The Arsenal midfielder Kim Little described Thursday evening’s 4-0 defeat by Barcelona as a “slap in the face”. After a near flawless start to the domestic campaign and only one defeat overall — by Barcelona in the reverse fixture — Arsenal had been riding a wave of success under their new manager, Jonas Eidevall.
But this week they hit a bump in the road. On Sunday they lost 3-0 to Chelsea in the FA Cup final, when they were convincingly beaten without a single shot on target.
There could have been no harder opponents than European champions Barcelona to play at the Emirates four days later. It is no disgrace to lose to a team on a 17-match winning run, widely expected to retain the Champions League, and who have the Ballon d’Or winner, Alexia Putellas, and runner-up, Jennifer Hermoso, in a star-studded squad.
“It can be incredibly helpful,” Little said. “It really allows you to see where the level is at, and where we need to aim for. In that sense it’s a real kind of honest slap in the face for us, to kind of take a step back and look at ourselves as a team of individuals and say, if we want to improve and get closer to Barcelona, we need to do a lot of things better.”
It is no coincidence that the two defeats Arsenal have suffered have come against the teams that reached the Champions League final last season. For much of the year, Arsenal can ease through domestic features against teams with smaller budgets and poorer players. Then a true barometer of your form appears and it feels more jarring.
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Eidevall has previously described the difficulties in preparing for a game against Barcelona; no one in the Women’s Super League provides a similar challenge, as Chelsea found to their detriment when they too lost 4-0 in last year’s final.
In its simplest form, Barcelona do to England’s leading teams, what they do to the rest of the WSL. It has led to Eidevall suggesting he would need to design specific training exercises to face the counterpress that is so key to Barcelona’s hold on opponents.
“When you haven’t been exposed to that [press] before, it’s a shock,” he said. “That happened to us in the first game, this time we knew what was waiting for us. We did it a bit better but you can see if we want to take it to the next level then we need to design training exercises in order to be exposed to that as often as possible.
“Some things are purely tactical and some things are just about doing on a habitual, instinctive level and counterpressing is one of them,” he added. “The way they counterpress it requires so much from you to be able to play out of it even if you are aware that the spaces are there. That will be a key for anyone playing against Barça. They have such a good understanding, they are an inspiration for anyone working in a team sport.”
As though to illustrate the issues Arsenal have in bridging that final gap to silverware, tomorrow they will face Leicester City, who are rooted to the bottom of the WSL table, with eight losses from eight matches so far.
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Arsenal will dominate possession, shots, and face little defensive pressure. They will almost certainly win handsomely. But it is why you will not see Eidevall relaxing in his technical area. He will be demanding more of his players, because this week has proved winning domestically is not enough, and the gap to the best in the world will not be bridged overnight.
