Arsenal’s Leah Williamson: ‘Dreams came true’ with Champions League win

Arsenal vice captain Leah Williamson has said her “dreams came true” when Arsenal won the Champions League on Saturday and it reaffirmed her decision to stay at her childhood club for her whole career, saying “it just wouldn’t mean the same” if she won the trophy elsewhere.

Substitute Stina Blackstenius came off the bench to score the only goal of the evening in the 1-0 win over Barcelona in Lisbon to secure the trophy, ending the Catalan side’s hunt for a third consecutive title.

Williamson has been with Arsenal since she was eight, supporting and playing for the club all career.

She was a mascot during their first European victory in 2007, when Arsenal last reached the final.

“You have to win trophies, you have to and I’m so proud of what we do off the pitch, who we are, how we lead and how we carry ourselves. I’m so proud of that but I want to win and Arsenal should be winning. I’ve looked at that legacy all my life,” Williamson told media on Monday at the Emirates Stadium as the team paraded the trophy.

Arsenal did not win anything domestically this season and have only won the League Cup twice in the past two seasons.

They have not won the league in six years and have not been in the FA Cup final in four.

“I’ve been aware of that all my life and I wanted to contribute to it. I didn’t want to end my career just being loyal. Loyalty is great but loyalty with trophies is just something else,” Williamson said.

“This week I’ve spoken to Tony Adams and Thierry Henry, people I watched and they were incredible and they won and that’s why they are remembered the way they are.”

Following Arsenal’s last league victory in 2019, fans thought the vice-captain might move on. The rumour circulated again after England’s 2022 European Championship victory and following her return from an anterior cruciate ligament injury last season that ruled her out of the 2023 World Cup.

However, she signed a new contract in May 2024, extending her now 20-year affiliation with the club.

Despite offers from other clubs, the 28-year-old has dedicated her life to playing for Arsenal, and said winning would not feel right anywhere else.

“I think professionally a lot of people would say that you should move [clubs] and you should test yourself in different environments and I’ve probably made it harder for myself staying in the same place and trying to get more out of myself every year,” she said.

“The environment doesn’t necessarily change and with the same faces, same people, I’m comfortable in that sense. And then you get a day like Saturday and I’m like this is why, because winning a Champions League final for Arsenal, it just wouldn’t mean the same anywhere else as it would here.”

The captain was in tears at full-time and admitted that she cried on the plane and at the hotel the day before the final after reading messages from loves ones.

While Williamson said at the time that winning the Euros was the best day of her life, she acknowledged just how much winning a European title with her childhood club means, saying it’s the happiest she’s been in her entire life.

“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,” she said.

“But I feel ashamed now because that feeling [on Saturday] 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.

“My dreams came true. I don’t ever talk about wanting anything on a football pitch, I think it’s dangerous, there’s so much out of your control, like you could be at your best but if somebody else’s best is better than you, that’s what it is.”

Williamson said she always felt like Arsenal would win and that she was telling her teammates that this was the year they would lift the trophy with full belief that they could beat Barcelona, despite being seen as underdogs and feeling written off ahead of the final.

Wiilliamson credited the investment that the club has made to keep Arsenal at the top for how they were able to secure a second Champions League trophy becoming the first English club to do so.

“[Arsenal] were one of the first to really invest and have stayed in the game and stayed consistent and continuously pushed whilst everybody around them is pushing as well,” she said.

“It’s a changing world and we’ve managed to stay at the top throughout all of that. “I’m proud of that and that we’re only in team in the land [to have won the Women’s Champions League].

“It’s a thing to be proud of. I don’t play football to make other people unhappy, I play to make people happy and I care about my people. And anybody that’s Arsenal — red and white — is going to have a summer to remember now and it’s for that.”