Jonas Eidevall spoke to the media following our draw with Juventus at the Allianz Stadium, fielding questions on clinical finishing, our home leg against Juventus in December, and whether players' game schedule is too demanding.
on whether we could have been more clinical in the final third...
I think we could have won given the chances that we created, but sometimes football is like that. I'm happy with the performance, I think we came from a really tough game against Manchester United. I think we have a tough situation in the squad with injuries.
I'm extremely proud of the players in the team, and the way that we came here and got back to our way of playing against a very tough team like Juventus. I think we created enough to win the game. But that shows our performance was good, and that is something that we can build on for the Everton game.
on his decision to play Jordan Nobbs on the wing and Frida Maanum as an 8...
Of course, you have to think about how the game is going to be. Juventus are very good at overloading in the right zones, they have some really good wingers in Bonansea and Beerensteyn, so you need to have central midfielders in the way that we play that are able to provide cover for the full backs constantly.
Frida is one of our players who can run the most and cover the most distance and that gave us that option. Frida has been playing so well in the number 10 position so of course, you see how we're gonna lose her offensive qualities. I didn't think we did that. I think we got some really, really good moments of her taking space with the ball. We can see that she's playing with a lot of self-confidence: turning and facing forward with the ball - so her performance pleased me a lot today.
on whether he's proud of our team's ability to respond to going a goal down...
Yes. It should give all of our supporters a lot of pride as well. One of the fundamentals - and we only have three fundamentals - one of them is 100%. And that's no matter the result. No matter the situation. We have an obligation to always play 100% and always compete in every second of the game. We're doing that and I'm proud of that.
on what learnings there will be for the home leg against Juventus in December...
It's a bit too early to say. Of course, it's gonna be a different game. I think we're gonna get some players into the squad. Like I said before, I have lots of respect for Juventus. I think they showed today as well that they are a very good European team. There is a reason why there are not many teams that have been able to win here at the Allianz Stadium.
I'm happy with our performance. I told the players after, I don't think we can expect to create many more scoring opportunities in a game like this. So I think we did well in that regard.
on Vivianne Miedema's performance after her personal break...
Very pleased with her goal tonight. I think it's always a balance between freshness and having continuity in training and playing. You obviously need to strike that balance. You can see that Viv was really fighting hard today together with the team on the pitch and that's what we need. You could see in tough moments in the game that we kept thinking positively, we kept thinking next action, we kept thinking team first and that was really pleasing to see.
I really think it's something that we need to consider in women's football when we see the calendar - to see how we put the players' health first here. They are constantly going between really competitive games at club level onto an international level. It has been taking up a lot of my thinking time because my gut feeling says that we're not creating something that is good for the players at the moment.
So my idea off the top of my head was that in the calendar, you should have protected periods for the players where no club football and no national team football should be played. Because at the moment, you end up with players that barely have any vacation at all. And it's consecutive year after year after year. So it's really fine that we're going to play more competitive games - that's great. But let's create a calendar that allows for the players to also recover, so we can have quality.
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