Jonas Eidevall feels that our post-season trip to Australia is further evidence of our place at the forefront of women's football.
We’ll be heading Down Under in May to face an A-League Allstars Women's team in Melbourne, in what is the first time the league has selected a women’s side, and we’ve been selected to be their opponents on a prestigious occasion.
And Jonas feels it highlights that we’re now one of the biggest draws in the women’s game, and can’t wait to see how his squad fares.
Reflecting on the news, he said: “Let’s acknowledge the great thing that it’s commercially viable for us to do a post-season trip like this. That shows the club’s investment but also the popularity that the team has, not only in the UK but across the globe.
“I was lucky enough to experience the World Cup there last summer, and you can see what enthusiasm and interest women's football has in Australia. It's great that we can continue to build and this is another opportunity to do that both for women’s football in general, but also Arsenal as a specific club.”
“It is now about making the most out of that opportunity. That means that for some players it will be the right thing to go, and for others it will not be the right thing if we talk about it from a loading and welfare perspective. We need to make good and deliberate decisions on that.”
The game also gives our international players an opportunity to maintain match sharpness ahead of linking up with the national teams before some crunch Euro 2025 qualifiers in the summer.
And while Jonas will weigh up which players will travel, he is keen to see some of our younger players get a taste of this incredible opportunity as he begins to turn his thoughts towards the 2024/25 campaign.
“It's going to be a great opportunity for us to see our first-year professionals get experience of travelling and playing with us,” he added. “We really need to grab that opportunity to invest time in these players, in combination with needing to have a strong team going out to showcase Arsenal to fans in another continent and the way we want to play football. It’s really about finding that balance and I’m in high hopes that we can do that.”
“We play our last competitive game on May 17 and the normal thing would have been to go on holiday after that. But then there is an international period of fixtures that I think starts on May 27, where they are playing competitive games. So, it was a clear wish from both the players and association teams to say can we not go on holiday in that period to help the players prepare.
“If there wouldn't have been international fixtures, I think the decision might have been very different in order to plan our training and matches.”
Hear everything Jonas had to say in his pre-Aston Villa press conference
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