‘I have very high respect for Bayern’ – Renee Slegers ahead of UCL clash | OneFootball

Arsenal Women manager Renee Slegers says she has a lot of respect for Bayern Munich, ahead of the Gunners taking them on in the Champions League this week.

The new Champions League format means that Arsenal are ninth of the 18 teams in the table, having won one and lost one game so far.

The Gunners lost 5-2 to Bayern just over a year ago in the UWCL, when Jonas Eidevall was still manager, and then beat the Germans 3-2 during Slegers’ interim period in December.

On their opponents, Slegers said: “It’s less than a year ago we played against them, and they still have some players that are similar with their qualities. They still pose the same threat from set-pieces, for example, and how they create. So they’re a really good team.

“They rotate and they try to create problems for the opposition. I have very high respect for Bayern because we know the last two games we played against them were very tight. So I look forward to the game. We look forward to the challenge. I think it’s two really good teams going against each other.”

Slegers also spoke about how the win over Bayern when she was interim manager gave her and the Arsenal squad a lot of confidence to go on and win the competition.

“[Last year’s win] was a big part of our journey in the Champions League. But it was also a big part of our journey as a team. And for me, that game was crucial in how I see the team, where I see the potential – not only from a football perspective, of course, I always believed in this team, and all the quality that we have, but the resilience that we showed in that game, and how we found a way to win in very hard conditions. 

“It was raining. It was windy. They posed a lot of threat to us with set-pieces and direct play at times and movements. And we dealt with it as a team. We get the win over the line somehow, because it wasn’t always beautiful. So that for me was a crucial moment in the journey in the Champions League. But more bigger, the journey of us as a team from a mentality perspective.”