A brace from Alessia Russo gave Arsenal a 2-1 comeback win against Real Madrid in the UEFA Women’s Champions League.
And the first was a looping header from a high ball in courtesy of fellow Lioness Chloe Kelly.
After the match, Russo spoke with England’s record cap holder Fara Williams and presenter Jeanette Kwakye on Disney+ about the link-up she has with Kelly.
“When Chloe is on the pitch, I’ve played with her a lot, at England as well, so I know what kind of delivery she’s looking to get in the box – normally a little bit flatter than that!” she laughed.
“We spoke about the areas that I like to attack, the areas that she likes to get the ball in, and just got on the end of it.”
And her second goal came from a corner, which was something that pleased her greatly.
“We work on corners all the time. Games can be defined by them. We’ve been on the right and wrong side of that in games. We work on them a lot so it’s nice when one of them comes off. That’s what happened.”
Russo admitted that Arsenal’s recent run of form has not been as stellar as they would have hoped – notably last week’s 3-2 loss to Bayern Munich in the Champions League after going 2-0 up.
But she added that she hopes this win will give them a bit of momentum.
“It was a really important win,” she said. “We’ve probably not had the results that we wanted in the last block. But it was really important to come here and pick up a result tonight in the Champions League. So we’re really happy.”
Alessia Russo: We have to be locked in
Asked if the players felt additional pressure as defending champions in the competition, she replied: “Maybe not so much a pressure but more of our standards are really high and we want to be winning as much as possible.
“We know what it takes, we know we’ve got it in us, and I don’t think we’ve seen it as consistently as we’d have liked. Happy to get the win tonight and three points.”
Arsenal now head into the international break, with Russo one of the Gunners’ players joining up with the Lionesses.
“People can reset and refresh ready for a massive block before Christmas because we’ve got Leuven and Twente [in the Champions League in December] – but we need to win them both. So we have to be locked in and ready to go as soon as we’re back from international.”
