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McCabe, Russo and Blackstenius react to Uwcl win

Having collected their medals and lifted the Women's Champions League trophy high into the Lisbon sky, our players have been coming to terms with the fact they've made history by becoming European champions.

Our 1-0 success over Barcelona thanks to Stina Blackstenius' goal saw us add our name to the roll of honour for the second time, but the first for this group of players who ended an 18-year wait for continental glory.

Post-match, they chatted to TNT Sports about their feelings about the game, the achievement and much more:

Katie McCabe: “I’m just in disbelief to be honest - no actually I do believe it because we suffered together today. Barcelona threw absolutely everything at us, and we kept together. We rode the storm, and our gamechangers came on and made sure we got runs in behind, and then Stina got the goal.

“It’s unbelievable to give this to our fans, our family, the players that have been here for so long, the players that have come up behind you. It's been an unbelievable day for the club.

“The word underdogs got thrown around during the week but we deserved to be in this final. We’ve been in it since the very start having to qualify for the tournament, and we had some difficult results in the group stage but we bounced back in the knockout rounds and we kept going. We were resilient and persistent. We were ruthless in front of goal and we needed just one chance today and Stina took it.”

Alessia Russo: “We worked so hard and it just feels amazing. We had to suffer a lot, and they're a top side. We knew coming into this game that we'd have to suffer, and there would be moments where we wouldn't have the ball, and we'd have to be content with not having the ball.

“But we knew that our gamechangers would come on. Stina, Beth, Lina, Lotte, our squad just wanted it so badly.

“We knew we could [win the tournament]. We believed since the moment our Champions League journey started, we knew that we had the capabilities. We knew that we could be good enough, it was just about going and doing it, and we've done it.

“Our supporters are amazing, literally every single game, home, away, cold, whatever, it doesn't matter, they're there. I think we might be celebrating with them at the Emirates on Monday!”

Read more Join our UWCL winners celebration in N5 on Monday!

Stina Blackstenius: “I just can't believe it, all of it. It's such a team performance from the very beginning until the very end and I just can't believe we won the Champions League and we get to celebrate it.

“I'm so happy I could give a goal today. They said I should try to run in behind and try to stretch them. But this is, once again, a big, big team performance. I'm so proud of our journey and how we came here and how we managed the game today as well.”

Kelly Smith: “Renee, Aaron, and our coaching staff spent a hard two weeks putting the gameplan together, but the players absolutely nailed it today. I thought we had the better chances in the first half. Obviously Barcelona would have come out stronger, turned it up a notch, but wow, what a squad this is.

“My nerves were awful. I didn’t play in the final in 2007, so I'm suspended, but I had the same feelings, sweaty palms, dry mouth, but wow, this team is amazing. There’s more to come from them next year.

“We knew what we had to do to come in. Obviously, Barcelona are an amazing team, we respect them, but we really believed that we could win if we were all on our a-game today and we were.

“We’ve been doing a lot of individual finishing, basic stuff, finishing across the goal, left foot, right foot, working in four or five-minute blocks, just individualised stuff. It's paid off - we've won the Champions League.”

Read more Arsenal win 2024/25 Women's Champions League

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