Jonas Eidevall is putting his rocky exit from Women’s Super League (WSL) club Arsenal behind him.
As he gets ready to move across the pond to join San Diego Wave as their new head coach, the 41-year-old has made it clear that he’s “looking forward to a new challenge” after his three-year tenure in north London came to an abrupt end last October.
Despite winning two FA Women’s League Cup titles and reaching the semifinals of the UEFA Women’s Champions League with Arsenal, the Swedish manager’s last few weeks in charge saw fans calling for his sacking.
However, speaking to in his first exclusive interview since joining the Wave, Eidevall stood by his resignation claiming it was “the right decision,” and three months on has pinpointed the moment he believes fans lost faith in him.
“I think that when we didn’t renew [Vivianne] Miedema’s contract my relationship at the time with the fans was hurting the team,” he said.
“I thought [leaving] was the easiest quick fix for the team to be able to perform again. That was an incredibly difficult personal decision for me to walk away from, but sometimes you have to do that when it’s what you think is best for the team. I’m also preaching that to any team. I always preach [that] you have to do what’s best for the team.
“Sometimes you lose as an individual, but if everyone is committed to always making the best decisions, then everybody will win in the end, and this time it was my decision to take the most difficult decision.
“I think that was the right decision for me, personally and I think the team has been playing well, so I’m really happy.”
“Tactical expertise, a focus for high-performing environments, understanding what it takes to be successful and developing players”. Those are the words of the Wave’s sporting director and general manager Camille Ashton explaining why she wanted to pursue Eidevall.
“We did a pretty extensive head coach search that started last summer,” she said. "Jonas was not part of the picture at that point because he was unavailable, but we continued and when things changed, he became an option to us immediately.”
Eidevall’s addition to the NWSL sees him become the fourth manager with expertise managing in England, including Gotham’s Juan Carlos Amorós and Seattle Reign’s Laura Harvey, who have an extensive past working in the WSL.
“I spoke around quite a bit after I left Arsenal to get an understanding of the league, but also about national teams and different leagues,” he said. “I wanted to make sure that I had all the information on the table to consider what would be the best option.
Within the last year, there’s been a real uplift in both managers and players alike swapping England for the United States, leading to lots of conversations on the similarities and differences between the two leagues.
Speaking to previously, Washington Spirit defender Esme Morgan said she thought the NWSL “is a much more competitive league.” The 24-year-old signed to the Spirit last June from WSL side Manchester City, adding she enjoys that “no one ever plays to defend for a draw for 90 minutes or just low block the whole time which happens quite often in the WSL when a top team plays a low team.”
When asked to explain the differences he’s noticed, Eidevall said the U.S. league is generically a “bit more transitional” compared to the WSL. “I think the athletic system up front with a lot of teams' forward players means there’s more speed in the NWSL than WSL,” he said.
“When you see recent coach hires in the league, I think it’s going to be more like that. I think you can see there is a diverse range of coaches with different playing styles and different philosophies. I would be making it far too easy to say that there is just one style in the NWSL on how I think teams play.
“You have the North Carolina Courage playing a much more possession-based game, and you have some extremely well-organized transitional teams in Kansas City Current and Washington Spirit, for example.
“I haven’t seen as much as we saw against Arsenal, with teams just sitting back in low blocks and sort of just conceding all forms of possession and hoping to keep clean sheets and maybe hitting you on the counter.”
He also hinted at the tendency for NWSL clubs to stick to their game plan and persevere with that to a high standard, whereas “in the WSL, more teams especially bottom-to-mid teams were adapting both formations and playing style towards playing top teams.”
Eidevall is eager to hit the ground running in the States, and is especially excited to take advantage of the support available to him with the Wave.
“A very clear reflection for me after my time at Arsenal was that wherever my next role was, I needed to work with a sporting director,” he said. “I really missed that at Arsenal. It’s a lonely place being a head coach that doesn’t have a sporting director. It was really important for me to speak with Cami to make sure that we were aligned on the vision with that.”
As it stands, Eidevall is hoping to have his visa application approved before preseason, which is expected to begin next month. For now, beginning to build relationships with his new team and staff is the priority.
“It’s visa dependent on when I’m eligible to come over to the U.S, but I’m used to having flexible starts to training,” he added. “When I joined Arsenal, it was during COVID-19 and I was also still in contract with my Swedish club [FC Rosengård]. We can either get results or make excuses, and I definitely prefer results.
“In the first part of preseason, it’s about building a connection with the players and staff. It’s about getting to know them as people and who they are, what’s important to them, and what motivates them, so that other players and staff can help them achieve that.
“That’s the process that begins now. It’s to build connections, and for me that’s the foundation of how much we can challenge and how much we can compete later on in the season. One of the things that really motivates me as a person working in those environments, is getting to know people and getting to understand how I can be a part of helping that person reach their potential.
“There’s no doubt that every person is unique and they have their own journey and that has to be understood.”
Despite only being founded four years ago, the Wave already have quite a checkered history in the world of women’s soccer.
English coach Casey Stoney helped write history for the club, leading them to victory in the 2023 NWSL Shield and the 2024 NWSL Challenge Cup. However, after a seven-game winless streak she was sacked last summer, sending shockwaves through the women’s game.
The Wave went on to finish their 2023–24 campaign under interim manager Landon Donovan, placing 10th in the league. Since then, they’ve entered a new era, thanks to an acquisition spearheaded by the Levine Leichtman family, in a move that saw president Jill Ellis step down.
Now under new leadership and new management, the Wave have entered a new era. When asked why fans should remain confident in the future of the club after a period of instability, Ashton said, “I think ultimately where we are as a club, is that we want to build something that’s sustainable.
“We have new ownership, new management and now a new head coach. We had a disappointing season last year and we’ll be the first to say that after winning the league a year prior.
“We don’t want to see that happen again and so we want to make sure that we are building all the pieces right now and taking the success that this club has had, but building on it to make sure that we are building the right foundation, and moving forward to have sustained success where we’re competing for championships year after year.
“Sometimes change is important to keep evolving and to keep growing, and ultimately that’s where we find ourselves right now.”
What’s more is that the Wave’s rebuild comes at a time when women’s soccer in the U.S. is also undergoing even more change. For the first time in NWSL history, more than two million fans attended games last season, and the college draft and all other drafts have been eliminated from the league.
When asked about the impact of increasing standards across the league, Ashton said “it makes it a whole lot harder to increase your own standard from the inside, but it’s also where the game needs to go."
“I think it’s a really exciting time in this league and with the elimination of the draft. In the past, we were ultimately creating a free market and now teams have to take responsibility to be good.
“Teams have to come up with competitive edges. You don’t just get to finish and get the best pick in the draft, you have to appeal to players and have to be a place where players want to come and stay. I think that’s really important because it’s going to drive the league up, because teams will fall behind if they’re not continuing to do things the right way.
“It’s actually the most exciting time for us [at the Wave] because we want to keep creating an environment here that players want to come, and that’s with the staff, facilities, infrastructure, culture being competitive and ultimately winning.”
