Former Barcelona player Mariona Caldentey is excited for Arsenal to face Real Madrid in the UEFA Women’s Champions League.
Title-holders Arsenal currently sit 11th in the UEFA Women’s Champions League (UWCL) league phase table, with three points from three matches. They narrowly lost to OL Lyonnes and beat Benfica 2-0. The Gunners’ last match saw them give away a first-half 2-0 lead against Bayern Munich, ultimately losing 3-2.
By the end of the league stage, the first four teams in the table advance automatically to the knockout stages. It seems unlikely Arsenal will be among those first four teams. Numbers five to twelve of the league stage enter a playoff round to compete for the remaining knockout phase places. In order to stay eligible for those playoff spots, Arsenal have some work to do.
This starts with getting a good result against Real Madrid. Renée Slegers’ side beat the Spanish club at the Emirates by three goals to nil last season in the quarter-finals, after losing 2-0 in the away leg.
Slegers expects Real Madrid to play a high defensive line and go player for player. “If you look at our goal kick situations last year, we’ve taken a lot of references from the game at the Emirates,” she says.
“You see them going high and player for player on those situations as well. So we are absolutely expecting that.”
Former Barcelona player Caldentey, who joined Slegers in the pre-match press conference, is looking forward to the clash between the two European giants.
“For me it will be always special to play against Real Madrid. I’m a Barca kid. I have been at Barca for 10 years, so that’s a big reality.”
The Ballon d’Or runner-up continues, “I’m excited. I think we have a really good chance to show everyone and ourselves what we want to do and they are a big team, so I’m really excited to play against them.”
Caldentey thinks the team have a good chance of beating Las Blancas under the Borehamwood lights.
“We saw it last year. In the first leg, we weren’t good enough, they smashed us and then the second leg we were good and then we hurt them. So I think it will be about us if we are in our best performance, I believe and I know we can hurt them.”
Arsenal ‘need to be focused’ urges Caldentey
Arsenal’s league form isn’t up to their usual high standards at the moment, with them sitting fourth in the table, eight points behind league leaders Manchester City.
Slegers reflects on the squad’s recent form, “We acknowledge that it’s difficult, but we also know the strength in the team and I think we know what we’re capable of and the strengths that we have in the squad.
“Of course, again, we’ve analysed the game and picked out the details, but if you tell the story of the block, Leicester is a good performance, it’s a good result. Chelsea, I think it’s two top teams going against each other. I think we dominate parts of the game and we wanted more from a results perspective,” she reflects.
“Bayern is a good first half against them, a top opponent second half,” Slegers adds. “We are of course very critical of ourselves. We give it away and there’s a lot of games and then a short turnaround into a North London derby. And yeah, if you look at what we concede from an XG perspective, it’s close to nothing, but we don’t create enough in that game.
“We’ve seen that if you compare it to last year and how easy it was for us to score goals and the type of opportunities we created, that’s a little bit harder for us at the moment.”
Caldentey analyses recent Arsenal performances through a positive lens, highlighting, “We had a really hard block, but at the same time, it’s the kind of games we want to play because they are the biggest ones.
“I think our learning is that we need to be focused the 90 minutes and that when we are good, we can beat anyone. But at the same time, when we are not fully focused, and the other things can hurt us as well. I think we need to take it positive because it’s gone and we can’t change it anymore. But we can improve and we are reviewing our games.
“What we can do better in the high press, how we can attack better with the ball, and hopefully, like, we can show tomorrow what we want to do,” she concludes.
Arsenal play Real Madrid tonight at 20:00 BST. The game will be streamed live on Disney+.
