Morning folks. Today, I want to ‘zone in’ on the two main stories that emerged from last night. I’m not interested in England and the Ben White stuff; we welcome him back to Colney and an Arsenal shirt with open arms – the rest can eff-the-eff-off.
Let’s start in Bosnia, where Italy missed the chance to end their hiatus from World Cups by being knocked out on penalties, which I still find mad with regard to the lack of Italian competition. This is a four-time winner of the competition, a side who are one of the great international football nations, who now have kids who will have never seen their side in a World Cup. Three times = 12 years; if you’re a teenager, you basically don’t remember what it feels like. And as a kid of the 80s, I have just come to expect Italian sides in these stages. So this is a bit wild for me, if truth be told.
Under normal circumstances, I’d be a bit ‘meh’ about this whole situation, but we’ve got skin in the game these days. Riccardo Calafiori is an Italian national and, having played the full 90 in the last game, he played a full 120 minutes last night, although thankfully he didn’t suffer the ignominy of taking a penalty in the losing shootout.
He will be gutted today. He’ll head back to The Arsenal with his head down, and given we still have so much to play for at The Arsenal this season, that might have a psychological effect. My hope is that he’s a strong enough character to get over it, but we’ve all heard the stories about players and suffering after extreme emotions as a result of international football. There’s the well-documented Arshavin decline, but Big Per Mertesacker also said that he struggled in the aftermath of helping Germany win the World Cup in 2014, so it happens at both ends of the emotional spectrum.
Calafiori will have little time to mourn his country’s exit; he’ll probably be on a plane today, Arsenal will no doubt give him tomorrow off, then it’ll be back on the training pitch on Friday, I suspect.
Or will it?
After all, he is a guy who we all know too well what his injury situation has been like; it’s here for us all to see. So he’s going to be feeling it a bit this morning I think; not just the emotional intensity, but the physical intensity of playing 210+ minutes in under a week. He certainly hasn’t been doing that for The Arsenal this season. In fact, if my workings out are correct, the only time he’s played 180 minutes for us this season was on two occasions; in September when he played for us at away against Athletic Club Bilbao and then at home against City in the Premier League, then in December against Everton away and Palace in the League Cup. Those are the only two times this season he’s played, so I just don’t see him being remotely available this weekend – Arteta surely just can’t risk it.
Which is a problem in itself, because technically both Big Gabi and Saliba are out with knocks, whilst Hincapie limped off for Ecuador. Given we have so many centre halves, it’s quite amazing that we could find ourselves short on numbers for this weekend’s FA Cup game.
That’s an issue for debate this weekend, because as sad as it is for Calafiori, the opposite was happening in Sweden, as Big Vik Gyokeres was a late hero for Sweden to send them through to the World Cup finals. It was a classic poacher’s goal, but nobody in Sweden this morning cares; they go to the US and Mexico, and Gyokeres has just written himself into Swedish folklore, just like Beckham did for England with his last-minute free kick against Greece all those years ago.
And if we’re going to talk about the possibly damaging psychological ramifications for Riccy, we should probably also acknowledge the opposite effect that could benefit us from Gyokeres’ emotions right now. He too played 120 minutes, so I can’t see him getting much time on the pitch this weekend, but when he walks into London Colney over the next day or two, he’s going to be doing it feeling at least six inches taller. As Arsenal fans, we have to hope that this helps him with regard to his end product. We all know that there have been times this season where, frankly, he’s looked about as useful as Inanimate Carbon Rod, but we also know that he is a man who is fuelled by confidence. And in 2026, his confidence has definitely improved; I saw somewhere that for both club and country, he now has 15 goal contributions in 21 games. If you are a striker who relies on your form and a hot streak, getting goals as he has just done for Sweden this week could be massive for us.
We’re in the ‘Business End’ of the season. We need the end product above all else. The pretty/quality football is secondary to results, and you know what gets results? Goals. Lots of goals. We need that Swede to make his contribution, and we need it now. Again, as I’ve mentioned, I doubt that will be much this weekend, nor should it. We have Gabby Jesus, we have Kai who has played a few minutes to build up his fitness, so they can share the minutes with the Brazilian, probably getting most. But when it comes to Sporting Lisbon, you want Big Vik ready for a return there, for sure, methinks.
As the players all start to come back to Arsenal from today, we now turn our attention to the fallout on injuries from this round of matches, with Arteta due to speak to the press on Friday. We have to hope that there is no bad news to surprise us, so let’s just cross our fingers that he is his usual coy self on specifics of injuries, but that he doesn’t confirm that any players are ‘definitely’ out for a period of time.
Catch you all tomorrow as we start to look ahead to another big weekend.