Jess Fishlock, widely regarded as the Wales Women\u2019s national team\u2019s greatest player, has announced she will retire from international football after this month\u2019s home friendly against Australia.<\/p>\n
The 38-year-old is Wales\u2019 record goalscorer, despite predominantly playing as a midfielder, and their most-capped player, with 165 international appearances and 48 goals.<\/p>\n
Perhaps even more significantly, she has played a talismanic role in the team for nearly two decades, frequently being the standout star, stepping up in their biggest matches and scoring memorable match winners. She was awarded an MBE for services to women\u2019s football and the LGBT community in 2018. She became Wales\u2019 first footballer to reach a century of caps in 2017.<\/p>\n
Fishlock cemented her place in the Cymru history books when she scored Wales\u2019 first goal at a major women\u2019s international tournament in July, finding the net against France<\/a> in St Gallen, Switzerland, during a group-stage defeat at Euro 2025.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Euros was the pinnacle of my football career; seeing the dragon on the world stage for the first time will be a memory that will stay with me for a lifetime,\u201d Fishlock posted on social media. \u201cTo all the players and staff, past and present, diolch [thank you]. It has been an incredible journey.\u201d<\/p>\n After starting with Cardiff City, she has spent most of her career overseas, predominantly with the NWSL club Seattle Reign, whom she joined in 2013. She has helped Reign win three NWSL shields and was named as the NWSL\u2019s MVP in 2021, making the NWSL\u2019s \u201cbest XI\u201d five times.<\/p>\n Fishlock won the Champions League with Lyon in 2019 during a loan spell, and has also had successful loans with clubs including Melbourne City and Reading. Her club career continues, with the NWSL end-of-season playoffs approaching.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Moving the Goalposts<\/p>\n No topic is too small or too big for us to cover as we deliver a twice-weekly roundup of the wonderful world of women\u2019s football<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n After Wales\u2019 exit from July\u2019s Euros in Switzerland, Fishlock said she needed a \u201clittle time to think\u201d about her Wales future and her decision comes before the squad announcement for Wales\u2019 home friendlies against Australia, on 25 October, and Poland, on 28 October.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jess Fishlock, widely regarded as the Wales Women\u2019s national team\u2019s greatest player, has announced she will retire from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":215538,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-215537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215537\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}