Caroline Graham Hansen: Barcelona's Ballon d'Or frontrunner who almost quit football at 23

It’s hard to overstate how much bad luck Graham Hansen endured with injuries in the early stages of her professional career. That it led to her being on the brink of walking away from football while still only 23 perhaps paints the picture better than any words could.

Thankfully, a return to Norway as her season with Wolfsburg came to a close allowed her to reset, refresh and get ready to go again. Mats Moller Daehli, the Norway international who is one of her oldest and closest friends, was also injured that summer, and the two spent time doing some rehab together, which helped.

The influence of Graham Hansen’s family was huge, too. “They supported me, kept me calm and just said, 'Hey, take it easy. We will come back. Don't think so far ahead',” she explained in an interview with GOAL after Barca’s first Champions League triumph. “You can't always win, but it was the way it happened, always being injured. It was not because you weren’t necessarily the best player, or you weren’t performing at your best. I was not performing at my best because I kept being unlucky.

“Of course, that's also part of sport, but you have vacation, you get back and then eventually you find your way again. I did, luckily for me. It's a fun and nice story when you then win the Champions League three years later in the way we did. It makes all the hours you put down really worth it. It's also a motivation to just keep going, no matter what happens.”

As Graham Hansen says, powering through those difficult times has certainly paid dividends. She has been one of the best wingers on the planet for most of her career, joining two-time European champions Wolfsburg when she was just 19 years old, but a move to Barcelona has helped elevate her game even further and added new elements to it.

The Catalans were not the dominant power they are today when Graham Hansen first signed in 2019, far from it, and so there were many who questioned her decision to join them from an elite side like Wolfsburg. However, she believed in the project and has played a significant role in its potential being realised, winning 13 trophies in five years, including two Champions League titles.

That’s despite her style of play not necessarily conforming to Barca’s. The Catalans are renowned for that iconic tiki-taka philosophy, and it is one that Graham Hansen has had the footballing intelligence to understand from day one.

“Her first day, I remember one player told me, 'She is an amazing player'. We were only five minutes in! And doing a very easy exercise,” Barca head coach Jonatan Giraldez told GOAL. "But when the rhythm of the pass, the precision of the pass and the movement before and the timing is so good, when you are coming from another country… It is not so easy for the foreign players. And Caro had it.”

However, it is Graham Hansen’s tendency to, in her own words, “break out” of that which makes her dangerous. “I think I was brought in to bring diversity, to break out of the passing style,” she told GOAL previously. “I'm a very vertical type of player that goes fast in transitions. I can dribble, get out of closed spaces when there's no space to create unbalance in the opposing team.

“When you have a style of play where it's all about controlling the game with passing, you need some players who can break out of that pattern. That's why I'm playing on the wing and I enjoy it so much because I also get put into a lot of situations where I get to contribute with the best parts of my game, too.”

That’s been seen in spades throughout Graham Hansen’s time in Barcelona, but especially this season. Having had some time out with an injury last year, the Norwegian returned last March and ended the campaign in scintillating form to help the Catalans win the league and the Champions League. It is momentum she carried into the current campaign.

In Liga F, Graham Hansen has 17 goals and 16 assists from just 20 appearances, only 16 of them starts. Unsurprisingly, she leads the division for direct goal involvements by some distance. She tops the charts in the Champions League, too, thanks to her five goals and four assists from seven games.

Asked for the secrets behind such numbers, the 29-year-old told La Vanguardia: “Having a good team, so I can enjoy myself. I'm very grateful to my team-mates because in the end, football is a team sport, and if your team plays well, it's easier for things to work out for you. Nothing has changed. I think I was playing very well in the other years too, but because people only look at the numbers, they didn't look at it as much. I've scored more goals and people take notice of that.”

It’s a fair point. After all, Graham Hansen has been playing at this elite level for several years now. Anyone who has watched Barca on a regular basis knows that and her team-mates certainly do, too. However, inexplicably, it’s led to very little individual recognition.

Graham Hansen has never even made the Ballon d’Or shortlist, with her exclusion after Barca’s Champions League triumph in 2021 particularly shocking given she was arguably deserving of a spot on the podium, never mind among the nominees. Her notable individual accolades to date are the Liga F MVP in 2020-21, two inclusions in the Champions League Squad of the Season, and a quartet of Norwegian Female Player of the Year awards. That’s an incredibly small list for one of the best footballers on the planet. Ella Masar, a former team-mate of the Norwegian’s at Wolfsburg, has described it as “a f*cking joke”.

What makes it all even more unbelievable is that Graham Hansen has hardly been thriving in a low-key manner. When it comes to performing in the Champions League, on the biggest stage, she always rises to the occasion.

Fortunately, these things don’t bother her. Graham Hansen’s focus is solely on how her performances can lead to team success, rather than individual glory. "I'm not going to play better by being on a list," she told La Vanguardia.

That she could – and should – finally be among the contenders to win the Ballon d’Or later this year will not be on her mind as Barca approach the final stretch of their title charge, the Copa de la Reina final and the latter stages of the Champions League, then, with the first leg of their semi-final clash with Chelsea coming up on Saturday.

Instead, her aim will to be decisive once more, as she was when the Catalans met the Blues at this stage last year. Graham Hansen scored at Stamford Bridge and Camp Nou, those strikes proving to be the difference in a 2-1 aggregate win that sent Barca through to a final which they won.

It’s likely that the talented Norwegian will have a telling impact 12 months on. Chelsea will be well aware of her threat, but finding a way to stop her is easier said than done. Even if they manage to keep her quiet, even if she doesn’t light the tie up, as long as Barca lift the trophy, she won’t care. Perhaps that’s another reason why she is so good.