‘I treasured that kit’: Leah Williamson’s Arsenal journey from mascot to mainstay | OneFootball

There is no bigger test of how Arsenal’s Leah Williamson balances the emotion of the occasion as a fan with her life as a player than a first Champions League final after years of working on her feelings when she is wearing red and white. “Do your job, Leah, and then the fan in you gets to enjoy it afterwards,” her internal monologue will run as she prepares to step on to the pitch when the Gunners take on Barcelona in Lisbon.

“It’s funny, Less [Alessia Russo] was asking me about this today,” the 28-year-old says, sitting in the sunshine by the small lake at Arsenal’s London Colney training centre. “Maybe it’s age, maybe it’s having the experience of doing it in other moments. The Euros final was fairly level to this in terms of testing my ability to manage the emotions of the day and occasion. I’m just going to enjoy it.

“If I think that the fact that I’m an Arsenal fan is going to get in the way I have to shift, because that’s not my focus for the day – my job is to be a player, a player that wants to do it for the fan in me.”

Williamson’s fandom and playing career have been intertwined from the moment she sidestepped her dad’s attempts to get her to support Tottenham. That included a trip to White Hart Lane and a new shirt that she had to take off before she got home; instead she chose their north London rivals, the team of her mum and grandma. On Saturday, it is her dad who will be donning a new shirt, having made a bet with her that if she ever got to a Champions League final with Arsenal, he would wear one.

This may be the centre-back’s first European final, but it’s not her first wearing red and white, however. Looking down at the photograph of her 10-year-old self dressed in an oversized kit and clutching a mini football, Williamson grins. As a mascot for the second leg of the 2007 European Cup final, Williamson lined up alongside her under-10s teammates and a few other girls to witness an achievement that has become the benchmark for English clubs.

“That’s my kit that I had to wash and wear again and again, but I loved it; it was something that was my own. I was just so happy to be part of Arsenal,” she says. “We had long-sleeved shirts if it was cold and if it was hot you just rolled them up. I broke my arm in my first game for Arsenal and when we got to the hospital, the woman said she was going to have to cut it off. I wanted a cast, as you do when you’re a kid, so I was saying it was painful but I switched to: ‘No. I’m fine. That’s OK. I’ll get it out.’ I wouldn’t let her cut it. It was broken, but I treasured that kit.”

That European final was played at Boreham Wood FC’s Meadow Park, where her mum used to help out on the turnstiles; it was a sunny day and the small terraces were packed. Williamson did not quite understand the magnitude of the fixture – the first, and to date only, European triumph by an English women’s club – instead she was a little upset because they walked on to the pitch with Arsenal’s opponents, Umeå. “I wasn’t very happy about that,” she says.

Seven years later, Williamson made her senior debut playing alongside some of Arsenal’s quadruple winners. “That for me was always the most humbling thing, playing with people that I idolised,” she says. “At one point they seemed so far away and then all of a sudden you’re in the same training session and you’re basically trying to not let them down.”

Arsenal play their Women’s Super League (WSL) and Champions League home games at the 60,704‑seat Emirates Stadium, which displays a huge wraparound tribute to the 2006-07 quadruple winners next to the men’s Invincibles side. It depicts the players hoisting a giant European Cup with red ribbons while the men lift a gold Premier League trophy. “Whenever I approach the stadium it’s just there and I’m very proud to be at a club that is as proud of them as I am,” says Williamson. “It’s also a reminder of the heights they reached and that incredible level of performance the club should aspire to be at. That’s the point of it all, to inspire people to climb higher.”

Does the weight of that legacy add pressure to the 2025 Champions League finalists? “It should do, but I don’t feel like it has,” she says. “It’s a fantastic opportunity and another step closer to getting the club back to winning ways, that’s how it’s seen by us, which is probably why the pressure doesn’t creep in.”

Arsenal’s end to the domestic season was hardly consistent. After a thrilling 4-1 defeat of Lyon to overturn a 2-1 loss in the first leg of the semi-final, there were back-to-back defeats by Aston Villa and Brighton, losing 5-2 and 4-2 respectively, before securing second place in the WSL with a 4-3 win over Manchester United on the final day.

“If we’d won those games I’d say to you: ‘It’s great preparation,’ and in losing those games I’ll say to you: ‘It’s great preparation, you just have to use it,’” says Williamson. “We had an opportunity against United to go out and to correct some of the things that had gone wrong in the previous games. Do I think there was a little bit of a hangover? Not mentally, in terms of concentration or commitment to the game, we prepared properly.

“It’s not like we all went on holiday and then just rocked up – we were in, we were focused. I just think it was a concoction of a lot of different things, a little bit of rotation, a little bit of the unexpected, and then playing teams that are fresher is going to have an impact, but that’s not the standard we’re happy with.”

Beating United at the Emirates Stadium was a chance to put things right. “The firepower that we showed, we looked like ourselves,” says Williamson. “I know they scored two late goals, but the nature of them is less concerning than those conceded in the other games. When you look at it holistically, we had a big task ahead of us to turn our form around and to re-engage with the fans at home after what they’ve done for us this season.”

Despite having come from behind in the quarter- and semi-finals, Arsenal are the underdogs facing the holders and three-time champions, so knowing the likelihood of things not going their way at some point must be high.

“It’s the one thing that you can’t force in football, that belief that you can turn it around, and it has to be organic and authentic,” says Williamson. “You don’t have it unless you’ve shown yourself that you have it.

“You could argue that we’ve put ourselves in positions that we shouldn’t have, but ultimately to be able to turn it around and demonstrate to ourselves that we can overturn things means we have that inside us now – that belief, that calmness, and the comfort in being uncomfortable and just trusting.”

That belief is liberating, but so is the feeling of being in a final. “A semi-final is hard because you’re not at the last step, there’s still another hurdle, but when you go to a final, you go free,” says Williamson. “That’s normally why you see the best football.

“Getting to the final is an achievement, of course it is, and everybody should be happy about that, but we go there to win. That’s the only focus. I’m proud of everything we’ve achieved thus far and I hope no matter what happens there’s a performance to be proud of in the final.”

Header image: [Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The Guardian]