I think I have described this scene a few times before. But after Arsenal lost to Paris FC in the Champions League qualifying round in Linkoping in 2023, I waited in the mixed zone to speak to Jonas Eidevall. Often the mixed zone is situated between the player dressing rooms and the team bus so, essentially, players have to walk past.
They are not obliged to stop of course and I had no intention of asking any player to do so on this occasion. I waited pensively for Eidevall after a gutting defeat and the players walked past first. I didn’t really know how to look as the players passed me. I was hurting (not as much as they were most likely), I didn’t want to stare, I didn’t want to look away. I wanted to look supportive and sympathetic but…that’s complex to emote with your facial muscles.
Katie McCabe walked past and I have known Katie for a number of years. She simply puffed out her cheeks as she walked past. Just under two years later, she walked past again in the (much busier) mixed zone in Lisbon, a bottle of Heineken in hand. On this occasion, she reached over and embraced and patted me on the back so hard that I think I bruised a rib.
Those two small interactions, for me, totally symbolised the crazy journey Arsenal embarked on from being eliminated in the 2023-24 Champions League preliminary rounds to winning the entire competition a season later. Her, ahem, ‘singing’ on stage at the Champions League trophy parade will go down in Arsenal Women folklore. I don’t really need to tell you anything you can’t see for yourself with Katie, the player.
I don’t remember her getting a single injury. Even when she left a Champions League quarter-final against Bayern Munich on crutches, she not only played four days later against Manchester City, but she rattled home the winning goal with a trademark McCabe golaco. She still had the hole in her boot from the (accidental) challenge that had seen her confined to crutches 96 hours previous.
HIGHLIGHTS | Arsenal vs Manchester City (2-1) | WSL | McCabe with a stunning winner!
‘My foot has been in ice for the last four days trying to get the swelling down. It’s well padded up but it still works! You can actually see the hole in the boot from the stud,’ she told us after the game. McCabe celebrated that goal by running to the bench. Arsenal endured an unprecedented injury crisis and she wanted to share the goal, and the moment, with her teammates on the bench and who were sat behind it because they were injured.
‘I wanted to celebrate with everyone because it’s all about the team and the squad. We’ve stayed together and I think you could see that in the celebration.’ McCabe’s skills as a warrior, as someone who played hard and worked harder, are renowned. But her skills as a footballer are hugely underrated. She played in every single outfield position for the club.
She reinterpreted the left-back role based on the differing demands of three managers in Joe Montemurro, Jonas Eidevall and Renee Slegers. All three managers have very different ideas about how they want their left-back to operate. McCabe was a lock in the starting line-up under all three. Against teams of the calibre of Chelsea and Lyon in the Champions League this season, she stepped in at centre-half and didn’t miss a beat.
When I asked Renee Slegers about McCabe being asked to play centre-half for the first time in her career in a Champions League quarter-final, Slegers referred to her unflappable attitude, ‘At halftime, both Aaron and me, go to her and ask if she has any questions about the role or the game plan and that position. She said, ‘no questions.’ So she steps out and just does the role- she’s fantastic.
‘She’s such an intelligent player, has been playing at the club for so long, knows Arsenal, knows the players around her and she just picks up the role. She should be really proud of this performance.’ Ultimately those performances at centre-half, I believe, caused a rethink from the club on whether she should be offered a new contract.
McCabe has not been in the leadership group this season, with Little, Williamson, Catley, Wubben-Moy and Russo the five players in the rejigged leadership group. The writing has been on the wall for her departure for a while. It is true that McCabe stepped over the line at times. Her red card at Stamford Bridge last season after Arsenal had just conceded a game changing penalty was especially regrettable and not looked well upon.
That is sometimes the price you pay for having players as committed and durable as Katie. Despite this demotion of sorts and the fact that her future appeared to be sealed until very late in the season, did you detect any downturn in the commitment and the quality of this player? I will let you answer that question because you don’t need me to tell you.
Katie was the first Arsenal player to get a chant from the supporters and it’s a real shame that circumstances meant she could not get the goodbye that she deserved at the Emirates on Wednesday. Supporters will be annoyed that the late u-turn on her contract situation led to that Emirates goodbye being denied her.
Arsenal are losing one of their greatest ever players, one of its finest custodians and someone who sweated every drop for every single second they played for the club. Again, all I can add in this piece to everything you have seen on the pitch is how accommodating she has been to us and this site over the years- and most importantly, to you, our audience.
I interviewed her after an FA Cup victory over Liverpool in 2022. It was the 20th anniversary of Arseblog which, touchingly, she knew and she commented on. ‘I know it’s Arseblog’s 20th anniversary and I wanted to say congratulations to you guys and everything you do for us, it’s absolutely brilliant, you put us on the map. All those years I have seen you at games and you guys have traveled here today again and we really appreciate it. And you’re based in Dublin too, that’s why I like yous!’
It’s fair to say that affection was mutual, with Andrew chiming in many times with his admiration. ‘She’s from just up the road here in Dublin, and in the long, long absence of an Irish magician with a magical left foot in the men’s team, I’m hanging my hat on her!’
And for many years, all Arsenal Women fans hung their hats on Katie McCabe. She was the constant and it’s not going to be the same without her.