Arsenal’s Beth Mead: ‘Chelsea are lethal but we can play better football than them’ | OneFootball

Beth Mead leans back slightly in her seat, the wall behind her displaying iterations of the Arsenal crest through decades of change and says: “It’s a tough club to walk away from.”

After a year of gossip, wondering, and a summer of speculation, the transfer window has shut and Mead is heading, hungrier than ever, into her ninth full season at the club she joined at 21.

“When you’ve been somewhere this long it holds a very precious place in your heart,” she says. “I have another year left on my contract, I still think I’m more than good enough to compete and be able to play in this team and I know I bring something different.”

Mead is speaking two days before Arsenal’s opening game of the season at the Emirates Stadium, where a record-breaking 17,000 season tickets and six-game bundle tickets have been sold. It is transfer deadline day and the midfielder Lia Wälti has announced her emotional departure.

“I’m refusing to watch Wally’s video; I’m going to wait until I get home,” says Mead. “I saw her when she sat down at the start of it and I thought: ‘I’m not doing this.’ On the day she told us she was leaving, I thought about what it would be like if I had to do that right now and it didn’t sit right. The thought of leaving is really, really tough, and at some point in your career it’s got to happen, but I’ve had good conversations with Renée [Slegers, the head coach]. I know where I stand, what she wants from me and what I can give the team. I know I can also give a lot to the team off the pitch and I take that role and responsibility quite seriously.”

It is just under two years since Mead returned after an anterior cruciate ligament injury that ended her 2023 World Cup hopes. The road since has not been easy but the forward appeared to find her pre-injury form for last season’s run-in with Arsenal and the Euro 2025 campaign with England.

“There were moments where I think that my football brain and my footballing ability helped us in big moments in games,” she says. “I had a nice conversation with Sarina [Wiegman] after things had settled down following the Euros. Obviously, it was an amazing Euros, we went and won it, but it was very different to the 2022 Euros where I started every game, was player of the tournament, this, that and the other.

“She said she’d argue I’d had as much of an effect this time; that, for her, as a manager, what she’d seen me do on the pitch, the role I’d played in crucial moments in certain games when I came on, was really important. I played different positions, I was playing midfield for quite a lot of the tournament, and she was like: ‘I think some people will miss that because you didn’t directly get the goal or the assist or whatever.’ That gave me a really nice warm feeling because, as a footballer, and my teammates appreciate this too, sometimes externally these things are missed.”

As Mead talks, a mature understanding of the importance of a squad is evident. “Me and Renée, and also the team, have a good understanding that it’s a competitive environment. I’m allowed to be pretty narked off that I’m not playing but also I’m going to come on and make that difference if that’s my job for the weekend. That’s elite-level football and you ultimately know that’s what you’ve sometimes got to do.”

The significance of the non‑starters in preparation for matchdays was shown before the 1-0 defeat of Barcelona in the Champions League final in May, when roleplaying unlocked an important piece of Arsenal’s strategy. In training the day before the final in Lisbon, the non‑starters were tasked with playing the role of Barcelona.

“I was [Clàudia] Pina for Barcelona and, to put it politely, I was taking the piss out of our team,” says Mead, with a grin. “I was finding every bit of space, I was finding pockets, I was putting balls out, I was going forward.

“It wasn’t just me – we were causing issues – but we had to do our jobs and I had to do my job as her that day to get the best out of the starting team. What we did in that training session changed our mindset going into the game.

“How successful I had been on that side of the pitch as Pina arguably helped us win that game and is why I felt so comfortable going into the Barcelona final. We knew we’d ticked off everything, knew we’d exploited Arsenal’s weaknesses the day before and gone: ‘Do you know what? Barcelona are going to have a field day there if we don’t sort that out.’ We sorted it out, we all committed to our roles, and the rest is history.”

Humility was key too. “You’ve got to throw your ego aside as well,” says Mead. “We are a team that wants to possess the ball, but you’re playing Barcelona, who are very, very good at it. Same for England v Spain in the final of the Euros: you’ve got to throw your ego out the window, be willing to work hard, defend, show that bit of grit and determination and I thought every single person, whether they started, whether they came on, whether they were on the bench giving the energy, committed to that in those finals. I think that’s now our bar – it has to be.”

In the Champions League final, when the ball from Mariona Caldentey reaches her feet and she sees the gap open for the pass to set up the winning goal from Stina Blackstenius, was it pure instinct?

“I just got myself that pocket of space. I’d seen in the game – this is a takeaway from being able to sit and watch games sometimes – how many blocked shots there had been. I know I’ve hit the shots from there before on my left foot but I thought: ‘There’s a lot of bodies in front of me.’ I don’t know why and how I saw Stina in that space, but I thought: ‘If I shoot here and it gets blocked, it’s just another step for the game … I’m going to find Stina.’ It was a split second between choosing to shoot or take the pass. I’m happy I took the pass.”

The psychological impact of winning the competition “has to have a big impact”, with Chelsea’s dominance weighing heavy domestically in recent years. “We can, arguably, play better football than Chelsea and we did a lot of times last season,” says Mead. “When we played against them, the first game, we went 2-0 down really early and absolutely dominated them the rest of the game but couldn’t get back into it. Chelsea are good at what they’re good at. They’re lethal, they have their chances and they score their chances.

“They showed it last year, they went unbeaten, but how many games did they get 1-0 results right in the dying death? That’s a champion team. We’ve now got to adopt that. We play the Arsenal way, but also when it’s not going perfectly we have to find another way we can win games. Barcelona was the perfect example for us.”

Mead made a similar impact at the Euros in Switzerland, providing the assist for Michelle Agyemang’s equaliser at the death against Sweden in the quarter-finals to force extra time and begin the battling charge through the knockout stage.

The 2025 Euros was less fairytale than 2022, more a gritty war epic, but Mead and her teammate Ella Toone were battling far bigger emotions than the matches threw at them, the former facing her first tournament without her mother, June, and the latter her first without her father, Nick.

“It’s coming up three years in January, which is crazy when you think about how much has happened in that time,” says Mead. “At the end of every game we said: ‘They’re watching over us and they’ve done it again. I don’t know how many times they’ll end up helping us out but they will.’ When the whistle went at the final I went to the stands and it’s my brother and my dad. It’s just such an amazing moment, an emotional moment, but the last time my mum was the first there on the front row, and that’s tough to think about.”

Next to her dad and next to Toone’s mum were empty seats. “We don’t know if it was done on purpose or it just was a complete coincidence, but it was a nice moment for both of us to be able to think that they were there, that they were sat watching.”

Every detail in England’s luxurious Dolder Grand hotel was thought of. “We are very spoiled and we understand that,” Mead says. “We all had suites, they had our names on the door, they had a picture and Sarina had left us a handwritten letter each. They all matter.”

It matters to Arsenal, too, that after scratching their big trophy itch their targets for this season do not shift. “Try and win all four,” Mead says of the available trophies. “We’re the only team to have done it, and let’s try and keep it that way.”

Header image: [Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian]