Arsenal’s Leah Williamson said on Monday her belief in “magic” had been justified by the club’s stunning women’s Champions League final win over Barcelona.
Stina Blackstenius scored the only goal in Saturday’s final as Arsenal won their first European title in 18 years, upsetting the odds to deny a Barcelona side chasing a third successive Champions League title.
But Williamson, standing in front of some 10,000 Arsenal fans outside the club’s Emirates Stadium in London as she and her team-mates celebrated their success with a trophy parade, insisted she always had the belief that Renee Slegers’ side could so something special.
“I’ve been saying the whole time, all my team-mates will tell you all I kept saying was ‘do you believe in magic?’,” said England captain Williamson as she addressed the crowd.
“That’s what I could feel.
“I knew it was going to happen against Lyon, I knew it was going to happen in the final. And magic delivered.”
Williamson, a lifelong Gunners fan, was a mascot when they last won the women’s Champions League in 2007.
And the emotional 28-year-old defender said of Monday’s celebrations: “We knew it was going to be a special day but when we all walked out today we said ‘this is one of those moments’.
“This is one of the moments I’ll tell my grandkids about... My club. My Arsenal. Champions League winners. European champions.”
Williamson later told reporters: “I always said, ‘trophy for England over the trophy for Arsenal’ because I just think you don’t pick your country, it’s a bit more of a fate thing, a bit more luck needs to be involved.
“But I feel ashamed now because that feeling (of winning the Champions League) was, I think right now, the happiest I’ve ever been in my whole entire life and I hope that other Arsenal fans are because I know I lived a dream, I never take it for granted.”
Williamson, who captained England to their first major silverware at the 2022 home European Championship, joined Arsenal’s academy aged nine, and has spent her entire senior career at the club after she was promoted to the first-team squad in 2014.
But while she admitted she may have made things harder for herself by staying put, Williamson added “And then you get a day like Saturday and this is why, because winning a Champions League final for Arsenal, it just wouldn’t mean the same anywhere else as it would here. My dreams came true.”
