Jonas Eidevall Feels Vivianne Miedema Is Ready To Return To Action

Arsenal coach Jonas Eidevall insists he has no problem with the Netherlands calling up his star-striker Vivianne Miedema despite her not playing for her club after an ACL injury.

Miedema ruptured her anterior cruciate ligament during a Champions League tie against Olympique Lyonnais on December 15. At the time, she felt the injury, the first major one she has suffered in her stellar career, would keep her out of action for nine months.

Next week, the Netherlands play in a home-and-away double-header against Scotland in the new UEFA Women’s Nations League. After an earlier defeat to Belgium, they are matches the Dutch must win to have a chance of qualifying for the Paris Olympics ahead of European champions England.

To the surprise of many, Dutch coach Andries Jonker included Miedema – the all-time leading goalscorer for her country with a scarcely-believable 95 goals in 115 international games – in his 24-player squad earlier this week for the games in Nijmegen and Glasgow.

Jonker said, “I spoke with Vivianne and Arsenal and looked at the possibilities. Vivianne trains with the group at Arsenal and she can also train with the group with us. If that goes well, it is possible that I use her in the group games against Scotland.”

Eidevall insisted the decision was taken after dialogue with the Dutch coaching setup and hinted that “maybe she can make the squad here on Sunday as well” when Arsenal take on Bristol City. “They know that Viv is really close to getting a ‘return to play’.”

Either way he insisted that her inclusion is a “win-win” situation for the club with Miedema stepping up her training ahead of their crucial Women’s Super League match against Manchester City immediately after the international break. “They are happy providing her with an optimal training experience. She would come back before the City game in a better condition than I think it would have been possible at Arsenal (training) with only three players.”

In April, Miedema spoke to the BBC and ruled herself out of contention for the FIFA Women’s World Cup finals in July. “I’m definitely going to miss the World Cup which is a hard one. I hope to be back for the beginning of next season. I need to be realistic in that sense.”

Five games into the new season and with Arsenal already eliminated from the women’s Champions League, there has been no sign of Miedema’s return to first-team action. Last Sunday, her team-mate and partner Beth Mead, who also suffered an ACL rupture three weeks earlier, made her long-awaited comeback 330 days after her injury. Miedema has now been out for 310 days.

Speaking last December in her weekly column with Dutch newspaper AD, Miedema insisted she would not rush her rehabilitation. “If I had been 35 now and it was my last World Cup, I would have still wanted to take some risks. But I want and need to continue for years to come and I’m not going to do anything crazy.”

Last month she admitted that she was now able to do everything in training with Arsenal adding “that is of course very nice after all the blood, sweat and tears of the past period. But somehow it’s also scary. How will my knee hold up? How will things go during the matches? That is exciting. I will first start playing for Arsenal’s second team to gain some rhythm.”

However, Eidevall admitted t0 me this has not been possible. “This also shows how much investment we still need to. We play our home matches on 3G turf with our under-21s. Of course, that’s not ideal for Viv to play on turf, which makes it really complicated. Something that looks really good on paper – that she can start playing with the reserves – now becomes really complicated in reality, because we don’t play on natural grass pitches.”

“So what we have done instead is we have played internal games. We have referees coming here to London Colney and helping us do that mid-week and we have been doing that consistently during this block. That’s been really important for the whole team, but also for Viv, that she can be integrated into something that looks like a bit more like a competitive game but just behind closed doors.”

She also hinted in that column that the next round of international matches may be a more realistic target for her return to the Dutch national team. “I don’t want to take any risks after all these months of hard work. I want to be at my best before I start again. Another round of the Nations League is scheduled for December. On December 1 we play against England at Wembley. It would of course be wonderful to be able to make my return to the Dutch team.”