Mikel Arteta has come out with an incredible claim about Arsenal after the ‘tipping point’ in their Champions League victory over Real Madrid was revealed.
I insist
Arsenal beat Real Madrid 3-0 in the first leg of their Champions League quarter-final on Tuesday evening. They were already among the likeliest teams to win the competition – there are literally only eight teams left – and many laptop-owning nerds in air-conditioned offices now have them down as statistical favourites, such is their clear probable route through to at least the semi-final.
So when the Daily Mirror website goes for a headline of ‘Mikel Arteta insists Arsenal CAN win Champions League – but lays down huge challenge,’ just know that that is perhaps the most unearned capitalisation in football tabloid history.
‘Mikel Arteta hailed Arsenal’s “magical” Champions League night – and then insisted they can go all the way,’ writes John Cross.
The dictionary definition of ‘insisted’ is ‘to state clearly that something is true, especially when other people do not believe you’. Which daft sod sat in the post-match press conference and told Arteta that nah, a clearly very good team and likely Champions League semi-finalists can’t win the Champions League despite them just beating the actual holders 3-0?
Maybe Arteta’s words were a bit more forceful. While we’re here we might as well check:
“When you’ve not played this team for 20 years then you have the chance to write your own history and it is nights like these where you can do that. They were magic moments. We have a lot more to give. It will give us even more belief. I did believe and you have to believe. The crowd was incredible, they gave us so much energy.”
See, Arsenal CAN win the Champions League.
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Hey Jude
In another example of how words should actually mean something, the Daily Mirror website brings us this:
‘Jude Bellingham fires warning to Arsenal after Real Madrid thrashing’
Consider yourselves ‘warned’, Gunners. They surely didn’t realise there are 90 minutes of the tie left to play at the Bernabeu until Bellingham ‘fired’ that reminder at them.
Hung, drawn and quartered
If that ‘warning’ doesn’t get through then Martin Samuel is on hand for The Times with a piece that leans weirdly far into the ‘never rule Real Madrid out in the Champions League’ theme.
Here is his opening paragraph:
‘If Arsenal are to progress from here, they will have to do what no team have managed since April 6, 2004. They will have to hold their nerve and eliminate Real Madrid at the Champions League quarter-final stage.’
Well sure. But that’s more than a little arbitrary when a) they’ve been knocked out in the last 16 eight times since, and b) they do not often – indeed ever – find themselves 3-0 down heading into the second leg of a quarter-final, or any knockout tie for that matter.
It’s not as if Real Madrid have a specific hex in the Champions League quarter-finals that Arsenal have to overcome. It is a vaguely interesting statistical quirk and nothing more, and certainly not something to lead an actual opinion piece on a 3-0 win on.
‘Sounds straightforward, yes? Who wouldn’t fancy their chances three goals clear?
‘Well, there’s a bit of history to unpack first. This is a Champions League quarter-final and both Real and Arsenal have form. Very, very different form.’
And just as entirely beside the point as Real Madrid last being knocked out at the Champions League quarter-final stage in 2004 is Arsenal last progressing from the same point in 2009. In no way is that ‘history of their own to unburden’. Declan Rice couldn’t give a shiny sh*t that Arsene Wenger developed a routine inability to get past the last-16 hurdle while Mikel Arteta was still playing.
Only losing to Bayern Munich last season is relevant to this Arsenal team in terms of their apparent Champions League quarter-final curse, and Mediawatch cannot remember them ever being 3-0 up after 90 minutes of that tie.
‘What if Real score twice in the first half, as they did against Manchester City? Do Arsenal simply decide they are better than Real and play the same way; or do they cling to what they already have? Even so comfortable, it is a dilemma.’
They certainly could, but if we’re bothering to randomly construct straw men then what if Arsenal score twice in the first half? The Gunners are slightly better than Manchester City, especially defensively, so there is every chance this massive ‘dilemma’ doesn’t even come into the equation.
You’d think a West Ham fan would have a more cheery view after watching a former Hammer stick two goals past Real Madrid.
READ MORE: Who will be the next manager of Real Madrid after they sack Carlo Ancelotti?
Calendar girls
It is also really, really weird to blame fixture congestion in The Modern Football Calendar for Real Madrid’s defeat.
‘Their best individuals decide the games that require the maximum, and gamble on those that do not,’ Samuel writes of the Spaniards. ‘They feel; it is the only way to handle the modern football calendar.
‘It is too much now. The tipping point has been reached. The best players cannot handle the extra load. The expansions of Uefa’s marquee competition, the 11-month commitment. It is not just what they have been through, but what they know is to come. There is no summer for the players of Real. There is only more football. It exhausts just thinking about it. So, sometimes, they phone it in.’
Did Arsenal batter Real Madrid because Kylian Mbappe was too busy thinking about the Club World Cup? Did Rice whip his free-kicks past Thibaut Courtois because the keeper has reached his ‘tipping point’?
Arsenal have played 48 games this season. Real have played 52 – two of which were Super Cup and Intercontinental Cup finals and two of which were a Champions League knockout phase play-off they had to go through because they weren’t good enough to qualify automatically.
No-one played more minutes than Rice at Euro 2024. Bellingham was in the top ten but then so too were Bukayo Saka and William Saliba. Real being ‘exhausted’ is not an excuse they can use against Arsenal.
Cool whip
This is wonderfully innocent – and frankly a show of ludicrous naivety – from John Cross of the Daily Mirror:
‘Both free kicks – scored from a similar area on the edge of the box within the space of 12 minutes were straight out of the former Brazil star’s repertoire. Arsenal’s set piece coach Nicolas Jover looked as if he told Rice to put some whip on the ball – and the England star obliged. Twice.’
Rice said after the game that Jover “told me to cross it”. But even that testimony wasn’t really necessary to deduce that an elite-level professional footballer probably doesn’t need to be told ‘to put some whip on the ball’ when shooting from a free-kick. Nor that a set-piece coach of such mythological brilliance would feel obliged to hand down such a directive.
Taking the Little Pea
‘Man Utd title winner, 36, looks unrecognisable with brand new hairstyle’ – The Sun website.
Cue a picture of the single most Javier Hernandez-looking man there has ever been.
Worst headline of this or any day ever
‘Merson suffers wardrobe malfunction live on Sky as he celebrates Arsenal goal’ – The Sun website, inventing the opposite of clickbait.
