golden blonde¹

someone said it was non-alcoholic!

march 05, 2023
the entire week leading up to the conti cup final, elena pushed herself.

she knew that it was go time.

she was accustomed to winning trophies at barcelona. it was in their blood.

winning was in her blood.

but arsenal had been in a bit of a trophy drought as of late. the spaniard was determined to end that drought this weekend.

jonas had made a big emphasis on the left wing, where elena would be behind caitlin for the game.

"we're going to attack this right side, every time okay?" jonas had said in their pre-game talk.

elena had known since the last time they had played chelsea. for whatever reason, caitlin looked a bit jet lagged when they played in the fa cup against chelsea and the chances she had created were lackluster.

arsenal had reverted back to the traditonal 4-3-3 for this game, abandoning the 3-4-3 that had worked against manchester city (sort of, barely).

it hadn't really.

elena didn't really enjoy playing in a 3-4-3, so to say that elena preferred the 4-3-3 was an understatement.

manu would be in goal as usual, with noelle, leah, rafa and steph being the four in the back. elena would be starting beside kim and lia in midfield, with the scottish midfielder playing more of an attacking role while lia and elena were the holding duo. lastly, katie, caitlin and stina would be the front line for today.

elena was feeling more than confident, they had really good film sessions the past week and she knew exactly what she needed to do today, help caitlin down the left flank.

shouldn't be too difficult, right?

as it turns out, it wasn't difficult at all.

they do struggle with a bit of... defensive aspects early in the game.

to be entirely truthful, it's a total collapse on the right hand side.

chelsea get early possession straight from kickoff and they attack the arsenal box with crosses.

really, it's no surprise that it's guro reiten's cross that ends up at sam kerr's head.

some would say it was inevitable.

elena would say that arsenal were just not prepared for such a quick attack; an embarassing thing to say, but it was the truth.

their defensive structure wasn't to be taken seriously at all and chelsea recognized that.

it was even more of an uphill battle now that they were down 0-1, but that just invigorated the players even more to push harder.

they wanted this trophy, and bad.

they didn't let chelsea's early goal hinder their gameplan, if anything, they knew they just had to tweak it a bit, to be more defensive and obtain possession more than they had to.

as the first half progresses, elena comes to a realization that is utterly hilarious.

in the beginning, it's perisset that is playing right back, but apparently, emma hayes isn't too happy with her performance. by the 15th minute, it's niamh charles that comes to play right back instead.

arsenal's first goal comes from a bit of effort and a bit of luck. lia does wonderfully to get the ball to stina, who draws a foul.

kim little was truly one of the greatest footballing minds elena had ever met; she restarted play quickly to elena, who found loads of space in front of her to dribble up.