Lacasse rediscovers joy for soccer with Utah Royals

When Canadian international Cloé Lacasse played for Arsenal last season, it did not take long for fans of the storied club to embrace her.

When the forward was on the pitch at home in London, a now-infamous chant could often be heard from the stands, sung to the tune of ABBA’s Voulez-Vous:

“24
Lacasse
Running down the wing
Lacasse
Hear the Arsenal sing
Lacasse
And we’re gonna win the league”

Lacasse has since found a new home with the Utah Royals in the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL), but the song lives on.

“I have heard the chant a few times,” Lacasse laughs. “They're definitely trying. I don't think it's necessarily something America's embraced as much as the English game. But I do hear it every game, so they're doing a good job so far.”

Lacasse made the jump to the NWSL after just one season at Arsenal. The forward’s tenure with the Gunners started with a bang. Her debut goal with the club came in just her second league match, a stunning shot from outside the box that salvaged a point for her club in a 2-2 draw against Manchester United.

But the fight for playing time proved to be an issue. Lacasse often found herself behind the likes of Beth Mead and Caitlin Foord on the depth chart. She would finish the 2023-24 Women’s Super League season with 19 appearances and just six starts.

The reduced playing time, along with a lack of consistency in position on the pitch, led to Lacasse reflecting on her career over the summer.

“I was just kind of like, you know what? When I'm with Canada, I'm always having fun, and we enjoy being out on the pitch, at games, training, all of that,” Lacasse told TSN. “And I think it kind of made me reflect on, okay, maybe it's time to look at different opportunities and see if I can find that type of fulfillment.”

Lacasse stressed that she loved her “incredible” teammates at Arsenal, but she realized a change was needed.

“I just wanted to find joy in playing again. I think that's so important,” she said. “I'm the type of player that's super creative, and I kind of need certain liberties to be able to get the best out of my playing skills. I think at one point, I wasn't having as much enjoyment playing soccer that I would have liked.”

Lacasse still has fond memories of her time with Arsenal, where she finished with 28 total appearances across all competitions and five goals. She cites playing in front of crowds of more than 50,000 fans at Emirates Stadium as memories she’ll carry with her.                                                             

But ultimately, she felt the system implemented by Arsenal, with a heavy focus on the tactical side of the game, didn’t allow her to shine.

“At the end of the day, you want to get minutes, you want to score goals, you want to be able to be creative and be the type of player that you are,” she said. “And I think my type of characteristics were being a little bit limited and a little bit restricted at Arsenal, which didn't allow to bring out my best characteristics.”

Before Arsenal, Lacasse spent four seasons with Benfica, where she netted 102 goals in 131 games and helped lead her team to three Portuguese league titles. She led Liga BPI in scoring in the 2019-20 season, and three years later, she was named the league’s top player.

Lacasse started her pro career with Icelandic club ÍBV. She said she wanted to go to Europe to gain more tactical awareness, which she thought was lacking in her game.

She believes she now steps onto the pitch with the Royals as a more well-rounded player.

“I think something that's always been one of my strengths is being a very fast, physical type of player,” she said. “So, I think having went to Europe now and gaining that tactical and a little bit more technical awareness, it's kind of a full-circle moment. It's been able to kind of complete my profile.”

Utah joined the NWSL as an expansion club this season. It’s a familiar situation for Lacasse, who joined Benfica a year after the women’s team was founded.

“I've definitely been through those growing pains, and I think I have attributes that can help through that process, through those challenges that will arise,” she said.

The Royals definitely experienced those struggles to start the season. A week before the Olympic break, they sat at the bottom of the league with just two wins in 15 games, and head coach Amy Rodriguez was fired at the end of June.

Since then, they have four wins in eight matches and have claimed 13 of a possible 24 points to climb out of the league basement into 12th place.

Lacasse admits she didn’t know what to expect when she joined the expansion club, but she had high praise not only for the facilities, but for the coaching staff’s mentality.

“The thing they told me when I arrived is that, in the previous months, they were just participants in the league, and that's not what they want,” she said. “They want to be competitors, and they want to strive to win titles.”

As expected with an expansion team, Utah boasts a young roster, with Lacasse the second-oldest on the team at just 31. The native of Sudbury, Ont. believes her wide array of club experiences can be an asset to her new team.

“I think in this stage of my career, there's a lot that I can give back to the game,” she said. “Coming from a smaller town like I did, I definitely had to gain so many different skills from different places just because some opportunities didn't arise… [I’m] able to coach those kids that won't have those experiences in Europe. They won't gain those types of tactical or technical skills.”

Lacasse has earned meaningful minutes to start her NWSL career, starting in six of her seven matches and only coming off the bench in her first appearance. Her 22 key passes already put her in the top 40 in the league.

After Lacasse scored her first goal with her new club last month (in a losing cause to the San Diego Wave), Royals interim head coach Jimmy Coenraets was quick to sing her praises.

“We have to be honest – she’s from another level,” he told the media following the match. “She shows that on the pitch. She shows that on training sessions… Cloe’s someone that doesn’t complain, that wants to play. She needed to go to a team where she was able to have more of an impact.”

Lacasse has already made an impact on the international stage with the Canadian national team. At the Paris Olympics this past summer, she featured in three of Canada’s four matches, starting in two of them, and netted the tying goal in the Canadians’ 2-1 win over New Zealand.

The Olympics had been a long-held dream for Lacasse, who recalls watching the Games when she was younger and cites it as the first time she was able to watch women’s soccer on television.

But she and her teammates were forced to deal with an avalanche of off-field distractions after members of the Canadian staff were accused of spying on a New Zealand training session using drones. As a result of the allegations, FIFA handed down a number of sanctions, including a six-point deduction to the team and a year-long suspension to head coach Bev Priestman.

But despite the added hurdles to overcome, Lacasse was determined to preserve her Olympic dream for herself and for “that little girl that sat in front of the television.”

“At the end of the day, that's who has worked so hard to be where I am today. And I don't think you can let people's negative decisions ruin such a dream, such a journey, that has taken a long time,” she said.

“I made it at the Olympic Games, and I got to represent Canada, and I'm proud of that, and I would hope that that little girl that was watching her first women's soccer game on television would also be proud of that moment.”

Since making her debut with the national team in Nov. 2021, Lacasse has made 39 appearances and 17 starts, including representing Canada at the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup. But her goal against New Zealand in her Olympic debut is a moment that transcended her dreams.

“When I was younger, can I say I would have dreamt of that moment happening? I'd like to say yes. But I think coming from a smaller town with less resources, less opportunities, there was definitely a moment in my career that I'd never thought I would represent Canada at the Olympic Games,” she said.

“So, when that goal happened, honestly, I probably just blacked out for a quick second. I was like, ‘Holy s--t, hold on here. I think that just went in the back of the net, and I'm pretty sure I just put it in the back.’”

Despite Canada’s quarter-final exit, where the team lost to Germany on penalties, Lacasse says she is proud of the result and the mental resilience the players showed to overcome the six-point sanction in the group stage to make the knockout round.

She admits it feels like the national team is in a bit of a limbo state as it awaits the results of an independent investigation launched by Canada Soccer regarding the spying scandal. Canada will play Spain in a friendly on Oct. 25, and the federation had previously announced that more information on the interim coaching staff is forthcoming.

“We know we're playing Spain at the end of October, but that's all we know,” Lacasse said. “So, I think people are just focusing on their club careers right now and making sure that they stay healthy and that they're doing what they need to do… to be able to represent Canada at the best of their ability.”

Although there are still many unknowns, Lacasse did tease one possible change – switching her Canadian no. 20 jersey to 24, so that national team fans could adopt her chant.

“You know, there's been a few Canadian people slide into my DMs, and I do think it's something they want,” she laughed. “So, we'll have to wait and see.”