'More blood on our teeth' - Inter starlet Cecilia Ran Runarsdottir on bouncing back from horror knee injury, being Europe's best goalkeeper and why Iceland have unfinished business at Euro 2025

There are a lot of goalkeepers in the European women’s game who have marked themselves out as household names over the last few years. The continent boasts established veterans like Mary Earps and Christiane Endler, young stars such as Cata Coll and Hannah Hampton, and rising profiles that include Phallon Tullis-Joyce and Daphne van Domselaar. However, the best goalkeeper in Europe during the 2024-25 season, one can strongly argue, was someone else entirely, someone whose name is certainly not as well known.

That is Cecilia Ran Runarsdottir, the 21-year-old Iceland international who was crowned Goalkeeper of the Year in Serie A after being a key player in Inter’s first real title charge on the women’s side. The Nerazzurre would fall just short in that race, as Juventus returned to the top of the Italian game, but that should not take away from the performances of Runarsdottir. She kept more clean sheets than anyone else in the league and was a vital part of the division’s best defence as Inter secured Champions League qualification for the first time.

Though Runarsdottir is quick to offer her rebuttal to GOAL’s observation that the season could not have gone much better for her – “If we got the title,” she is quick to point out – this was a massive year for a player who has endured her fair share of bad luck over the last few years. After suffering an injury on the eve of the 2022 European Championship that required surgery and then missing almost a year due a truly awful knee problem, Runarsdottir is now well back on track to becoming one of the best goalkeepers around, and she heads into this summer’s Euros with the potential to show that on the biggest stage.