And so I am become a meme. Towards the end of this game, already booked for standing on the edge of the pitch whirling his arms in a balletic, immaculately groomed pose of horror, like an oversized wedding cake figurine at the world’s most distressing wedding, Mikel Arteta could be seen pulling his jumper up over his eyes to obscure the spectacle in front of him. Not so fast, Mikel. We’re all in this together you know.
At the final whistle, with a controlled, job-done 0-0 safely in the bag, Arteta could be seen striding out in front of the post-match column of Arsenal players, conducting the crowd, an urgent, compact, dark-haired figure with, from a distance, something of the business-casual Tom Cruise about him.
And by that stage the dominant note inside the Emirates was relief: at a successfully concluded second leg; and also, it should be said, just a concluded one. This was a difficult watch once again.
Sporting are the kind of team you will have these nights against, gnarly and obstructive, a kind of footballing knotweed. And Arsenal will be hugely pleased with this result. Eight clean sheets. Another date ticked off. They’re in the semis now, with Atlético Madrid plus one other team between them and a first Champions League title. This is only good. Maybe this is just how you win things. Even if it didn’t exactly feel like it.
In the middle of all this it is worth talking about the Arsenal crowd, who have become the spectacle around this club now, its most theatrical element, and who have been unfairly maligned as an entity. From a distance it is easy to assume the entire Arsenal fanbase is in the grip of some kind of category mistake.
There have been boos and early walkouts. But this could still be the best season in the club’s history. More to the point, football is meant to be fun, collectivism, warmth, drama. So why does it feel instead like watching somebody have their toenails very slowly peeled off with a set of pruning secateurs?
Why the state of total fear, an anxiety that seems outsized, entirely disproportionate to the actual event. But it is also wrong to blame the fans for this. If only because what Arsenal are producing is a genuinely strange spectacle. Arteta’s football is a sui generis version of possession ball, control, breaking the game down.
It can feel like trying to win by default, to win by drowning slightly more slowly than the other guy. Nobody has ever advanced on so many fronts playing quite like this.
Here Arteta started with four career centre-backs, including Cristhian Mosquera, who is an excellent one-on-one defender, but a species-level step down from Jurriën Timber as a ball-playing full-back. And from the start there was a sense of absence. Arsenal were all mildly discordant notes in the final third.
Passes that were just the wrong weight or line. Early crosses eschewed. It is tempting to say Arsenal miss Martin Ødegaard in these moments. But they miss the previous Martin Ødegaard, the Martin Ødegaard Martin Ødegaard also misses.
Rui Borges was up on his touchline straight away in putty-coloured gilet and high-end cappuccino slacks, like a global ambassador for the colour light beige. His Sporting team are well-drilled and physically robust. Morten Hjulmand ran the midfield for a while.
Cue the first real tremor of muttering voices and individual shouts of dismay. Victor Gyökeres had a close-range chance on his left side and nudged at it weakly with his right foot. Being one-footed only really works when your good foot is a wand, a paintbrush, a sniper rifle, or at least quite good.
And at this point a single goal was all it would have taken to turn a slow-burn holding job into disastrously passive display. Just imagine, if you will, the sheer naked horror of this Arsenal team taking part in a penalty shootout, the kind of content that should probably require proof of age, or just a mass pixelation.
But the crowd did stay with it. There were attempts to generate noise, to find elements to cheer. At half-time at the Emirates they played I Feel For You, and this felt about right. Watching this has become an ordeal, an experience to be endured, like watching a self-driving car stuck in fourth gear, still somehow doggedly on course. How are you meant to feel about it?
Here there was a loosening up as the game crawled towards its end point. Arsenal finally mustered some sustained pressure around the hour mark, Gabriel Martinelli eventually shooting over, and the applause was almost tender, the kind of applause you might offer a particularly anxious seven-year-old nephew finally having a go on the slide. Nobody left. Arteta got to curate the spectacle at the end. And Arsenal crawl on, this strange, slow-burn race towards some kind of finish line, a spectacle that really is unlike any other.
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