To have been a follower of football since Tuesday of last week is to have had the strange sensation of being trapped inside the dream of a fanatical Arsenal fan, forced to bear witness to 10 miraculous days when the club progressed from winning the Premier League title to a new consciousness of itself as possibly the most important cultural institution in the world.
There may have been times during 6½ years of struggle when Mikel Arteta felt lonely in a sometimes cold and unforgiving Arsenal throne, but no longer. Squeezing up alongside the manager on the podium is a scrum of middle-aged executives eager to explain their own parts in the miracle.
In particular, reclusive genius Josh Kroenke – the 46-year old son of billionaire owner Stan, alongside whom he serves as Arsenal’s co-chairman – has emerged from the shadows to detail how he helped win the title. We learned this week that, much as Al Gore once invented the internet, Josh had taken the initiative in the signing of William Saliba, the defensive rock upon which Arteta has built his church.
Kroenke jnr was even generous enough to share some of the credit with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, for which Mikel Arteta was famously the first high-profile English football figure to test positive. Kroenke reckons that in hindsight, Arteta was fortunate that the virus emptied the stadiums in the season when he was trying to reboot Arsenal’s culture, giving him space to do necessary work that otherwise might have been drowned out by the screams of an enraged crowd. The implication that Arsenal’s current ascendancy should be seen as another malignant legacy of the pandemic was surely unintentional.
Arsenal's Gabriel (left), goalkeeper David Raya (second left), co-chair Josh Kroenke and Bukayo Saka (right) celebrate with the Premier League trophy after Arsenal's 2-1 victory against Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park last Sunday. Photograph: John Walton/PA Wire
Arsenal's Gabriel (left), goalkeeper David Raya (second left), co-chair Josh Kroenke and Bukayo Saka (right) celebrate with the Premier League trophy after Arsenal's 2-1 victory against Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park last Sunday. Photograph: John Walton/PA Wire
This fever dream will continue through the summer but tonight it must pause, for back in reality, on the banks of the Danube, Arsenal have a date with the current champions of Europe.
Paris Saint-Germain come into the game in quite a different state of mind. Their own title trophy-lift was an understated affair, dealt with briskly at the ground of their neighbours Paris FC, an hour before the kick-off of the last game of the season, which PSG lost 2-1.
While Arsenal’s players had revelled and exulted for hours with the Premier League trophy, the players of PSG could hardly be bothered to actually raise their own, as though already saving their energy for the forthcoming final.
Energy and its conservation has been a major theme of the build-up. Of PSG’s likely starting XI this evening, only Vitinha and Willian Pacho have played more than half the minutes of the Ligue 1 campaign. Ousmane Dembele, Fabian Ruiz and Marquinhos have played less than a third. Under Luis Enrique, PSG are structuring their season around the 17 matches of the Champions League. The 34 games of the French league are seen more a kind of weekend keep-fit club players can opt in or out of as and when desired.
Arsenal’s race against Manchester City for the Premier League title did not afford them the luxury of resting their stars for European nights. So players like David Raya, Declan Rice, Martin Zubimendi, Gabriel and William Saliba have all played about twice as much league football as the average PSG first-teamer.
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No doubt, the explosive speed and extraordinary precision with which PSG have skewered their opponents has owed something to that freshness.
And yet, as Johan Cruyff said, every disadvantage has its advantage. Arsenal have been playing intense 105-minute games nearly every week. PSG only play matches of that intensity in the Champions League knockout phase. They’re not used to it and they have shown a tendency – in Arsene Wenger’s favourite phrase – to “drop a little bit physically” as the game goes into its last quarter. The longer this match remains in the balance, the relatively stronger Arsenal should become.
And Arsenal will be strong from the start: physically, they are the strongest side PSG have faced in the competition. This will not be a final like last year, when it was obvious after 15 minutes that an Inter side with three outfield starters aged 36 or older had no business being on the same pitch as PSG.
PSG will look to Vitinha to provide inspiration against Arsenal in Saturday evening's Champions League final at Puskas Arsena in Budapest, Hungary. Photograph: Justin Setterfield/Getty Images
PSG will look to Vitinha to provide inspiration against Arsenal in Saturday evening's Champions League final at Puskas Arsena in Budapest, Hungary. Photograph: Justin Setterfield/Getty Images
Vitinha likes to float like a butterfly in deep midfield, luring in opponents and releasing teammates into space, but if any side has the players to capture him and break him on a wheel, it’s Arsenal. Kai Havertz, Martin Odegaard and Declan Rice are pressers with the energy and discipline to keep chasing Vitinha and hammer PSG’s delicate gearbox to pieces.
Vitinha has shown that when he’s at his best, nobody can get close to him. Will he and his teammates be at their best? Their last serious match was against Bayern, 3½ weeks ago. Arsenal sweep into this final on a tidal flood of joy. PSG await them with serenity. Are they calm – or becalmed? Can they explode out of that calm and overrun an Arsenal defence that has conceded only six goals in 14 Champions League matches so far?
Luis Enrique has proven he knows how to get a team peaking in a final. He has coached 10 club finals and won nine (excluding Super Cups and other such glorified friendlies from the reckoning). The one blemish on his record was the 3-0 defeat to Chelsea in the Fifa Club World Cup final last summer, a defeat Enrique blamed on the team running out of of energy after six months of continuous winning. That’s why he has been so careful to limit his players’ minutes this season.
In Budapest on Friday night, he told the media that the motivation to win a second Champions League in a row was even more than the motivation to win it the first time. As if they needed anything more to sharpen their competitive appetite, winning the final triggers a bonus of €1 million per man – and every player who has played a part in the European campaign receives the same bonus, which is one way of ensuring everyone in the squad is focused on the collective goal.
Arteta’s record in finals is played two, won one. The most recent final was the Carabao Cup against Manchester City on March 22nd, a game that might have been Arsenal’s worst performance of the season. They played that game under the shadow of the then-encroaching doom, the fear that City would hunt them down. Now, though, they have seen City off, they’re frolicking free in the sunlit uplands. When Odegaard and Bukayo Saka appeared before the press in Budapest, most of the questions were about last week’s celebrations – a curious emphasis the day before the biggest match they’ve ever faced.
The players politely indulged the talk of celebrations and dreams fulfilled, but when Arteta was asked if winning the title had taken some pressure off this game, he didn’t even wait for the questioner to finish before cutting him off with a “no”.
He understands this is a historic opportunity. Tonight his team plays for the right to be considered the best ever to represent the club.
Enrique’s recommendation at times like this is to try to have fun. “When you play a final like this, you have to enjoy it. It’s essential because you never know when you’ll play one again.”
Arsenal’s drive towards the title was fuelled by nervous tension. Tonight we discover if their engine can also run on euphoria.