‘Super proud’: Slegers hails Arsenal after Women’s Champions League success | OneFootball

The Arsenal head coach, Renée Slegers, said her team’s performance was “above all expectations” after they stunned Barcelona to win the Women’s Champions League title in Lisbon.

Cited as the major underdogs before kick-off, Arsenal thwarted a Barcelona side who had won three of the past four finals, and won their first women’s European title since 2007 thanks to substitute Stina Blackstenius’ 74th-minute winner.

“I’m super proud, because you can have all these ideas in your head and show videos and use your tactics board and all those things, but when the moment is actually there, to then execute this in a Champions League final, it says so much about the players,” said Slegers, whose team knocked out Real Madrid and the eight-times champions Lyon on their route to the final. “We had to suffer at times but the way we managed the game, for me it was unbelievable. It was above all expectations. We were spot on in the crucial moments.”

The 36-year-old Dutchwoman has been in permanent charge of Arsenal for only 127 days since her appointment in January, after initially stepping up as their interim head coach in October after Jonas Eidevall’s resignation, but she has overseen a rapid resurgence in the club’s fortunes to deliver one of the greatest days in their history in the heat of the Portuguese capital.

Slegers also believes there are more improvements to come from her team, adding: “There’s been so much engagement and investment and belief and intensity in the way we trained. I’m so happy for everyone that they got the rewards today. They are so worth it. They worked extremely hard. There is still more in this team and that is the scary part.”

Arsenal’s victory was particularly special for their former Scotland midfielder Kim Little, who first joined the club in 2008 and rejoined the north London side in 2017. After captaining them to glory, she said: “We knew coming into this game that we had to be basically perfect to beat this Barcelona team. The team showed incredible discipline. Across the board it was just incredible.

“It’s very special for me. I’ve been at the club a very long time and we have had incredible periods where we have been successful. The club won it in 2007 and I signed the year after that. To still be at the club now and see how much it has done to progress the women’s game and invest in us as players and as a club, it is truly special. To be sitting here now today off the back of winning the ultimate trophy for club football, it is definitely the best moment of my career.”

Arsenal are the only British women’s club to have ever lifted a European title but this was their first time in the final since winning a quadruple of major honours in the 2007 campaign. Since then they have had to endure their neighbours Chelsea dominating the domestic silverware but they remain by far the English women’s game’s most decorated club, with a record 14 Women’s FA Cups to their name as well as 15 top-flight titles and 16 League Cups across two different iterations of that cup.

Slegers hinted they will seek to use their victory as a springboard for more silverware domestically, as they try to end Chelsea’s run of six consecutive English league titlesShe added: “This means so much for everyone who has built towards this across many years, but it also means so much for the future, because it motivates people, it motivates us and it shows what we are capable of. Of course, if you are part of Arsenal you go for trophies. That’s what the club wants and that is what we want as well.”

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