_After Arsenal Women paraded the Champions League trophy in front of their fans at Emirates Stadium, Steph Catley spoke to a few members of the press. With thanks to Football London’s Tom Canton for the transcription._
**How are you feeling?**
It’s pretty overwhelming to be honest. That was insane. I’ve never felt like that in my life. This whole experience has been what you dream of as a kid when you decide to be a footballer. To do it with this club, it’s everything I could have ever dreamed of.
**It sounds overwhelming, but I guess how cool is it to see all the fans there?**
I knew there would be a few, but seeing the floods of people that are here, they’re so loud and they’re so invested, like they are every time they come and watch us. It’s just a privilege to play for them and I’m so glad we could bring home a trophy for them.
**How’s the 36 hours been since that final also went? What were the emotions like?**
It’s the biggest high you can imagine, winning a Champions League. We started at the very start of the tournament, had some rough games, had some great games, but I think the momentum that we built towards the end of the tournament, we knew we could do something special. But to actually go there and do it and win, it’s hard to put into words. It was the best moment of my career by far, something I’ll remember forever.
**Has it sunk in yet?**
I don’t think so. I think it’s hard. Sometimes I just look down at this, I’ve been wearing it non-stop for however long it’s been, however many hours, but we say it to each other a bit, we won the Champions League and then it sinks in for a second. It’s honestly hard to put into words, but like I said, it’s the best moment of my career. I’m so, so happy.
**Now you going to taste of winning? You probably want more of it, I guess.**
I think that’s the thing, you win once and you’re like, now we have to defend it. We have to stay Champions League winners. There’s so much we want to win in the league. We want an FA Cup, we want the League Cup again, we want the League. We feel like we could have done better this year, the way we built up momentum, but this is something amazing to build on for next season. We’ve got a taste of the ultimate success, so we definitely want more.
**It’s a long way from Melbourne, I guess. Growing up where women’s football wasn’t a big thing as a kid, how do you compress all this?**
It is hard to put into words and it’s hard to think that back then, playing in Australia, I was an AFL nut. I lived in Melbourne, so football wasn’t ever really spoken about. It’s not in the papers, it’s not on the news. In my heart, I always knew I wanted to be a footballer and making a Champions League final and then going on to win it. I was so emotional yesterday and it’s a dream come true. I’m far from home, but I feel my roots very deeply and I’m very proud of my story and where I’ve come from. To do this, I could never have imagined.
**And you’re back into camp soon?**
Yeah, I got my flight pushed, I was supposed to be on a flight today. We were, us three. But we’re on tomorrow morning, so we’ll get in I think Wednesday morning. Straight back into camp, that’s football, it just keeps moving. We’ve made sure we’ve celebrated and it’s not something I’ll come down from for a while.
**Steph, can I ask you about Renee as well? To come in midway through a season and take Arsenal to where you’ve taken yourselves to. Can you pinpoint the key thing that Renee has changed or done that’s taken you to this level?**
I think she’s just brought belief to every individual and to us as a squad. I think if you look at our squad, we’re so, so talented, we’ve got everything there we need to beat anyone in the world. But we just weren’t really putting it together and I think she brings a belief in the individual that allows them to express themselves. We trust our structure and we trust it enough that individuals can make decisions and back themselves on the field and the rest of the team will follow. And I think that’s sort of been the key. You’ve seen individual performances less throughout the year. Chloe coming in, Mariano, people who like to express themselves are allowed to because our structure is so good. I think just the way she speaks to us, the communication, the interactions that you have with her every day is so positive. She believes in us so much that you can’t help but play for her and play for the badge and each other. I think you saw that especially yesterday. I think the performance in itself was just pure heart.
**How do you balance the ambition and what people pick on now but also trusting what it is that got you here?**
Yeah, I think it’s a balance. I think there’s so much that you learn as a footballer every single day. I think the Villa game, the Brighton game where we conceded, I think it was nine goals. And I think if that didn’t happen, maybe we wouldn’t have had the result we did yesterday because we learnt so much from those situations. And conceding those goals, we learnt when we needed to tighten up, we learned our weaknesses. And yeah, I think those are important lessons to hang on to where we had a good performance and we’ve obviously won the ultimate goal this season. But next year we want to go up another level, we want to take those lessons, we want to build and we want to be even better than we were this year. So I think combining it all together will hopefully be a beast next year. That’s the goal.