“I don’t think I ever was a teenager,” Australia defender Ellie Carpenter says, relaxed and amused as she does so, almost like she is realising it for the first time all over again. “I kind of skipped that and went from a kid to an adult overnight.”
She sits with one leg crossed and the other bent, foot on the couch in Disney’s “Matildas: The World at Our Feet” documentary series, wearing a yellow t-shirt and a letter ‘E’ charm on her necklace.
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It feels like your friend is telling you a story you already kind of know, and on the surface, many Australian fans familiar with Carpenter can see how she comes to the conclusion that she basically skipped her adolescence.
The kid from Cowra was always playing above her age bracket, debuting for the national team at 15, leaving school not long after, signing for the best club in women’s football at 20.
Her story has become common knowledge but, somewhere along the way, that morphed into her story being mistaken as common — the rule rather than the exception.
At 22 years old, the Matildas star is a player who has been doing extraordinary things her whole career and she’s done them so often that the extraordinariness of them is undersold, glossed over, taken for granted.
It’s a story worth revisiting to appreciate just how far Ellie Carpenter has come.
COWRA. Tidiest town in New South Wales, 2002. Friendliest town in New South Wales, 2006. Population: 12,753.
“Two sets of traffic lights, a couple of roundabouts and one main street. That’s Cowra,” Carpenter explained with a laugh.
It’s about a four-hour drive west of Sydney. Plus another 20 minutes out of town if you’re Carpenter. “So literally the middle of nowhere,” she smiled. “But I loved it.”
Like many Aussie country kids, Carpenter’s childhood was one spent playing outside, participating in any sport that was available, something that was encouraged with two PE teachers for parents.
From little athletics to soccer, Carpenter was impressing from a young age. She could have just as easily been a sprinter, winning medals at a national level in primary school. But football was the sport she wanted to pursue.
Footballers often speak of sacrifices, those made by them and their families so that they can give everything to a career that is inherently finite. Carpenter and her family are no different. She and her family knew from a young age that while Cowra was a great place to grow up, it wasn’t the kind of place that could accommodate a young footballer’s lofty ambitions. Though the family tried.
Trips to Sydney, Canberra, and other regional centres for training, games and tournaments became a regular occurrence, meaning Ellie and her brother, Jeremy, spent as much time in the car as they did on the pitch for years.
Eventually, the family collectively decided a change needed to be made.
“Around 10, 11 they kind of thought we have to move to Sydney like it’s not possible to make it from the country,” Carpenter said.
It was decided that she, Jeremy, and their mum Belinda would make the move to Sydney to give both kids the best opportunities in football.
They would have access to the kinds of facilities, coaches, and training that just aren’t possible in a country town. Her dad would stay behind.
While the move was obviously for a good reason, it was still an enormous change. Belinda quit her job to support the kids. Both Ellie and Jeremy left their school, their friends, their childhood home all in pursuit of a footballing dream.
The Carpenter siblings would both end up at Sydney’s renowned Westfields Sports High. Ellie played for NSW in the national championships and soon enough would get her first taste of national team football, the first indicator that this massive move had been worth it.
ANTE Juric remembers the first time he saw Carpenter. Back in the early 2010s, the current Sydney FC coach was a part of the youth national team setup as head coach of the Mini Matildas — Australia’s under-17s — and was interim coach of the Young Matildas — the under-20s.
At the national championships in Coffs Harbour a barely teenaged Carpenter impressed those watching along, including Juric.
He remembers a kid who was raw but had great physicality What was most impressive for him was that she was a good defender, something you didn’t find too often at that age.
Despite only being 14 at the time, Juric has no qualms about selecting Carpenter for the Mini Matildas and in October 2014, she would make her debut at the AFC U16 Championship qualifiers.
She debuted for the Young Matildas, the under-20s, a month later.
The snowball had begun. With youth national teams now under her belt, the next stop was the W-League. At 15, Western Sydney Wanderers coach Norm Boardman signed the youngster to her first professional contract, impressed with her Young Matildas performances. So impressed in fact, she didn’t even need to trial.
Carpenter had no expectations regarding game time in her first season in the W-League. She would go on to play every minute of every game.
Having impressed in the youth ranks and the W-League, a call up to the senior Matildas came in February 2016.
“I was at school when I saw my name on an email [about squad selection] and I thought, ‘Is this real, have they made a mistake?’,” Carpenter told FIFA in 2016.
On March 2, 2016, in the Olympic qualifiers, Carpenter would make her Matildas debut in a 9-0 victory over Vietnam. She became the first player born in the 2000s to play for either of Australia’s senior national teams. Not long after she quit school in Year 10 to focus on football full-time.
In the four years following that decision, Carpenter ticked off an Olympics, an Asian Cup, and a World Cup. She was routinely a young footballer of the year winner, playing for the Wanderers, Canberra United, and Melbourne City in the W-League.
At 17, she spent the offseason in Norway at Avaldsnes alongside Chloe Logarzo and Emily Gielnik, two of her very best friends in the Matildas, as well as Gema Simon. However, she never took to the pitch as visa restrictions around working as a footballer as a minor meant she wasn’t allowed to play.
At 18, she signed for Portland Thorns, joining the long list of Aussies and Americans who spent the year splitting their time between the W-League and the NWSL. At the time, she was the youngest ever player and goal-scorer in the league.
Carpenter had always been willing to travel for her football, even more so now that it was her full-time job.
This was a player who was always going to go places because she wasn’t going to be told otherwise. If she didn’t make it, it certainly wasn’t going to be because she didn’t do everything in her power to get there.
The next obvious stop was Europe.
Lyon is a long, long way from Cowra. 16,680 kilometres to be exact.
Carpenter carries a little piece of Cowra with her wherever she goes, with the town outline tattooed on her ankle; a permanent reminder of where she’s come from.
“Sometimes when I go through the training, I’m like: ‘Whoa, this is how far I’ve come.'” she said.
Carpenter signed for European powerhouse, Olympique Lyonnais, in 2020, taking a different path from most of her teammates who were scattering across England. By signing Carpenter, Lyon picked up one of the most promising young right-backs in world football. That they wanted to sign the Aussie, to a three-year deal no less, was an incredible indication of how she was viewed globally.
Widely regarded as the best club in women’s football with a trophy cabinet that silences anyone willing to make an argument to the contrary, by signing for Lyon, Carpenter was able to fulfil yet another dream.
“It’s always been a goal of mine to be here at Lyon and be amongst these world class players. It’s known as the best club in the world for women’s football,” she said.
Training is tough. The schedule is hectic. But it’s exactly the kind of environment Carpenter wanted. While she is no stranger to uprooting her life, she had never had to do it on this kind of scale and under these kind of circumstances before.
“I’ve never experienced this before,” Carpenter explained. “Definitely a culture shock, like they hate speaking English. So, for me I was like well I’ll have to learn the language.”
Vision of Carpenter doing postmatch interviews in French with a distinctly Aussie twang did the rounds on social media in her first season at Lyon. Just when fans thought she couldn’t get more impressive, she had dazzled them all again. The French language wasn’t the only thing she would become accustomed to.
“This is my first time living in Europe and I love it. Everything is so close. It’s like an hour flight to somewhere else and I’m like an hour flight and you’re in another country,” she said. “Like what? That’s so crazy to me.
“I’m a country girl at heart. And I can go rough and go camping and not shower for weeks. But since living in Europe, I’m just like nails every week, eyebrows, hair, facials.
“My mum laughs at me. She goes Ellie like how many Louis Vuitton bags do you have now? I’m like, oh, just a couple. It’s me now you know. I love it.”
It’s not all shopping and manicures though. Since moving to Lyon, Carpenter has picked up a Division 1 Feminine title, a Coupe de France, and two Champions League medals.
Carpenter and the Women’s Champions League final have a bit of a strange relationship. The Aussie is a two-time winner of the most prestigious club competition in women’s football.
Her first medal came without her stepping foot onto the pitch; she was an unused substitute as Lyon defeated Wolfsburg 3-1 in 2020. Carpenter, who was 20 at the time, was second-choice right-back to Lucy Bronze, who was set to leave Lyon to join Manchester City.
A Champions League medal is nothing to scoff at. But knowing how hard Carpenter had worked and how competitive she is, there was no doubt that she would want to contribute to Lyon’s next win from the pitch.
After two seasons of cementing herself as the first-choice right-back, Carpenter got her chance to play in a Champions League final in May 2022.
