Three conclusions from Arsenal Women’s pre-season tour of DC

I am sitting at Washington Dulles with some time on my hands before I can check my luggage, so here are some conclusions from the tour in DC (I will be at Southampton on Saturday covering the final pre-season friendly too).

Suffering was part of the plan

The conditions in DC were very hot and humid for both games. I was still in London for the Washington Spirit game but I can tell you that by the time kickoff rolled around for Arsenal v Chelsea, the sun was brutal. In the press box I elected to stand simply because I didn’t want the sweat to pool too much on my body and I was just stationary.

The conditions were not a surprise, DC is always oppressively hot in August. I spoke to Jonas one-on-one twice and sat in two of his press conferences and on every occasion, he referenced the need for a fast start to the season. Arsenal start early with Champions League qualifiers and there is an excellent chance they are going to have to play Atletico Madrid just to go to the playoff round.

They open the WSL season against Manchester City and play Chelsea on match day four. Arsenal cannot win anything in the opening month of the season but they could lose everything. They have to be in peak form from the get go and playing two tough opponents in difficult conditions was in service of that aim.

Arsenal are also working on a slightly more patient model of playing out from the back. I asked Jonas Eidevall about this after the Chelsea game and he confirmed what I saw, a slower, more provocative style of playing out to tempt the opponent onto them.

‘Yes it is fair to say we have been doing that and working on that. I think we were quite good on that last Spring as well and it has been part of the team’s development. We have looked quite solid with that at times in pre-season but there are also times that we move the ball quite well. We still lack a bit of clarity on when to change the point of the attack and to recognise where the free player is.

‘We lacked consistency in giving those passes and making those decisions, sometimes we did it really well and sometimes we took the wrong decisions and we need to learn from that.’ My suspicion at the moment is that Arsenal might see this as an option to try to snake charm low defensive blocks away from their penalty areas. It was hit and miss in the two games in DC but that is what pre-season is for, to try new things in a consequence free environment. Arsenal wanted an uncomfortable pre-season and they got one.

There are (broadly) two markets in the US for Arsenal Women to woo

Again, please appreciate how broadly I am speaking here, but having spent a week in DC, some of it around the women’s team and then a day watching the men’s team in Franklin Hall on Saturday, it strikes me that the US market is split into two factions where Arsenal Women are concerned.

Clearly, there is an enormous amount of support for Arsenal Men in the US. I remain so taken aback on my two visits now by the passion and the sheer number of people who organise their lives around Arsenal out here. Clearly when the men’s team come here, they arrive with a product that is far in advance of the domestic soccer product. That isn’t the case with the women’s team.

The US is, it is fair to say, the spiritual home of women’s soccer. So there is a big women’s soccer market independent of Arsenal. The NWSL gets good crowds, the USWNT has a lot of interest and the availability of Arsenal Women games to broadcast since 2019 (the FA Player remains undefeated as the WSL’s most significant innovation) has built an Arsenal Women specific audience here.

Tobin Heath’s arrival in 2021 drove a huge amount of interest towards Arsenal and right-back Emily Fox is from Ashburn in Virgina, just a short drive from DC. This is a market that does not need to be convinced to watch women’s soccer. Instead, the challenge is probably to provide a superior product to the one that is already here.

The advantage for Arsenal Women is that they can play a local team like Washington Spirit and expect a very tough opponent in the way that the men’s team would not experience if they played an MLS team. But it is also probably a market where the women’s team needs to work a little harder.

The other ‘market’ of course, is for people who support the men’s team and have been wooed by the expansion of the Premier League and getting them to take an interest in Arsenal Women too. Again, there is little to no cynicism, for want of a better word, for fans Stateside who have been exposed to women’s soccer and will know exactly who Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan are.

I watched the Washington Spirit v KC Current NWSL match- the first game of the double header ahead of Arsenal v Chelsea at Audi Field. The Current goal was scored by Temwa Chawinga, who Arsenal wanted to sign in the summer of 2022 and set up by Debinha, who Arsenal came close to signing in January 2023. An MLS game would be unlikely to offer up a similar triviality with Arsenal Men! It is an interesting and, arguably, more divergent marketing challenge for the women’s team here than it is the men’s.

And for those who don’t know, some of us had the privilege of watching the likes of Kelly Smith, Rachel Yankey & Alex Scott in the US growing up in the 2000s & Kim a decade later, so it’s been nice to have those club connections continued/ updated over here etc as time goes on🙂

— hallie (@hals517) August 26, 2024

Mariona is a wide forward

Earlier in the summer I speculated that Mariona might play more centrally for Arsenal in the number 10 position. Nobody has entirely nailed that spot since Eidevall was appointed save for Frida Maanum’s good run of form in 2022-23. Mariona’s signing coincided pretty neatly with Vivianne Miedema’s departure too.

To be clear, Mariona’s position was always speculation on my part, it was never sourced information. But I was very much told that Arsenal wanted to introduce a little more trickery and guile into the attack as well as some youth. That has arrived in the shape of Rosa Kafaji, but as a central player, not as a young wide player as I thought.

The TL;DR is that Arsenal added the two profiles I expected them to, but I thought Mariona might play as a 10 and that Arsenal would then buy a young, tricky winger. Instead, Mariona is going to be considered more of a left-sided wide forward and Kafaji will play centrally.

I asked Kafaji about her position at Arsenal following the Chelsea game. ‘I think I was brought here especially for the 10 position…I am a player that takes risks but the reward is high too.’ And I asked Jonas Eidevall about Mariona’s primary position too.

‘When I have seen Mariona at her best in the national team and for Barcelona has been coming off the left and having that freedom to move between the lines and find the pocket. I know last season she played quite a bit in the 9 position and she can manage those positions, which is good, but the main idea is that she plays as a wide forward and having that freedom and flexibility within our structure to move around from there.’

I wrote a few weeks ago about why these are such interesting moves given that both of these players, in different ways, break free from structure. Mariona drifts into spaces without the ball and looks to make connections. Kafaji is a player who will frustrate on occasion losing the ball, but she takes risks and tries penetrative (difficult) passes and actions.

Arsenal can certainly do with this type of player and it is no surprise she has caught the eye on this tour. It isn’t just her quality, it is the fact that she is so different and Arsenal need their attacking play to look different this season. You need drums, you need bass, you need rhythm. But you do also need someone capable of a virtuoso guitar solo.