Arsenal boss Renee Slegers said Alessia Russo “is everything” after the striker’s hat-trick sealed a 3-0 victory over Benfica and made her England’s all-time leading goalscorer in the Women’s Champions League.<\/p>\n
The 27-year-old struck in the 39th minute with a sublime sweeping finish for her 21st goal in the competition, which put her level alongside former Chelsea forward Fran Kirby.<\/p>\n
But she soon claimed the standalone record with a glancing header from a corner to ensure Arsenal secured back-to-back wins for the first time this season.<\/p>\n
Russo then rounded off the perfect evening at Meadow Park with her third, converting from the penalty spot to take her tally to 23 goals in Europe.<\/p>\n
“She is everything. It’s hard to know where to start,” Slegers told Disney+.<\/p>\n
“She is such a humble, nice human being, really good, cares for everything and everyone, does everything to the fullest. <\/p>\n
“There is so much to say about Alessia and it is a privilege for me to work with her.”<\/p>\n
After a slow start to the season that saw her blank in her first five matches, Russo has now scored nine goals in her past seven games for club and country.<\/p>\n
“It feels really nice. I love playing in the Champions League and I love scoring goals,” Russo told Uefa.<\/p>\n
“It was really good to get the win. To score a hat-trick is really special.”<\/p>\n
Caitlin Foord, who had won the penalty for Arsenal when she was brought down by Catarina Amado, thought she had scored a late fourth for the Gunners, but it was ruled out for offside following a quick check by the Video Assistant Referee.<\/p>\n
“It’s incredible for Less, I am so happy for her,” Foord said of Russo’s hat-trick on Disney+.<\/p>\n
“She’s been pushing and pushing to get goals and to get three tonight – I’m not surprised. I see her do it every day in training.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arsenal boss Renee Slegers said Alessia Russo “is everything” after the striker’s hat-trick sealed a 3-0 victory over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":817030,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-817029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=817029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817029\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/817030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=817029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=817029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=817029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}