Swedish coach’s side edged Chelsea in WSL encounter and leans into superstitions to try to land trophy on SundayJonas Eidevall has just given away his biggest superstition two days from his first FA Cup final, at Wembley against Emma Hayes’s Chelsea. “If Emma sees this she will probably buy a thousand black cats with the money Chelsea have and send them all over our ground,” Arsenal’s manager says. “I’m going to be invaded by black cats.”It is said with a big laugh but Eidevall has not finished. “I don’t let any black cats cross my way, ever – I don’t harm any black cats either, it’s important to say. But I have sometimes driven around, rerouting for a couple of...
In women’s football, where you’re not used to big crowds, mindset can be the difference between winning and losingFrom when I was young the FA Cup final has always been the key date in the diary for women’s football. When I won it for the first time in 2005, in front of 8,500 people at Upton Park, it was long established as the marquee day for the women’s game, and it’s just kept growing since then. When Manchester City play West Ham at teatime on Saturday they are expecting a crowd in excess of 50,000.It’s a very special occasion, and playing in it has always been a huge privilege, but dealing with that kind of crowd at Wembley is a...
The clubs head into their Champions League semis hampered by the demands of moving from a summer to winter seasonChelsea’s manager, Emma Hayes, is no stranger to pressure. She led the club to the WSL1 and FA Cup double in 2015 and won the 2017 Spring Series. Yet this season the pressure has mounted in a very different way – and that is not a reference to her pregnancy with twins. Making the switch from a summer to a winter season has taken its toll.With Chelsea fighting for trophies on three fronts, the business end of the season has become brutally congested. The switch was designed to fit better with the international calendar and help teams to maintain momentum in...