Jonas Eidevall: WSL clubs have achieved Champions League wins 'despite' schedule
By Ali Rampling
Arsenal manager Jonas Eidevall has admitted that recent big wins for WSL sides in the Champions League have been achieved 'despite' the league's congested fixture schedule.
The Gunners comprehensively thrashed reigning European champions Lyon 5-1 in France in their group stage opener last Wednesday, while Chelsea recorded a noteworthy 1-0 win over last season's beaten semi-finalists PSG the following evening.
The two teams were then in WSL action over the weekend with respective victories over Liverpool and Brighton, and both face another Champions League group stage clash this week, meaning the pair will have each played three games in seven days.
Having been similarly critical of the league's schedule last season, Eidevall called on the WSL to work together with clubs in order to give English sides the best possible chance of succeeding in Europe.
"Those results were despite the system and not because of the system," the coach said of Arsenal and Chelsea's recent Champions League wins.
The Arsenal boss used the example of the Eredivisie and Ajax as the model to follow. Ajax did not play a league match in between their two Champions League qualifiers against Arsenal this season, while the Gunners took on rivals Tottenham in the north London derby the weekend in between.
"Just to see the other teams that we are playing in Europe; when we played the qualifiers for Ajax, they didn't have a weekend game in between the two games because the Dutch association, they want to prioritise to see if they can go into the group stages," he said.
"They know that their players will get more competitive games, so they chose to do it like that.
"What I'm looking for is to have that discussion with the clubs and across the league to see how do we give the clubs that compete in Europe the best conditions in order to achieve results that are good both short term but also long term for the league and the clubs that do it. But we don't have those discussions, and I think that is not good enough."
Arsenal continue their Champions League campaign with the visit of Zurich on Thursday night.