Arsenal women overcome adversity to win Champions League under new manager Renee Slegers and set the stage for future success.

In the summer of 2024, the Arsenal women’s team lost its record goal-scorer, Vivianne Miedema, on a free transfer to Manchester City. The departure of the club’s talismanic forward, widely considered one of the world’s greatest strikers, was followed five months later by the resignation of manager Jonas Eidevall after a string of poor results.

For Arsenal, statistically the most successful club in English women’s football and among the most decorated in the world game, this was unfamiliar territory. The Gunners, after all, have won the most doubles and trebles in English history, completed a record seven unbeaten league seasons, and assembled a staggering, unrivalled cabinet of trophies. The club has also played a significant, often pioneering, role in the rise of women’s football in England.  

Inspired response

So, the situation the team found itself in last October demanded an inspired response. Renee Slegers, Eidevall’s assistant, was promoted as manager on an interim basis — not a particularly imaginative decision on the face of it, but the club knew what it was doing. This wasn’t a stopgap arrangement but an educated punt, and she was appointed permanently in January.

The former Dutch midfielder, whose playing career was cut short by injury, had a reputation for being an intelligent student of the game. She, moreover, had a longstanding bond with Arsenal, having joined its academy as a 17-year-old in 2006. She had made a senior appearance by the time the club became the first English side to win the women’s Champions League in 2007. 

Eighteen years later, Slegers steered the team through a spectacular European campaign, winning Arsenal’s second Champions League title. It remains the only English team to claim the prestigious continental trophy. The side built its confidence from come-from-behind wins over Real Madrid and eight-time champion Lyon in the knockout rounds before laying low the almighty Barcelona with a tactical masterclass in the final.

Stina Blackstenius’ 75th-minute goal, after coming on as a substitute, decided the title clash, producing an incredible finish to a rocky season for the Gunners. Arsenal was better organised, calmer, and executed a meticulously detailed gameplan to perfection against Barcelona, which was in its sixth final in seven years with a team widely regarded as the best in the world, featuring Ballon d’Or winners and influential midfielders Alexia Putellas and Aitana Bonmati.

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Slegers delivered an expert coaching performance, getting her substitutions right and devising a way to stop the highest scoring team in the tournament. “What we did so well was using all possible tools to speed the game up, to disrupt it, but to stay true to who we are. This was key to why we won,” Slegers said. “Barcelona are so good, but we tried to exploit weaknesses where we could. We said beforehand that the midfield of Barcelona was the engine, they are the conductors. So we wanted to stop them.”

Leah Williamson excelled at the back and veteran Kim Little and former Barca midfielder Mariona Caldentey in particular helped shut down the Catalans’ star-studded engine room

Slegers explained that Arsenal’s other players chipped in to flood the midfield and help their own central trio. She hailed her squad for pulling off everything they had planned. “[I’m] super proud, because you can have all these ideas in your head, show videos, use your tactics board, do it in training, but when the moment is actually there against an opponent that is so good, to then execute in the Champions League final, it says so much about the players,” she added.

Composure and courage

Captain Little said the team’s composure on the big stage was a consequence of focusing on the task and not the occasion. The team wanted to play without fear.

“It was fairly calm [in the dressing room] and that is one of the key things in these big games,” explained Little, who first joined the club a year after the 2007 triumph. “[Sleger’s team-talks were] task-focussed… small details on how we can stop them and some details around set pieces. I think that showed in our performance, how we approached the game was very controlled, with little pointers of the belief that we have and the courage we wanted to show.”

Defender Katie McCabe said it was all about the work rate the entire side put in. That started up front, where England striker Alessia Russo was a rock, using her size to win balls and keep the attack going. Russo had jumped ship from Manchester United to join the Arsenal project in 2023 on a free transfer, just months after the Red Devils turned down a then women’s world record £500,000 bid by the Gunners.

The rock of North London: Leah Williamson excelled at the back, snuffing out Barcelona’s attacking threat. A lifelong Gunners fan who was a mascot when Arsenal triumphed in 2007, Williamson said the 2025 win felt like “magic”.
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Russo struggled to match the hype of her arrival during a difficult first season, but Slegers has sparked a transformation in the striker’s fortunes — Russo was recently named as the football writers’ women’s player of the year. “Any player who plays for Arsenal understands that it’s a winning club, so ambitious, and wants to be at the top,” she said.

The squad had lunch in the week leading up to the final with the team that won the 2007 trophy, and Russo said it was a “special” experience. “We’re very aware of what’s come before us as well… we had lunch with some of the 2007 winners earlier in the week and to understand how much it still means to them is really special for us current players,” she said.

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In addition to the lunch, Slegers picked the brains of some important figures from that team, including coach Vik Akers and his assistant Emma Hayes, now manager of the United States’ women’s team. “I was at the club in 2007 so I have a little bit of an idea of where the club comes from, and I had lunch with Vic, and it was fantastic to see him bring the perspective. There’s so many people who have been investing for such a long time, I’m just a very small part of it…”

When magic delivers

England captain Williamson, a lifelong Gunners fan who joined the London club at the age of eight and was a mascot when Arsenal triumphed in 2007, said the win felt like “magic”. Standing in front of some 10,000 fans outside the club’s Emirates Stadium during the trophy celebration, she said, “I’ve been saying the whole time, ‘Do you believe in magic?’ I knew it was going to happen against Lyon, I knew it was going to happen in the final. And magic delivered.”

Arsenal is determined to use the triumph as a springboard for further success. Slegers said her players are hungry for more and the future could be “scary” — in a good way.

“There are signs that when you are a winning team, you struggle together, you suffer together, you find ways to win,” Slegers said. “I think there’s even more in this team, that’s the scary part of it, we achieved something enormous but I think there’s still more to give.”