A very subjective look into AWFC

I’m not really someone who enjoys going to a coffee shop to work. The way that I work is that I need the least amount of distractions and even though I get the whole “leaving the house” to get work done, I don’t necessarily enjoy it. It might depend on what it is that I really need to do, of course, but I need peace and quiet. Today though is a day where I needed to do some stuff away from home and I didn’t have time to write a post until now, and I promise you I tried really hard sitting at a Starbucks but I gave up. Nothing came to mind, there was a very annoying person a couple of tables over talking on the phone, and that little detail of the smell of coffee which I don’t like, so I’m not typing this on my laptop in a random parking lot. This uncomfortable situation makes me laugh because of how minuscule the stakes are. I’m just writing a blog… I’m not even a paid journalist or writer, yet I feel all this pressure, albeit self imposed, to come up with something interesting regarding Arsenal Women and the World Cup, yet with the very first, tiny piece of resistance I froze and came up with excuses as to why I am not writing anything.

Then Caitlin Foord came to mind. So did Steph Catley, Alana Kennedy, Ellie Carpenter and all the Aussies that are playing a semifinal against the eurocup champions. That’s pressure… Yet, I’m positive they embrace it, they cherish it and they feel empowered by that. This is the elite mentality that is needed to get to this point in all sports, let alone in women’s sports. This is precisely why I’m such a champion of women’s football… the amount of obstacles they have to go over only reveals more obstacles and so or and so forth. This is so impressive and never gets old to me.

I also think about Alex Greenwood when she was asked recently if she was intimidated by playing against the Australians with all their momentum and she, within milliseconds, said: NO. That was ice cold and I love her for that. That is the type of mentality that I can only hope I have when dealing with a big challenge. Like I’d like to think that I possess it but do I really?? It’s worth auditing ourselves and using these heroes of ours as inspiration.

Now, this is all about mentality but what about emotions? What about “elite emotions”? Because if there’s elite mentality there has to be an emotional answer to this, right? And the way I would define this is just by being absolutely open with emotions… the crying, the body language, the yelling, the screaming… the feeling of feelings. I LOVE THAT. We also see tears in the men’s game, we also see body language expressions but with the women’s game its like I’m transported to when they were kids and there was ZERO platforms for them. There was nothing. And here they are.

As a musician, I get asked very often about stage fright and how I deal with that. What I always say is that emotionally speaking “fear” is not the right descriptive. I needed to understand what it is that I felt to understand how to deal with it. My brain and soul cannot wrap around the amount of emotions that would go through these footballer’s hearts. In music even though stakes are high, there’s a job to do and you usually do the same thing, the same way, all the time. In football, every second of every minute of every match is unpredictable and a set of actions, reactions, acting to achieve a reaction and reactions to actions.

IThe reasons why I admire these women has no limit. I grow, I learn, I expand and I am so grateful to every single one of them.

d ❤

THAT ARSENAL WOMEN PODCAST on:
YOUTUBE
APPLE PODCASTS
SPOTIFY