Jess Park exclusive: Lionesses star on joining Man Utd from Man City and the message of 'freedom' that has her thriving as Red Devils prepare for League Cup final showdown with Chelsea

There was less than an hour remaining in the Women’s Super League summer transfer window when the most stunning business of all was completed. Jess Park and Grace Clinton had been stalwarts at Manchester City and Manchester United, respectively, during the previous season. And yet, at the eleventh hour, both were sent to opposite sides of the city, to represent what had been their biggest and bitterest rival.

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  Flying form

  Park plays like she is loving it, too. With six goals and four assists, it's already her best-ever WSL season in terms of goal contributions, and there are still six games to play. That’s on top of three goals in other competitions, including the crucial equaliser in the League Cup quarter-final win over Tottenham.

  “Jess just excites me. She excites the team. She excites the fans,” Skinner said of his talismanic forward just last month. “And you know what? We're getting to the point now, as soon as it leaves her foot, you know it's in. As soon as you know she's in a space, you know that she's going to hit the target.”

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Tottenham Hotspur Women
Tottenham Hotspur Women
26 Apr 202607:00

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Manchester United Women
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  Freedom aplenty

  And the position Skinner has put Park in has helped to bring that form out of her. At City, she was deployed in a more orthodox central midfield role, but at United, she’s most often started on the right and been allowed to float into whatever spaces appear.

  Asked what the message has been in that role, Park says: “Have freedom, find the ball, find the spaces, find the pockets.” That’s exactly what she’s done.

  “A position is just where you start. It doesn't have to be where you finish,” she explains. “I just like to link up with the players around me, try and do that as best as I can, and create opportunities to score and assist.”

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  Perfect role

  Skinner’s stance all season has been to give Park that freedom to thrive.

  “As a coach, if you coach the life out of players, you can see it drains out of them,” he said recently. “When [Jess] was at City, she had a very defined, clear cut role and she had to do certain things. It worked for them at the time, but what we've done is we've tried to negate the pressures that she'll have by putting her in spaces teams don't get used to. You stick her in one space and it can stifle the situation. If you keep moving her and keep allowing her to have that freedom, she'll create anything for anyone she for anyone, and she'll score goals as well.”

  What does it do for a player’s confidence when they are given that kind of freedom, especially when that player is a creative playmaker like Park? “I'm confident in myself, and him then giving me that on top of it has really given me a different angle of the game to go and express myself and go and play football,” she says.

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  Consistency of message

  That’s continued even as the attacking picture has changed. In January, United made up for a quiet summer with a superb winter window, bringing in Bayern Munich striker Lea Schuller, Hammarby star Ellen Wangerheim and full-back Hanna Lundkvist, from the San Diego Wave.

  The arrivals of Schuller and Wangerheim - especially the latter, who has regularly taken up what was always Park’s spot on the right - have led to much more rotation of personnel and positions in the forward line, with Park also starting centrally and on the left since the turn of the year.

  "The message is still the same", she says. “I think it's still important, wherever you play, to find spaces and pockets and pick the ball up and do what you're good at. No matter where I play, I'm always going to try and do that," she adds.

  Because of the versatility of players such as Wangerheim and Melvine Malard, who has 16 goal involvements this term, it’s made the whole United attack quite fluid and interchangeable. 

  "Obviously, it takes a lot of responsibility to know the out of possession responsibilities," Park notes. "But as long as we've got that in the bag, then, yeah, go and be free. It's nice."

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  Reinforcements

  It’s also added necessary firepower in attack as the ‘business end’ of the season begins. United’s depth was nowhere near where it needed to be in the first half of the campaign, with the players deserving huge credit for what they were able to achieve in spite of that. Now, reinforcements have arrived to help them build on that.

  Wangerheim returned 17 goals and seven assists in 25 league games in Sweden last year and adds “qualities” which Park believes are “very, very helpful for this team”. Meanwhile, Schuller, the centre-forward who scored 103 goals in 180 appearances for Bayern Munich, is someone Park talks to “every day” as they work on building that connection.

  “On the training pitch, we work on things that maybe we missed a little bit or things like that. She's really settling into the group and is a great asset to have as a player. I think this group is really special for that. The conversations that we have together are about what we want on the field, but when we get off the field, we are actually a very together bunch. I think that's one of the strongest things about our team.”

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  'Every game is like a final'

  With cohesion, individual quality and now depth in this squad, United are set up for a big end to the season. This Sunday, they make their bow in the League Cup final, looking to dethrone holders Chelsea. The Red Devils then have six vital WSL games to go, knowing any slip-up will be costly in the race for Champions League football. Amid it all, there is actual Champions League football, with the Red Devils’ two-legged quarter-final against Bayern Munich to begin on March 24.

  “Every game is like a final,” Park notes, but Sunday’s final always feels like a particularly big one because it’s the first silverware of the season. Win, and it gives you so much confidence to take into the rest of those big games. Lose, and picking yourselves up quickly is vital, or things could spiral.

  “I think if you get into that final and you win something, you can almost use that as fuel, because you want to keep feeling that,” Park adds.

  It’d be another big step in United’s journey if they could come out on top, too. It’s already been a huge season which has seen them take strides in Europe especially. To register just a second-ever win over Chelsea, in their 17th meeting, to lift their first League Cup would be a statement. And in Park, they have a special player, brimming with confidence, who can deliver the sort of moment that will be needed to do exactly that.