Hawa Cissoko is delighted to be back at West Ham United Women’s Chadwell Heath training base, as the team returned for pre-season training.
The 26-year-old defender returned to east London to report back for pre-season on Wednesday and there was a jovial mood as players worked through the first day of testing, before then headed out on the grass for a short session on the pitch.
Indeed, the Hammers have two months of preparation before their first Barclays Women’s Super League fixture of the 2023/24 season, when the Hammers will welcome Manchester City to Chigwell Construction Stadium on Sunday 1 October.
And Cissoko is looking forward to getting back up to speed and putting in the work during pre-season.
“It feels so good to be back,” Cissoko told whufc.com.
“It’s the first time in my career that I’ve had two months of holidays, which was nice but very different. I’ve been working hard on my fitness whilst I’ve been away, but nothing with the ball – so when I had my first touch on Wednesday, I had to remember what it felt like to have a football again.
“There was a really good vibe around the place, it’s really nice to be back and preparing for the new season.”
A new season brings new optimism, and after a summer which has seen Cissoko jet off to a host of different countries as she rested and recuperated ahead of the new campaign, she is ready to tackle pre-season head on.
“The holidays were long so I was able to get around quite a lot. I went down to Nice and Monaco in the south of France, and then I went to Guadeloupe to relax.
“There is a volcano on the island that we wanted to go up, but we couldn’t do so because it was unsafe, so that was a little disappointing. But overall, my summer was fantastic and I feel ready now to come back into training and prepare properly for the new season.”
The Hammers are missing the six players who are out in Australia at the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup, with Mackenzie Arnold, Izzy Atkinson, Viviane Asseyi, Honoka Hayashi, Risa Shimizu and Emma Snerle all away with their nations.
It means that a small group of players returned for the first day back, and Cissoko was thrilled to catch up with those at Chadwell and reconnect after so many weeks apart.
“It’s always great to see your teammates,” she said. “We’re obviously missing our teammates that are away at the moment, but we’re cheering them on from home.
“We know that this pre-season we have to work hard, we know what went wrong last year and we have to make sure that we are better.
“That starts from the work that we put in in these first couple of days.”
