Whether you watch women's football or not (you definitely should), you have more than likely heard of Vivianne Miedema. Having started her career at SC Heerenveen, she then spent 3 years at Bayern Munich before signing for Arsenal back in 2017. She quickly became a fan favourite and has been given the nickname of the goat by the Arsenal faithful, but what has she done to earn this status, and just how good is she?
Playing Style
Whilst she plays as a striker for Arsenal on paper, she often drops deep and operates as more of a number 10, which is the position she naturally grew up playing. To Ian Wright in a feature for Adidas x London, she touched upon this, stating "I've never really been a '9', I've always played as a '10'". This allows for her advanced midfielders, often Kim Little and Jordan Nobbs, to overlap her and get in behind defences. The same can be said for the wide players, who benefit a lot from Miedema's selfless style of play.
With that being said, she remains an incredible finisher; you can almost always rely on her to score in a one-on-one situation with the keeper. Naturally right footed, she scores a healthy percentage of her goals with her left, and a handful with her head too. Her pace is often a feature of her game that goes unnoticed, despite the fact that she can take on any defender in the league in a race to the ball.
If I was to pick out a fault in her game, it would probably be her strength, which was most evident in the 2-1 loss against PSG in the UEFA Women's Champions League Quarter Finals, where she often found herself bullied off the ball and it hindered her ability to fully grow into the game.
Goal Machine
At just 24 years of age, Vivianne Miedema is the all-time leading goal scorer of the Netherlands women's national football team, and has even outscored Robin Van Persie for her country, both the men's team leading scorer and her childhood hero. She achieved this at the 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup by scoring her 60th international goal, a tally which she has already increased to 69 in just 88 games.
Her domestic statistics are just as impressive. In the Netherlands for SC Heerenveen, she scored 78 goals in 69 games. Miedema made her senior debut at just 15 years old, and was reported as the youngest ever player in the Eredivisie Vrouwen. In the 2013-14 season, she scored 39 league goals, earning the golden boot.
She helped Bayern Munich to 2 successive titles, (the first of which during an unbeaten season), netting 35 goals in 61 appearances. This was where she met now girlfriend Lisa Evans, who came with her to North London in 2017.
So far at Arsenal Vivianne Miedema has scored 44 goals in as many games and has established herself as one of the world's best strikers, maybe the best. Along with the goals, she has won endless individual awards in England, including PFA Player of the Year in 2019, and she was shortlisted for the Ballon d'Or Feminin in the same year. In both the 18/19 and 19/20 seasons, Miedema was awarded the golden boot, with 22 and 16 goals respectively. Furthermore, she was awarded the London Football Awards Women's Player of the Year 2 years in a row, along with the FWA Women's Football of the Year in 2020.
May I add, Miedema hasn't been the first-choice penalty taker of any of these teams.
Creative Vision
If her goal scoring stats weren't quite impressive enough, she has a lot more to offer. She was the WSL's top creator in 2019/2020 with 8 assists (0.64 per 90). Her average direct goal contributions per game was 1.72, which is on another planet compared to the second highest, Pauline Bremer, at 1.43.
These two sides to her game were best displayed in an 11-1 win at home to Bristol City, of which 10 goals directly involved Miedema (she only played 65 minutes). She scored 6 and set up 4, with the 11th coming when she was no longer on the pitch. This was the biggest defeat in WSL history, and was arguably massively due to her (with no disrespect intended to her teammates), as she also became the first player in WSL history to contribute to 10 goals in a single game.
In all domestic competitions in 2018/19, she had 10 assists alongside her 31 goals, amounting to 41 contributions in 27 games. When you look at her career, her creativity has only truly began to flourish in London; before the move, she was mainly used as a pure number 9, and had less freedom to create.
Football Intelligence
Miedema is often touted by critics as a tap-in striker, which massively overlooks the traits which make her numbers so dominant. Her movement off the ball is world-class and she makes situations far easier for herself, which is highlighted by her conversion rate of 29%. She isn't wasteful on the ball, and her 2 WSL goals from outside the box demonstrate this perfectly. Rather than try and find the space for a shot, she has the ability to find her teammates, who can then in turn find her with the return ball into the penalty area.
She finishes so many of the shots she takes because she is so clever on the ball, and because her finishing ability is at such a high level. She knows what to do when, to help the team, rather than just to help herself. Miedema averages 1.91 key passes per game, a lot of which are through to the before-mentioned marauding midfielders of Nobbs, Little and Van de Donk.
Conclusion
Sometimes it's easy to get caught up in her numbers and forget that Vivianne Miedema is only 24 years of age. She has the potential to go on and be the greatest female player of all time and it is scary to imagine how her stats will look once she retires.
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