Eidevall on Russo's 'sky-high potential'

Jonas Eidevall was full of praise for Alessia Russo during his pre-Manchester United press conference on Thursday.

Our No 23 is set to face her former club on Friday night for the first time since joining us in the summer and our head coach believes that she could make the difference. 

"I think Alessia has a lot of different qualities and what might be the unique thing is the combination of these qualities," Eidevall told the media. "Sometimes you have a forward that is really hard working, really loyal, works extremely hard in defence and you can live with that player not being so good technically, for example, or not being a great finisher.

"Then sometimes you have a player that is a great finisher, but you don't get exactly 100 per cent in defence for it and maybe you can live with that for the team as well because of what it can provide with you in offence. Sometimes that player is really good technical when there is not a player around her, so it's not any duels, but once it's a duel, that player starts to lose the ball, but you can live with that because the moment that she isn't in a duel, they provide so much for the team.

"Alessia has all of these qualities. She can work hard in defence, she's clever in defence, but she can also score goals. She's an excellent finisher both with her head and with her feet. She's a technical player, but she can also control the duels and be really physical and protect the ball.

"It's very, very seldom that you see players that can have all the aspects of it. Usually in football, you have to choose between some of it and that has to be an active choice. But the standout with Alessia and why I think her potential is sky high is that she has all the faces onto it. That also means she has to develop all the faces for it, but she has all of it and that's quite unique."