Scotland's Caroline Weir 'ready to go' ahead of mammoth play-off round after returning from lengthy injury lay-off
Scotland women's national team head into a mammoth double-header with qualification for EURO 2025 within touching distance and boosted by the return of one of the game's superstars.
Caroline Weir, who missed out on over a year of international football with an ACL injury, has returned to the squad following a lengthy lay-off and is fully determined to help her nation reach the finals. Voted best player of the 2022/23 Liga F season, an award presented by the Spanish Footballers' Association AFE, Weir’s return is well-timed to join a national side full of confidence having won their last five games on the bounce.
Pedro Martinez Losa’s side are preparing to face Hungary in the first set of play-off rounds with seven places left up for grabs in Switzerland at next year’s tournament. The Real Madrid playmaker hasn’t pulled on the dark blue of Scotland since September of last year but has been focused on these games for some time now.
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Should Scotland navigate their way past Hungary they will then face a final play-off round against the winners of the tie between Montenegro and Finland.
Weir told the Scottish FA's media team: “It feels amazing to be back. I’ve been looking forward to this for the last couple of weeks. I had my eye on these fixtures way back when I first got injured, it felt like such a long time away but here we are, so happy to be back with the team in Scotland as well. It feels great.
“It’s been tough, unfortunately [it was] such a long injury, such a long process, many ups and downs but I feel fortunate that I had lots of good people around me and the rehab went as smoothly as it probably could have gone up to this point.
“To represent Scotland, that is the highlight for me, so to miss out on a year of Scotland games was really tough, but the team has really grown in that time.
“I can see that, I was watching the games and I feel like coming into this camp they’re massive games, but I feel like we’re ready for them.
“You have no choice but to have your perspective changed a little bit, I’ve never really had time injured at all, the max [before] was probably two weeks out.
“To make these play-offs in the way we did gives us great confidence coming into these games.
“I just feel like the team is in a good spot, I feel like we’re ready and we’re just excited to get going”.