Welcome to Budapest: city of stew, city of pavement squares, city of men in cotton smocks offering brisk muscular relaxation in geothermally heated cubicles. Eleven days on from the profound emotional release of winning the Premier League title it seems fitting Arsenal will approach their season’s endgame in a city that is basically perfect for a restorative summer city break.
Saturday afternoon at the Puskas Arena already looks like a twin-track event for Mikel Arteta’s team, an occasion that changes shape according to the angle from which you see it. On one hand, victory against Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League final would represent the greatest day in Arsenal’s history. On the other, this is an occasion that feels strangely light, fun, celebratory, a free-hit kind of final.
And this really is something new for a team whose entire public identity in the age of Arteta has been defined by the curation of anxiety, every step or stumble pitched as a referendum on the validity of the project, on the basic character of the knitwear-clad avatar of pain striding along at the front of the parade.
When was the last time this team were able to approach a day like this without some deep clog of existential dread? How will a non‑tortured, fully validated, daddy-does-actually-love-us Arsenal carry themselves? What does this team playing without fear even look like?
Even the well-meaning performative attempts to enjoy the title run-in felt painfully stiff and processed. Get on the fun boat. Bring the fire. Join us as we micromanage to the last detail the liberating of our own emotions. Suddenly Darth Vader is doing stand-up. Spock wants to disco dance. Mr Pincus, can you hear me Mr Pincus?
And now we have this, a chance to breathe, to take the air by the Danube, and to luxuriate in a slight but significant shift in the tone and texture of this Arsenal era.
Perhaps the travelling fans can simply enjoy looking around for omens. English teams have played four Champions League ties at the renovated Puskas Arena, winning four and not conceding a goal, although admittedly none of their opponents could field a furiously irresistible Georgian goal-werewolf.
Coldplay and Ed Sheeran, also English, have played sold‑out mega-shows there. As have Depeche Mode, who have a French name but are in fact from Essex. So unlucky there, Paris. Even the Ballon d’Or ceremony has been moved to London, which would certainly be handy for dual Euro and World Cup king Martín Zubimendi/Declan Rice.
In the real world PSG will be favourites to win, and with good reason. They’ve done it before. They have a clear advantage in attacking personnel, a team that approach these occasions armed to the teeth, a bayonet in each sleeve, a back-up Kalashnikov in their waistband.
But there are new variables now, fresh unknowns. Two key things have changed. The most important is Arteta himself, both in his professional status and his relationship with the club.
A few weeks ago some more deranged elements of the wider online fanbase were calling for him to be sacked. The scepticism wasn’t confined to the hysterical fringe. There have always been doubts, and a surprisingly heartfelt wider desire for Arteta to fail, to be exposed as a helmet-haired fraud, an empty pair of grey slacks; annoyance at the capering presence at the edge of the picture, the paperclip-salesman sloganeering, the sense of being lectured by a male wellness tycoon. As recently as this season’s semi-finals the French press was making sly references to Arteta’s “overly emotional register”.
Well, not any more. Football is an outcome-based industry. Elite clubs crave success. Elite players respond to it. And Arteta is now unarguably an elite coach. Even getting to a Champions League final is an act of levelling up. It makes you a Max Allegri, a Mauricio Pochettino. Winning it would be something else altogether, a fresh name on a list that over the past 12 years reads Carlo Ancelotti, Zinedine Zidane (three times each), Luis Enrique (twice), Jürgen Klopp, Hansi Flick, Thomas Tuchel and Pep Guardiola; basically the capi dei capi, the guys who get to do the jobs.
Arsenal’s executive has never publicly wavered on Arteta. But that gravity has shifted. The club now has an asset to placate, to hang on to, the star of his own title-winning project, and a manager who will be of interest to Spain’s big two, to PSG themselves, to the Football Association in due course.
Another interesting note of trivia: Arteta would be the first English coach to win the European Cup since Joe Fagan in 1984. Well, he does at least have a British passport and live in London. And he is also the best qualified British candidate to manage the England team. Maybe this is his destiny. Maybe the set pieces, the big lads at the back, all make sense in this light. Maybe the game isn’t actually gone, but back.
Perhaps not. But that moment of status-uplift is hugely significant. Arteta has a Scottish Premiership title as a player at Rangers and FA Cups as captain and coach of Arsenal. But winning the Premier League is by some distance the most significant moment of his 27-year professional life.
This is a football personage who has made an elite-level career out of almost but not quite reaching the summit. As a kid he made it to La Masia, but not through La Masia, blocked by an extreme wealth of talent, including, among others, Luis Enrique. He went to PSG for almost 18 months, but in a period when this meant winning the Intertoto Cup. He went to post‑peak-Wenger Arsenal, the years of shrinkage and falling away.
Perhaps he could find elite validation with a steamrollering Spain? But steamrollering Spain already had Xavi, Andrés Iniesta, Xabi Alonso, Cesc Fàbregas, Sergio Busquets, David Silva and Santi Cazorla, and Arteta never won a cap. Hang on, maybe he can play for England! Except, no, Fifa says he can’t.
Arteta’s coaching career also kicked off with a spell of standing near someone else while they won things, before three successive second places at Arsenal. He may project certainty, process chat, trusting the methods. But Arteta is also human. He has spoken of doubts, of a feeling that maybe it’s just not me. Except, it is him. Arteta is the captain now. Will he look, speak, walk differently?
Ideally not. There is a theory out there Arsenal will experience The Freeing Up. The ankle weights are off. The handbrake will not just be released via the annoying electric button, but jimmied out with a screwdriver and thrown through the side window.
Is this a good idea? Does it make sense for Arsenal to abandon the disciplines that took them to this place, just as they come up against Europe’s most unforgiving attack? Live by the rigidly disciplined tactical straitjacket, die by the rigidly disciplined tactical straitjacket. You’re not going to outdance Michael Jackson. But you may beat him at a really long and painful game of Scrabble.
Arsenal are not the defensive nihilists they have often been cast as. Much of the season has been spent managing the absence of their most creative players, with a centre-forward who runs about as if he’s being chased by a sheepdog. PSG are also less freewheeling than they have been painted. Both of these teams start from a position of achieving control. They rank one and two for fewest shots conceded in Europe’s top five leagues. PSG have four attacking players of genuine high quality, but their effectiveness is built on a structure that allows them to run forwards and seek out duels. This is not a free-flowing, off-the-cuff team. It is attacking super-strengths implanted into a system.
It seems likely the outcome will rest on how Arsenal defend and counterattack in wide areas. There is a precedent here. It is easy to forget that for 26 minutes in Paris last May, Arsenal dominated these same opponents, and in an interesting way.
Luis Enrique’s team pinned Arsenal’s full‑backs in their own half in the first leg of that tie. At the Parc des Princes Myles Lewis-Skelly and Jurriën Timber came inside fearlessly, flooded the midfield and enabled a hugely aggressive pressing structure. Arsenal couldn’t finish the chances they made. Fabián Ruiz scored a brilliant goal to kill the tie. But the plan worked while it worked.
Logic still suggests PSG have too much attacking power. But if Arsenal can keep it goalless for an hour the game may just start to lean towards this new-look champion team, out there just living for the moment (context: probably not just living for the moment). It will as ever come down to details. And maybe, just maybe, to that absence of fear.
Leave a Reply