it multiple times but the national team, they end up becoming family so I can speak for myself and know I’ve reached out to her and say that I’ll be here if she needs any help,” Logarzo said.
“I know that she has a great support system, but if she ever wants to chat that I’m going to be there for her, but I know that every other person would have reached out as well.
“She’s got a great team around her at Chelsea. She has the national team as well and she’s going to do tremendous things.
“She’s been through it before. She’s been through quite a few injuries and she’ll be back even better because the last time she came back from a major injury, she became the Sam Kerr that you guys see now.
“I’m looking forward to what there is in the future for her to be able to rebuild.”
