Category: Football (Soccer)

The origin of PSG’s largesse and the effect it’s had on their domestic game can’t be ignored, even as we appreciate the team’s stunning quality

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Since 1990, only one side had ever successfully defended the Champions League – Real Madrid, who won three in a row between 2016 and 2018. Paris Saint-Germain’s victory in the final on Saturday elevates them to a new tier of the pantheon. No bad side has ever won the European Cup or Champions League, but only great sides have ever retained it.

Arsenal pushed them much closer than Inter had in losing in the final the previous year, and there is always something slightly unsatisfying about a victory on penalties, but the quality of this PSG cannot be denied. They put six past Bayern in the semi-final – their superiority far greater than the one-goal aggregate margin would suggest. It was a similar story in the quarter-final, in which a 4-0 aggregate victory didn’t really reflect how much better they were than Liverpool. And while Chelsea may think they were slightly unlucky to lose the first leg of their last-16 tie away to PSG 5-2, the 3-0 result in the second leg was a devastating assertion of authority: three goals scored by an almost bored opponent apparently just as they felt like it.

This is an extract from Soccer with Jonathan Wilson, a weekly look from the Guardian US at the game in Europe and beyond. Subscribe for free here. Have a question for Jonathan? Email soccerwithjw@theguardian.com, and he’ll answer the best in a future edition.

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In recent weeks, there has been endless discourse on why so many people hate Arsenal. Yet, yesterday’s parade in the cultural melting pot of north London proved that plenty of people out there really, really, really love them. Due in no small part to the fact that he couldn’t head his penalty and none of his teammates were blocking the PSG goalkeeper, Gabriel Magalhães’ miss from the spot meant the Gunners came up agonisingly short in their latest bid to win Bigger Cup. That didn’t stop the thick end of a million Arsenal fans of every age, stripe and shade from making the pilgrimage to Islington to worship their vanquished heroes. With the Premier League trophy already in the bag, the general mood ratio of unbridled joy to crushing disappointment was about 75-25, a statistic many will recognise as being almost identical to the previous evening’s possession stats in the Puskas Arena.

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To better highlight the whole field among Europe’s elite, we chose an XI that couldn’t feature more than one player from any one team

This year we are picking a team of the season with a difference: I am allowed only one player per team. Of course, as finalists Paris Saint-Germain and Arsenal have players with claims to all of these positions, so apologies to Willian Pacho and Declan Rice, among others. But what this format does allow for is an overall view of the Champions League season that was.

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Thirst for renewal is strong and new players could help bridge the gap to PSG but there are no guarantees

The greatest lie ever told about penalty shootouts is that they are a lottery. This is a recognisable and trainable footballing skill, a test not just of ball-striking and placement but research, psychology, mettle under pressure. Eberechi Eze puts the ball wide, Gabriel Magalhães sends it in the direction of the Danube: this is failure on the most brutal and unforgiving terms. But it is failure nonetheless.

The second greatest lie ever told about penalties is that fortune plays no part. Any encounter decided by 10 kicks of a football will evidently be at the disproportionate mercy of random factors: the divot, the bad contact, the goalkeeper’s guesswork (and to all the preparation that goes into the process, it remains partly guesswork). That this sport – already a sport of low scores, narrow differentials and infinite variables – chooses to decide its biggest prizes on these smallest of morsels is one of its cruellest traits.

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The best images from Budapest and beyond as, after reaching their first Champions League final in 20 years, Arsenal lost out on penalties to the defending champions Paris Saint-Germain

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Eberechi Eze and Gabriel missed from the spot to give PSG victory in a gruelling final

“They’ve got a wonderful group of players and a great manager in Mikel Arteta but having come so close three times on the bounce I felt these guys needed it,” Sol Campbell says of Arsenal winning the Premier League for the first time in 22 years since, in 2004, he was the cornerstone of their defence for the Invincibles. His team remained unbeaten throughout that historic league season, but the pressure on his successors has been immense.

“The wait has been so heavy and it was all pent up, building year after year, always coming so close but never getting over the line,” he says. “That’s why you saw such an outpouring of joy and togetherness. It’s been incredible because we’ve been waiting such a long time.”

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Arsenal relied on their brilliant defence to see off PSG in the semi-finals and frustrate Parma in the final in 1994

By That 1980s Sports Blog

The Cup Winners’ Cup would become a victim of the Champions League’s expansion in the late 1990s, but there could be no questioning the quality of the competition when Arsenal won it in the 1993-94 season. Real Madrid, Ajax, Parma, Torino, Bayer Leverkusen, Benfica and Paris Saint-Germain stood in Arsenal’s way as they tried to win their first European trophy since the Fairs Cup in 1970.

The first round was far from encouraging. Arsenal limped past Danish club Odense 3-2 on aggregate. But the 10-0 demolition of Standard Liège – including a 7-0 win in Belgium – took George Graham’s side into a testing quarter-final against Torino.

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As a boy in the apartheid era I saw footage of the Gunners beaten in the 1969 League Cup final – on Saturday I will attend the Champions League showpiece with my son

I fell for Arsenal in the white‑and-black world of apartheid, where television was banned as a tool of communist propaganda and the club of my dreams was 6,000 miles away and mostly invisible to me. So it feels fitting that a surreal love story that began for a small boy in South Africa in 1969 will reach a new peak on Saturday night in eastern Europe. This 65-year-old Arsenal fan and his 25-year-old son, who is just as besotted by the Gunners, will be at the Champions League final in Budapest as we face the dazzling powerhouse of Paris Saint-Germain.

It’s the final game of Arsenal’s tumultuous grind of a season and we are as exhausted as we are still euphoric. We will remember that my last game of this campaign could have been Swindon’s 2-1 home defeat by Chesterfield in League Two. I have had my share of pain with Arsenal; but it would have been a far deeper burden to have spent 57 years supporting Swindon.

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In the runup to the Champions League final, the Arsenal manager’s first footballing steps in the Basque Country and Barcelona are recalled by those who shared them

The way Santi Cazorla tells it, rolling about laughing, Mikel Arteta may just be the worst person you could ever wish to watch a match with. Which is why he knew his friend would be a coach and why he told him to go away and become one, convinced great things were coming. “When we were injured at Arsenal, we used to meet at home for games, and he would grab the remote and pause it,” Cazorla recalls. “I would say: ‘What are you stopping it for?’ He would say: ‘No, go back, go back,’ rewind it 30 seconds, and then ask: ‘What do you see?’ I would say: ‘I see a paused screen. I don’t see anything!’”

So Arteta would explain. “‘Don’t you think this player is badly positioned? … If he goes a bit deeper, this space opens up … if the pivot goes there, this happens … that line should be deeper …’ I would look at him and think: ‘What’s with this guy?’” Cazorla continues, still cracking up. “He was a coach already. All game, every game: pausing, rewinding. The match is finished and we’re only in the 35th minute. ‘Do you see it?’ ‘Yes, yes, you’re right, now come on, press play.’ But I didn’t see it. I love football, I can watch it all day, but I don’t notice those things. Mikel does. I think it’s a gift.”

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⚽ News and previews before big weekend of football
⚽ Arsenal owners promise to strengthen | Mail John

The aforementioned Qatar played Ireland last night in Dublin, and lost 1-0.

The game was played against the backdrop of mounting controversy over Ireland’s forthcoming Nations League fixtures against Israel, with the game scheduled for October 4 in Dublin a particular focus, and protesters hurled tennis balls bearing the message “stop the game” onto the pitch on several occasions during the first half.

The 22-year will make a shock switch of allegiance from Italy to Australia four years after turning down the opportunity to represent the country of his birth at the tournament in Qatar.

Football Australia is still awaiting confirmation from Fifa that the formalities surrounding Volpato’s change of heart can be completed before Socceroos coach Tony Popovic names his 26-player World Cup squad by 1 June.

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Arsenal striker scored the winner in the final five years ago and is determined to make up for being ‘in a bad place’ when injured this season

When Kai Havertz thinks back to the 2021 Champions League final, he can’t help smiling. Chelsea’s surprise victory over Manchester City in Porto still feels like yesterday for the Germany striker.

“It is something I will never forget,” he says. “As a kid I could have never dreamed I would score a goal in the final and win that game. I will always be proud of it. I just try to take that feeling and hopefully it will happen again.”

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• Josh Kroenke says there will be no ‘standing still’

• Extending Mikel Arteta’s contract the ‘utmost priority’

Josh Kroenke has promised that ­Arsenal will strengthen their squad even if they are crowned European champions for the first time and said rewarding Mikel Arteta with a new contract is an “utmost priority”.

Arsenal, who face Paris Saint-­Germain in the Champions League final in Budapest on Saturday, spent more than £250m last summer on players who helped them win a first Premier League title for 22 years. Kroenke and his father, Stan, the club’s ­American owners and co-chairs, watched ­Arsenal at Crystal Palace on Sunday and brought the trophy on to the pitch before it was presented to the captain, Martin ­Ødegaard. They are expected to be at the final.

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Jurriën Timber’s likely unavailability means a reshuffle that will affect selections in all areas of the side

It would be easy to look at Saturday’s Champions League final between Paris Saint-Germain and Arsenal and see it as a battle of attack versus defence, of beauty against pragmatism, of French elan against English doughtiness, as some sort of tussle for the soul of football. But it would not entirely be true. And where, after all, was the honour at Agincourt? In the vainglorious charges of the dashing French cavalry or the stoic defiance of the British archers arrayed, naked from the waist down, behind their defensive stakes?

On the one hand, the stats look stark. In the Champions League this season, Paris Saint-Germain have averaged 63.4% possession, higher than anybody apart from Barcelona; Arsenal’s figure is 52.6%, the 11th-highest of the 36 sides who made the league stage. PSG’s pass completion has been 89.3% to Arsenal’s 85.7% (third-highest to 14th-highest). PSG have scored 44 goals to Arsenal’s 29. But on the flip side, Arsenal have conceded six goals to PSG’s 22 and won 13.4 aerial duels per game to PSG’s 9.4 (sixth-highest to 29th-highest).

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