Hello and welcome to the Arsenal Women's Ask Caste December edition. Well, there will be a couple of December editions, but let's not waste time with Admin.

Arsenal play Leon at Emirates Stadium on Thursday evening in the Women's Champions League. In a game that I think at the beginning, or at least when the draw was made for the Champions League, I think a lot of Arsenal fans probably thought that this would be a much more pivotal game for us than it is.

It is however a very very pivotal game for Leon in the group, probably more so than Arsenal, who just to remind you of the ramifications need to avoid a five gold defeat,

to definitely qualify for the quarterfinals. And if they get a point or more, they will be guaranteed top of the group with a game to go away at Zurich, where they should win anyway, quite frankly.

So we thought we'd have a look ahead to that game because probably, well, certainly Leon, the most successful women's team in history and Arsenal, probably up there with Wolfsburg as the second most successful women's team in the history of women's football.

But to discuss the game with us, the person who literally wrote the book on Leon Femini in the author of Olympic Leone's Queens of Europe, contributor to the London is blue Chelsea women podcast.

I don't think there's a lot of crossover in our respective audiences there, but nevertheless to talk about Leon, Abdullah Abdullah. Thanks so much for joining us.

And no, no, I appreciate it. Just another one another show I wanted to get off on the bucket list and finally finally get to be here, especially talking about Leon, I couldn't have asked for a better, better starting to into the into the podcast. I'm very glad to be here.

Absolutely, our pleasure. And listen, let's let's go back. I think I think Leon, obviously just like one of always one of the most fascinating women's teams, hence you writing a book about them, because of their success.

But I think last season, the 21, 22 season, probably the most interesting Leon season. So before we kind of look ahead to the game on Thursday night, I'd really like to rewind to last season and talk about them winning their Champions League title back. And I don't use the word their title loosely.

I know Leon would very much consider it their title, because obviously Barcelona won it in 2021. And I think everyone assumed that Barcelona would do the same again in 2022. But Leon came back, rod back, beat Barcelona in the final to win the Champions League.

Were you surprised by that to see Leon kind of come back and win the Champions League when all the talk was about how Barcelona with the new show in town, and they were going to dominate the competition, maybe in the way that Leon have over the last decade.

If you're going to ask the fan and me, I'd say 100% Leon were going to win it. I just knew it all along, believed in them 100%.

But if you ask the analyst and me and the writer and me, then I would say that I think to some extent, and I think in the in the deepest hot of every Leon fan, it was a little bit of a surprise that they came back and they were actually able to win the Champions League.

Because I think there was a point where I don't think any of us thought that Leon would be maybe they would definitely be maybe in and around the semifinal.

I definitely thought there was semi-final material, but I didn't think they were final and maybe winning the Champions League material. It's in the beginning. There was a bit of a struggle in the beginning of the season.

There were moments where they were up and down, weren't very consistent. And I think for me that came down to the fact of, you know,

Bompister had come in for first full season. I think she was finding her way with the team, kind of where she wanted to take them. And, you know, I think for me, eventually it was when she got her team down in the system she wanted down. It got a lot better. But I think

the moment that it turned for me was probably ideally when it was was the Wolfsburg in the Barcelona play against them. I think that was the foundation for where we could really see that Barcelona with there for the taking it in some regard.

And if you can follow that blueprint and kind of close them down, I thought that was that was important. So I think for Leon, I think it was

all right, if you can get to the final and you can execute the game plan, there's you are in with a shot right now. I think with

with with what happened with I think I think Wolfsburg had figured out that if you close off their supply in midfield, stop the wide place for getting into good positions.

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