‘We can go all the way in which’: Jonas Eidevall on life at San Diego Wave and classes realized from Arsenal

“I love the ocean,” Jonas Eidevall says, and he references walks alongside the seaside at Del Mar. “People are very relaxed, life is lived at a slower tempo right here. I’m a quite simple individual. I prefer to learn a ebook, go to the fitness center and spend time with my spouse and youngsters, that’s type of all I would like.”

The former Arsenal head coach is reveling in a calmer globe as the pinnacle coach of San Diego Wave however it’s not merely the seashores which might be decreasing his stress ranges; his staff are on a five-game successful streak within the NWSL and sit second within the NWSL, one level off prime spot, with two matches to go earlier than the playoffs. Winning feels good and the membership are focusing on silverware, as he tells the Guardian: “It would imply all the things. There are not any ensures within the playoffs, however the thrilling half is saying: ‘We also can go all the way in which’ – that’s a risk for us and we have to imagine.”

Success didn’t initially look destined, when the Swede took cost 21 months in the past, at a time when San Diego Wave have been enduring one thing of an exodus of senior gamers; the United States defender Abby Dahlkemper’s sale to Bay FC in August 2024 and Alex Morgan’s retirement a month later have been adopted by the USA ahead Jaedyn Shaw’s departing for North Carolina Courage and her cross-border teammate Naomi Girma becoming a member of Chelsea in January 2025. A reconstruction was wanted.

That is why, on a video name that winter, when Eidevall spoke to his gamers for the primary time after taking cost, he started by quoting a proverb: if you wish to go quick, go alone, however if you wish to go far, go collectively. “My concepts are usually not price something if we don’t imagine and purchase into them altogether,” he says. “We targeted all the things on simply constructing connections as human beings.” Detailed tactical discussions have been initially stored to a minimal. They spent – as he remembers – round 4 weeks of their six-week pre-season focusing totally on passing out from the again, to develop their fashion. Fast ahead to the current day and it has paid off, with the Wave defenders Kristen McNabb and Kennedy Wesley being the division’s prime two gamers for passes accomplished this season. More notable, although, has been the event of younger gamers, such because the 18-year-olds Melanie Barcenas and Kimmi Ascanio.

“From 2024, when the membership was not performing properly on the pitch and it led to an entire rebuild, we needed to discover an edge, discovering gamers that would match into the way in which we wished to play,” Eidevall says. “Back then [it] was a bit completely different to many different groups within the league, as a result of the NWSL was seen as being dominated by athleticism and transitional play, which clearly then requires actually quick gamers and perhaps didn’t put a premium on technical supremacy.”

He provides that the membership due to this fact eyed gamers who’re “actually, actually good technically. We had some younger, gifted gamers already – that has given us a extremely good benefit as a result of we’ve been in a position to develop gamers in a wage cap league. That’s big, as a result of should you solely purchase readymade gamers, you’ll run out of wage cap house fairly rapidly.”

It is not only the wage cap that differs within the NWSL, in comparison with Eidevall’s earlier jobs at Arsenal and Rosengård. The broad competitiveness of the American league signifies that, regardless of being second within the desk, San Diego have misplaced virtually as many video games this season as Eidevall’s Arsenal throughout three English campaigns, and he says: “This was new for me. [In] European leagues the highest groups very not often go two video games in a row with out successful. Here, even the staff that wins the league may undergo spells the place they don’t decide up factors, so the way in which you deal with these moments turns into crucial.

“Training [here] can be a problem – typically it’s very laborious to get 22 gamers as a result of you’ve a restricted roster dimension. The second you begin to have accidents … there’s no actual second-team academy system like we’ve in Europe, the place you may all the time have the numbers that you really want. Here you may not, right here you wish to do one thing 11 v 11, however you’ve 18 gamers and also you simply should be artistic with the way you coach.”

Trying to play entertaining soccer has been a goal in a marketing campaign throughout which they’ve already set new membership information for regular-season wins and targets scored. They have performed it with the second-highest common possession share within the division, extra pictures on track than every other staff and whereas going through by far the fewest pictures on track.

“That’s probably the most pleasing half, outcomes by way of an identification quite than getting outcomes the opposite approach round,” Eidevall says. “The identification we’ve is to permit the gamers to be artistic.”

We are talking round two years after Eidevall resigned as Arsenal’s head coach on 15 October 2024, following a disappointing begin to that season. In his three full campaigns on the helm in north London he had received two League Cups, reached a Champions League semi-final and secured a second-placed top-flight end in 2022 – however was unable to win the WSL. Reflecting on what he realized from that spell, he says: “We had a variety of fluidity with how our broad gamers might play in Arsenal, which at occasions created too few central choices. So, how will we get higher central connections? How will we get extra gamers central on the pitch? That was a long-term reflection on my time at Arsenal. And that’s additionally led to some tactical modifications that we’ve performed right here with San Diego.”

There is a side of his Arsenal tenure that he’s decided to take inspiration from at San Diego, together with his staff having secured a house playoff quarter-final at their 35,000-seater Snapdragon Stadium. The 43-year-old fondly remembers the primary sellout crowd for a ladies’s match at Arsenal’s 60,000-seater Emirates Stadium, for his or her Champions League semi-final against Wolfsburg in 2023: “We wish to promote out Snapdragon Stadium and so as to take action we have to do precisely what we have been doing at Arsenal – we have to create particular experiences on the stadium,” he says. “That is what’s going to attract folks into there. Yes, play thrilling soccer, however we additionally have to play video games that imply so much to be there. The ripple impact of that, that’s so huge.”