Wally

The signing of Lia Walti during the summer of 2018 raised some eyebrows among the Arsenal fan base. When Joe Montemurro took the team over in November 2017, he first concentrated on defensive solidity, with Leah Williamson and Louise Quinn forming a solid defensive partnership with Dominique Janssen ahead of them.

Janssen really grew into the role as the ‘six’ as Arsenal became more defensively formidable. Therefore, the arrival of Walti from Turbine Potsdam was not deemed as hugely necessary. However, for Joe Montemurro, the Swiss was a crucial piece of his puzzle and the first signing that truly marked the transition to Montemurro-ball.

It was quickly obvious why Walti was seen as such a key pillar in the transition to Montemurro’s fluid vision of Total Football. The Australian coach somehow managed to cram a series of 10s like Kim Little, Danielle van de Donk, Jordan Nobbs and Vivianne Miedema into his attack, interchanging positions at a dizzying rate.

He needed an anchor behind them to secure the base of the team and Walti, with her sixth sense for danger and her altruistic attitude towards her team, was the perfect ballast. But Walti wasn’t just a good defensive midfield player, she was capable of fantasy in her passing and is probably the most truly two-footed footballer I have ever seen. Back when FBRef was collating the data, Walti would regularly register something close to 50-50 for passes played off both feet.

In her first season she was such a revelation that she was voted into the PFA WSL Team of the Season by her peers despite missing the last three months of the campaign with a knee injury. Her teammates quickly nicknamed her ‘snake hips’ due to her unrivalled ability to wriggle away from opposition pressure. Really, Walti was the only personnel change that Joe Montemurro made to his starting eleven in his first full season and Arsenal went from pretenders to title winners.

As time went on and the coaching baton passed from Joe Montemurro to Jonas Eidevall, Wally’s role in the team changed. Instead of playing as a single pivot, as she had so excellently under Montemurro, she became more of a left central midfield player. She interchanged with Kim Little at the base of the midfield and was asked to join the high press. It is to her credit that few people noticed the change so capably did she adapt.

In May 2023, Jonas Eidevall talked to Arseblog News about the player’s ability to adapt and what Walti had taught him as a coach, ‘When you see her play and when you spend time with her, you see she has qualities both on the pitch and off the pitch to make a great team.

‘She has adaptability and versatility in her game so she can adapt to new ideas. She is an exciting player to work with because, sometimes, as a coach you work with a player who makes you adapt your own ideas.

‘You see she has some unique qualities that you really want to utilise. It has been both in the two years we have worked together. She has adapted to some of my ideas and I have adapted too to some of her qualities.’

Walti continued to marshal the Arsenal midfield in a partnership with Kim Little that secured the technical department of the Arsenal team. Walti has an innate ability to understand how to control the temperature of a game, when to calm things down with a shimmy away from an opponent and a calm pass back to a centre half, and when to raise the temperature with a defence splitting pass.

I still don’t think her forward passing and her ability to hit a through ball have been properly valued outside the Arsenal fan base. Walti also performed an excellent stint as a left centre-half for the last couple of months of the 2020-21 season as injuries took their toll on the squad. Her ability on her left-foot and her defensive instincts made her extended period in defence seamless from an Arsenal perspective.

While the quality of the player is a very significant reason for fan affection towards Walti, supporters also saw a quality person. Walti was a leader, who visibly always put the team first and not just because of the position that she played. Fans got to know a methodical character who enjoys puzzles and picking up leaves from her garden with kitchen tongs!

This summer, Walti fought tooth and nail to be fit to lead her country out at a home Euros, a tournament where she continued to show her class as a player and as a leader of a generation of exciting new Swiss talent. It is incredibly fitting that Walti, whose quality and leadership has been matched by her loyalty, bows out with a Champions League winners medal.

Speaking from a journalistic point of view, all I can say is that all our encounters with Walti down the years have emphasised everything you can already see about the character. Always warm, always polite, always honest. Arsenal fans are understandably sad to see the player leave but all a footballer can ever hope for is to leave on your own terms, with your head held high and, well, a Champions League winners medal in your pocket.

Job done, Wally.

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