Katie McCabe had the last laugh in May. After Arsenal’s phenomenal Champions League win over Barcelona, in which she was part of a back four that didn’t concede a foul against the three-time European champions, Arsenal partied hard and McCabe was front and centre of the social media posts from inside the club’s afterparty.
At the celebration outside the Emirates Stadium two days later, the full-back was a highlight, shades on, leading the 10,000 crowd in singing her own chant before shushing them and kicking off a rendition of the final goalscorer Stina Blackstenius’s song to the tune of Karma Chameleon, getting a huge cheer when she proclaimed “red is in my bloooood” and being spotted having to run to catch up with the coach before it left the ground when the players finished their third day of celebrations.
“I worked so hard for that moment,” McCabe says eight months on. “I’ve worked my whole career to lift a trophy like that with a club like Arsenal and I was going to make sure I enjoyed it along with my teammates. I guess the fans just got to see my personality even more because all eyes were on us.”
Don’t remind her about singing her own chant, though. “I can’t sing it ever again,” she says. “I got so much stick for that. I was cringing after it.”
The speculation was whether McCabe would remember much of the partying – “I do remember everything,” she says – or be able to meet up with the Republic of Ireland squad for their Nations League game against Turkey six days after the final, but not only did she make it and play the full game, she put in a player-of-the-match performance in the 2-1 win.
“I got on with recovery and I was back in the green zone where I needed to be,” she says. “I’m very in tune with what my body needs.”
The player-of-the-match trophy was delicious reward for that turnaround. “That made it even sweeter because I felt like everyone was writing me off for the game on the Friday,” she says, with a grin. “I’m the captain, I know what I can bring to the team.”
After highest of Arsenal highs, the team are struggling to replicate the doggedness and togetherness that enabled them to turn around tie after tie on the way to that most unexpected of final wins in Lisbon.
That campaign began in the first round of qualifying and McCabe broke the record for minutes played across a Champions League season. She is Ms Consistent and credits a leg break in a cruncher of a tackle as an 18-year-old, playing for Dublin-based Raheny United, with embedding an “I do not want this to happen again” mindset that has driven her attention to detail on conditioning her body to be “strong and robust enough to withstand lots of minutes and big training sessions”.
That was stage one. Then, in her 20s, attention turned to education around sleep, nutrition and recovery strategies and “being at a fantastic club like Arsenal we have the facilities and the staff around to support that,” she says, her cat Coopurr, whose life has recently been turned upside down by the arrival of a puppy, Peggy McFoord, curled next to her in the home she shares with partner and teammate, Caitlin Foord.
“It’s all about preparation. I get my prep done early in the week as that’s what I need to do so that I’m performing at my best level. Sleep and consistent bedtimes are a massive part of things. Recovery strategies as well, whether that’s the sauna, ice baths, etc.”
With matches for Arsenal and Ireland piling high, it involves a lot of discipline. “You learn to love it,” McCabe says of the strength and conditioning training and recovery strategies. “Especially the ice baths. You learn to love the pain of the coldness. I’ve even invested in a sauna here at home just to try and chase those 1%s.”
McCabe has maintained consistency in the quality of her performances. She was sensational last season, becoming an important creative outlet, a title not often attributed to a full-back. She benefited from a traditional left-back, Steph Catley, playing inside her at centre-back, the Australian able to cover and allow McCabe to regularly overlap and exercise her attacking threat.
McCabe’s qualities are often overlooked or dampened down, the 30-year-old’s reputation for being fiery on the pitch often dominating discourse around her. She has the most yellow cards in WSL history, the highest number in a season and often plays on a tightrope, physicality a key part of her game.
“I don’t have control over how people describe me,” McCabe says. “What I can say is that I’m very passionate, I want to win and I’ll always work hard. I wear my heart on my sleeve with that and I always give it 100%. I hear so much narrative around the way I am. But, for me, I’m doing my job. You’re constantly looking to find that perfect level of performance and, yes, with the emotions of the game or when decisions don’t go your way that can spill over sometimes. But, being passionate is who I am and if I take that away then I wouldn’t be Katie McCabe.”
The next challenge is the team, who host Aston Villa in the FA Cup fourth round on Sunday, finding consistency. Five draws in the league, including a frustrating 0-0 from a dominant performance against Manchester United in their first game back after the winter break, have left Arsenal 10 points off the leaders, Manchester City. On Tuesday night, they welcome United to Borehamwood for a League Cup semi-final that will not be able to end in a third stalemate of the season.
“There’s been a couple of results that haven’t gone our way,” says McCabe, who has hit 10 years with the club she credits with being a big part of who she is today. “But the positive that we’ve tried to focus on is that we are doing all the right things: we’re getting into really good areas, I think we nullified Man United’s threat and, as a team, we’re being very productive in what we’re trying to do.
“We are obviously looking to tweak a few things. We’ve got such quality up top, so we need to make sure we’re setting each other up in the right areas in order to score. It’s of course, frustrating but we can’t dwell on it too much.”
In a 12-team league, closing a 10-point gap is unlikely, but McCabe says: “You never know in the WSL. Especially this year, there’s teams taking points off everybody … We want to compete for all the trophies and that’s going to be a tough ask, but we’ve got a great team, we’ve got winners in the team, so we’ll be absolutely focused on pushing for that.”
