{"id":25605,"date":"2026-09-29T07:30:46","date_gmt":"2026-09-29T07:30:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=25605"},"modified":"2026-09-29T07:30:46","modified_gmt":"2026-09-29T07:30:46","slug":"the-rise-of-alessia-russo-how-arsenal-and-englands-no-9-became-world-class","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=25605","title":{"rendered":"The rise of Alessia Russo: How Arsenal and England&#8217;s No.9 became world-class"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div aria-label=\"main body\">\n<div>\n<p><span>With Eidevall, his successor Renee Slegers and England boss Sarina Wiegman, and their staff, Russo worked on getting into what Eidevall described as &#8220;the goal zone&#8221; more often. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Again, it didn&#8217;t bear fruit overnight. Before the goals increased, Russo&#8217;s underlying numbers went up. She took more touches in the opposition&#8217;s box than ever before, she unleashed more shots and hit the target more regularly, to increase her expected goals statistics, all before eventually finding the back of the net more frequently.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>In the 2024-25 season, Russo hit that 20-goal mark for the first time to help Arsenal win the Champions League and England triumph at the Euros. Notably, her seven goals in the Champions League were only bettered by Barcelona&#8217;s Claudia Pina. In the following campaign, she fell just one short of her first 30-goal season, netting nine in the Champions League this time, a total only topped by Barca&#8217;s Pajor.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>&#8220;I think what you see now is that when she gets to the right spaces with the right timing, she has so much conviction in what she&#8217;s doing,&#8221; Slegers remarked earlier this year. &#8220;I think that&#8217;s what&#8217;s taken her to another level.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With Eidevall, his successor Renee Slegers and England boss Sarina Wiegman, and their staff, Russo&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25606,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25605\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}