Meet Vivianne Miedema, the Women’s Super League record-breaker

“The way we played football was long balls. It didn’t matter how you won the games, as long as you won them. I started looking around and I had more options and when I came to Arsenal I had that feeling.

“I want to have the ball a lot, so that was the most important thing. [Chasing long balls] was all I had done in Munich for three years. So I was really happy to come here and play football – and we’re doing quite well right now.”

As a Feyenoord fan during her childhood, she has always followed the career of Robin van Persie, and the opportunity to emulate her hero’s success was too good to turn down.

“Van Persie was my biggest idol ever. So the moment Arsenal came in, you’ve got that special feeling as well,” she explains.

With seven years’ experience of senior football, Miedema demonstrates maturity beyond her years both on and off the pitch.

The 22-year-old is only six goals away from equaling Manon Melis’ all-time goalscoring record for the Netherlands Women’s team, with 54 strikes so far for the Oranje.

In 2017, she helped fire the national team to a maiden European Championship title, claiming a brace in the final against Denmark.

But Miedema is keen to play down expectations of repeating that success in France this summer at the World Cup.

“I should say I’m really confident but I’m not,” she admits.

“It was really hard for us after the Euros to qualify directly again, to handle the pressure. We had to go through the play-offs against Denmark and Switzerland. Even right now, people are saying ‘you’re going to be world champions’ – but it’s too easy to say.

“I think it’s a really open tournament, with probably France, USA, Germany, Japan – they’re always the favourites. I would say we are a good outsider. We’ve got a good team and we know what we can do. If that comes out at the right moment, we can have a good World Cup.

Handling this pressure – “a good pressure”, in her words – is something Miedema is still adapting to.

“Right now yeah, I feel pressure. Before it didn’t really matter what you were doing but right now, we’re so big, everyone knows us, so you always feel a bit more pressure playing, especially in Holland.

“There’s 40,000 people at the stadium for every game, and everyone’s got an opinion about the players. It gives you a lot more pressure. Going into the World Cup, they’re like ‘oh, you won the Euros, you’ll easily win the World Cup as well’.

“We weren’t favourites to win the Euros, we’re not even close to being favourites to win the World Cup, but people expect it from you.

“I think it’s something we need to adapt to. The team has been struggling, but it’s also really nice to get that experience and that feeling of people under pressure, like when people are watching us, it’s a good pressure.”

The Oranje haven’t always enjoyed such big attendances, but their triumph in the European Championship sparked a welcome surge in popularity.

Miedema also sees her role as being more than a player on the pitch, co-writing a book, Het Meidenvoetbal Doeboek (The Girl’s Football Book), with the aim of inspiring the next generation of female footballers in Holland.

She believes there is still a long way to go in developing the women’s game, with investment a major factor in its continued growth.

“Obviously it’s easy to just say money, but everything stands and falls with money,” Miedema explains.

“There’s a lot of money here in England, and you can see it growing the women’s game. The FA puts a lot of money into women’s football and you can already see the league getting stronger. Even for Arsenal, everything just gets better; we can train at the men’s ground, the pitch at our stadium. It is money, in the end.”