When it was finally over – on the night and for the club season, devastation the overriding emotion for everyone connected to Arsenal – Declan Rice wanted to go back to make the point. To last July and his club’s first pre-season game, against Milan in Singapore.
Arsenal won 1-0 before the teams agreed to stage a penalty shootout. The idea was clear: to practise in front of a crowd because you just cannot replicate this particular aspect of the game on the training ground. Arsenal lost.
So at least there was a kind of symmetry to how it all ended on Saturday night in the Champions League final, Arsenal losing on penalties to Paris Saint-Germain, Gabriel Magalhães missing the decisive kick in round five. As an aside, Arsenal had two other shootouts in pre-season, against Villarreal and Athletic Club. They lost the former, Gabriel missing the fifth, again. They won the latter.
What Rice wanted to stress was the marathon nature of a season that has brought the club’s first Premier League title since 2004 and defeats in two finals: the Carabao Cup and now the Champions League.
“This season from start to finish … we started in July in Singapore and we’re now coming up to July again,” Rice said. “We’ve just played our 63rd game in all competitions. It’s been really tough, mentally draining. Since October, it has been three games a week.”
Nobody had the heart to mention what is up next for Rice: the World Cup with England in North America. It will be the biggest, most congested one of them all, the heat and travel demands incredible. Rice will approach it having played in 55 of Arsenal’s matches (not including pre-season). Plus, six more for England. And battled through the pain of a persistent injury problem for months.
When Rice was forced to withdraw from England’s friendly against Japan at the end of March, Thomas Tuchel revealed he had been at “70%” for “quite a while”. When he returned for Arsenal, Mikel Arteta came to play him as more of a midfield No 6 than a No 8. Was it to manage his running?
“We know what we’ve been through internally this season,” Arteta said as he tried to digest the PSG defeat, and it was easy to imagine he had Rice’s internal battle in mind. Yet all the way through the final, Rice resisted. Up until his very last action – his successful conversion in round three of the shootout. He was not the barnstorming presence of so many Arsenal games. But as a symbol of their character, their sheer bloody-mindedness, he was there.
There were many others and what had to please Arteta the most was how his players executed the gameplan. After Kai Havertz’s early goal, Arsenal were watertight against Europe’s most feared attack until Cristhian Mosquera conceded the penalty for Ousmane Dembélé’s 65th-minute equaliser.
Thereafter, Arsenal pushed again, they asked questions and, were it not for a clutch of poor final passes, they may have nicked a winner, most notably before the end of regulation time. You didn’t like the approach? You haven’t liked Arsenal this season? They don’t care. Neither do their fans.
“You can’t play the game against PSG like others have done where you are following them all around the pitch because that’s what they want,” Rice said. “We really nullified them.”
There was a moment after PSG had got past Bayern Munich in the semi-final and were looking ahead to the final when Luis Enrique referred to Arteta as “Mikelito”. The PSG manager was an established Barcelona player when Arteta was a young hopeful at the club, trying (and failing) to break into the first team. Luis Enrique’s use of the old nickname was affectionate and yet it felt slightly patronising, too. He has to see Arteta as more of an equal now.
The bad bits of the final for Arsenal took in that lack of care with their final ball. Their pass-completion rate was an extremely low 69%. PSG’s was 91%. They simply did not enjoy enough possession; they made 196 successful passes to PSG’s 806. Or create enough in front of goal. Some of the individual attacking statistics were startling. Bukayo Saka completed only four passes and was nought out of four on his dribbles. Martin Ødegaard touched the ball 12 times.
Gabriel’s miss from the spot made the headlines but what about Eberechi Eze’s in round two? He took a penalty for Crystal Palace in their Community Shield shootout win against Liverpool at the start of the season. He made a stuttering run, paused and shot weakly for the bottom left-hand corner, with Alisson getting down to save.
In a video captured on the Wembley pitch, as Eze’s miss was replayed on the big screen, the Palace defender, Tyrick Mitchell, can be heard saying to him: “You’d better stop taking it like that, I’m telling you.”
“Yeah, I think it’s done,” Eze replies. But he went with exactly the same technique against PSG, the only difference being that he dragged the ball past the post.
We also really have to talk about the referee, Daniel Siebert, and the sense that Arsenal antagonised him with their time management. It was an extraordinary episode when he blew for the end of the first half of normal time as Saka prepared to take a corner, feeling the Arsenal winger had dillydallied too long.
PSG were back out early after the interval but where were Arsenal, Siebert seemed to wonder? He walked over towards the tunnel and stood on the sideline waiting for them. He looked exasperated. Two minutes after the restart, he booked Mosquera for time-wasting on a throw. Then, at the last, as Gabriel prepared to take his penalty, did Siebert absolutely need to have a chat with him and fuss over his placement of the ball? Gabriel respotted it before blazing high.
Moving forward, it will be interesting to see if Arteta can turn the dial more towards attack in the pressure games. He talked about having to “make some very important decisions if we want to reach another level.” The Atlético Madrid striker, Julián Alvarez, will be a prime summer transfer target. Arteta will reflect on whether the club can make improvements on the medical and conditioning side to better withstand the demands of the schedule.
For the moment, though, it will be the snapshots and emotions from after the final that dominate. The PSG celebrations as they retained their Champions League title. Even the image that was projected on to the magnificent facade of the main train station in Budapest. It featured Dembélé, his teammate Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, and the caption: “Back to Back”.
“We’re gutted but we move on,” Rice said. “There’s been so many top players who have taken so many years to win their first Champions League. We’re going to use these feelings … seeing them lift that trophy … to go on and win this competition. We’ll be back, for sure.”
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