Renee Slegers says that the contrast between Stina Blackstenius and Alessia Russo is the key to their partnership. Blackstenius has scored in each of her last four appearances, while Russo scored a hat-trick in the North London derby on Saturday as well as a fine goal in the Champions League quarter-final first leg against Chelsea last week.
‘They are really good players. It’s really important to us. I think they’re they’re quite different as players and that’s why they make such a good fit. You sometimes say opposites attract. I think they are quite far away from each other.
‘That’s what makes them such a good partnership because they want to do different things on the pitch and they give each other that space and opportunity to do those different things. So it brings a dynamic in a team that’s really good for us and they both can play the 9 role.
‘We have other players that can play the 9 role, Less has been playing at 10, we have other players that are really good in the ten, so again, it just comes back to the quality that we have in the squad and the different options that we have with different attributes that we can use in different moments in the season or in a game.
‘It’s just a luxury position for us as coaches to be really detailed with those decisions, how to start, how to finish, what does the opposition do, what do we want to do? And so forth, that partnership has been great for us.’
Slegers has kept the public guessing about her goalkeeper selection for Wednesday night after Daphne van Domselaar was reintroduced between the sticks for the North London derby. Arseblog News quizzed Slegers on the decision to add two further goalkeepers in January, with Naomi Williams recalled from loan at Bristol City and Bara Votikova joining on loan.
‘We were in five competitions at that moment, now we are in three. It was important for us to have a big setup, not only on the match day, but our training environment is very important to us as well. So for the team, it’s important to have goalkeepers, we do a lot in training with split practices and we spit off in small groups at the end of sessions.
‘So that’s important for us to have high quality in everything we do. But it’s also important for the people that are with us and that we that we offer them the absolute best opportunity to develop and contribute. So that’s also part of the decision, there’s quite some things going into this. But we’re really happy with the setup that we have from goalkeeper perspective.’