It doesn’t get much better than that across two legs against Real Madrid, who aren’t great, but three more games like that from Arsenal and they will win the Champions League. It’s the time for giddiness.
There would be at least five penalties per game if the foul (and it is a foul) on Mikel Merino was given for every similar set-piece grapple in the box, at which point we questioned whether God is indeed a Real Madrid fan, but only briefly. The supreme being’s Los Blancos leaning was made abundantly clear ten minutes later when Francois Letexier awarded the hosts a penalty in what would result in less a game of football and more a game of spot-kicks if similar hugs were routinely sanctioned.
The second penalty award was a farce from start to finish: the Kylian Mbappe dive; the referee buying it; the five minutes it took for VAR to make a decision. But the first was also odd.
Raul Asensio was baffled when the referee made the box signal and jogged over to the touchline. Merino gave a tentative wave in appeal as he went down before getting up and getting on with the game, there was no replay in the 90 seconds between the incident and Letexier consulting his screen and no comment from the TNT Sports commentators even as he made his way over. What he was going to be looking at was the height of anticipation in a game which hadn’t offered a great deal of excitement up to that point.
It was one of those that definitely is a penalty but you would be very, very angry about had it been awarded against your side. Thankfully for Real Madrid, Bukayo Saka had a brain fart. Why? Just why?
He’s achieved Never In Doubt status through converting his last eight for Arsenal, typically smashing them into the corner to take the goalkeeper’s decision out of the equation.
If he scores he would of course be hailed as a genius; the coolest of customers in a cauldron. But Saka doesn’t strike us as someone who gives a damn about such acclaim, making a panenka of any sort an out-of-character move. Such a terrible panenka was particularly shocking.
They work on the assumption that a goalkeeper always dives so a dink down the middle is a relatively safe bet. But whether out of choice (which would be more damning) or because of a slight mishit, Saka essentially waited a beat for Thibaut Courtois to go to his right before feathering it straight to him.
It was an awful penalty entirely out of keeping with his performance on the night as he bullied David Alaba, getting the better of him pretty much every time he got the ball, and it’s not the penalty miss but him exorcising that penalty miss demon in the very same game which sums Saka up as a player. That’s the time to dink it, Bukayo.
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Merino’s part in it was brilliant, flicking on David Raya’s long pass forward to Saka before playing the through ball for the winger. It was no less than Arsenal deserved on a night when Mikel Arteta’s perfect game plan saw them brush the 15-time Champions League winners aside with the sort of confidence that will more than reasonably have fans dreaming they can go all the way.
Our favourite moment of the night was undoubtedly the 20 or so seconds midway through the second half when Gabriel Martinelli took the p*ss out of Vasquez with body feints and touches of the ball on the touchline from one foot to the other amid deafening Madrista whistles before Ole’s from the travelling Gooners.
Ally McCoist bestowed most of his “I’ll tell you what” protestations of praise upon Declan Rice, who was indeed brilliant once again, but then they all were in what is surely the greatest moment of Arteta’s managerial career.
Jakub Kiwior at worst added £10m to his summer asking price and at best proved there’s absolutely no need for Arsenal to spend money on a new centre-back this summer. Do they really need a striker after that Merino performance? OK, yes they do, but he was superb. And we need to check Myles Lewis-Skelly’s passport and put the doping control officials onto him, because his level as an 18-year-old is absurd.
Even William Saliba turning blind into Vinicius Junior may end up being a positive amid reports of Real Madrid interest, though they may look past that blunder and focus on his extraordinarily dominant performance against Mbappe et al. We could gush for a further 1000 words on just how good it all was. It was arguably better than the first leg.
Thomas Partey added a completely unnecessary blot to the copybook by picking up a daft yellow card in the 85th minute and while we’re reticent to be negative in any way after they’ve knocking out the reigning champions with such aplomb, Real Madrid were never the strongest team in this competition.
Arsenal might be though. Paris Saint-Germain are wonderful but fallible, as we saw across two legs against Aston Villa, Barcelona are similarly up and down, while the Gunners will fancy themselves against Inter Milan despite Simone Inzaghi once again illustrating just what a brilliant tactician he is having masterminded victory over Bayern Munich.
That was as close to a perfect two-legged European display as you’re ever likely to see, and we have little doubt that three performances of the same quality will see Arsenal win the Champions League.
