Hayley Raso does not want to be heard. Or really, overheard. It is nothing against her new Tottenham Hotspur team-mates.
“I don’t need people to hear me or listen to me and things like that,” the 30-year-old midfielder says with a sheepish laugh. So Raso, in full white home strip and bouncy brunette ponytail, is on the move, navigating the labyrinth of Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
It is early November and Raso’s first time inside her new club’s main stadium. As the Australia international passes the home team’s dressing room — a brightly-lit semi-shrine displaying the men’s team’s shirt for the various stadium tours scuttling about — she stops to snap a photo. An offer arrives for her own photograph to be taken in front of it, which Raso swiftly declines with another bashful laugh before embarking on her journey again. Finally, a cluttered but human-free office is unearthed.
Raso pulls up a chair for The Athletic before settling into another, allowing herself a gentle swivel and a deep breath.
The episode is a brief but enlightening window into Raso, whom Spurs signed on a two-year deal in the summer. The midfielder has won silverware in the National Women’s Super League (NWSL) with the Portland Thorns and lifted the League Cup with Manchester City in 2021. In 2023, she became the first Australian and first Asian Football Confederation player to represent Real Madrid’s first team. That same year, she was shortlisted for the Ballon d’Or Feminin (finishing 17th in the final votes) after helping Australia reach a historic World Cup semi-final against England. Her Wikipedia page is cheerfully sprawling with similarly impressive factoids, while a career that has spanned multiple continents and competitions brings its own authority.
“When you say it like that, it fills me with a lot of pride about where I’m at,” Raso says with a smile when presented with this list. “But I’m Aussie. We’re chill. I like to think I’m humble. Which is why I don’t like doing interviews in front of people!”
Raso does not shun the limelight. She lights up as she speaks about playing at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium later this month in her first north London derby, or receiving hand-made friendship bracelets from fans with her name and number on them (“I usually have them up my arm”), or even speaking about her Duolingo progress (“Martha Thomas thought she could speak Spanish, then I came in”). The same glint emerges when the conversation turns to Friday night’s Women’s Super League (WSL) match with City at the Etihad, her first reunion with Gareth Taylor’s side since her exit in 2023 and her first match for Spurs since sustaining a hamstring injury over four weeks ago.
But Raso is not one to go out searching for attention, an irony when juxtaposed with the past summer. Upon leaving Real Madrid after just one year and becoming a free agent, Raso was the subject of dedicated Reddit transfer pages and X threads speculating about the experienced midfielder might be best suited.
“I had people on their toes, because free agency isn’t usual anymore,” she says. “I had a lot of messages from people telling me to just announce where I was going, what I was doing. The game’s grown a lot so we shouldn’t really complain because we’ve wanted people talking about us in the game for a long time. I suppose we’re close to being there where we are now. But sometimes, you’ve got to ignore it.”
While free agency is slowly being phased out in women’s football by longer and more secure contracts for players, Raso found the time afforded her in the summer to assess her options did not come with added pressure.
“Do you know that old saying about flipping a coin and when the coin’s in the air, you know what you want?” she says. “When the coin is in the air, you’re like, ‘Please be heads, please be heads’, or whatever. I really like that because it is true. But I’m a thinker. Unless I’m playing, I’m thinking, laying out the pros and cons. I’ve always been that way. I’m very far from home, I need the right club. Not only football-wise, but off the pitch. It’d been a long time for me in and out of teams, coming off the bench, not playing minutes. I wanted to go to a team where I felt really valued.”
Long conversations with Spurs head coach Robert Vilahamn in the summer convinced Raso that his pocket of north London could provide this, promising to afford Raso “faith and freedom”, something she did not feel she had previously had.
The pitch is not uncommon, especially as Spurs have honed a reputation under Vilahamn since his appointment in 2023 as a club where undervalued or underutilised players find space to blossom. Forward Thomas — who left Manchester United in 2023 after being limited to just 10 starts across two seasons — scored six times in her first four league games, ending the season with 10 goals, including the extra-time winner against Leicester City in the FA Cup semi-final to book the team’s first trip to Wembley. Bethany England’s exit from Chelsea in January 2023 after seven years has resulted in a rejuvenated career for the Euro 2022 winner. Young players such as midfielder Grace Clinton (on loan from United last season and now one of England’s breakout stars), winger Celin Bizet (who joined United in the summer) and forward Jess Naz (called up to the senior Lionesses squad last month) found a platform to showcase their talent last season.
“I’ve seen it from the day I got here,” Raso says, pointing to the goal she scored on her debut in the 4-0 win over newly-promoted Crystal Palace in Spurs’ opening WSL game as evidence. “Everything that was spoken about that I wanted has come to light here.”
Raso’s bright start to life in north London was interrupted when she sustained a hamstring injury in Spurs’ dramatic 3-2 defeat by Liverpool on October 6, forcing her to the sidelines for a month. While her new team-mates helped her through physical therapy sessions and kept her motivated, the interruption coincided with a difficult run on the pitch for her new team. The Liverpool loss was followed by heavy defeats by Manchester United (3-0) and Chelsea (5-2), shining a light on the gap that remains to the league’s upper echelons.
A last-gasp victory against West Ham United last weekend stopped the rot. That Raso’s return arrives ahead of a daunting fixture on Friday against league leaders City — whom Spurs have beaten just once in their past 13 outings, a memorable FA Cup quarter-final penalty shootout victory last season on their way to Wembley — is favourable, her composure and quality on the ball crucial as Spurs look to regain their fluency and bridge the gap.
The timing is also poetic.
“It’s always fun playing against your old team,” Raso says. “I enjoyed my time there, but you get a little bit of extra motivation going into a game against your former club. You obviously want to beat your old team. But you also want to show them where you’re at and how you are.“
(Top photos: Jacques Feeney/Offside/Offside via Getty Images)
