So close but so far for Mikel Arteta and his Arsenal team. On a night of drama and intrigue in Budapest, Arsenal scored early through Champions League final specialist Kai Havertz and eventually took the reigning champions all the way to penalties. But when Gabriel’s kick – his team’s fifth – was dispatched over the bar into the celebrating PSG supporters, an Arsenal dream died. They will, after all, have to settle for the Premier League trophy this season. There is no league and European double on which to reflect and here Football Editor IAN LADYMAN analyses the fall-out from a huge climax to the club season.
IS IT TIME FOR ARSENAL TO EVOLVE?
This was a night when a plan worked for Mikel Arteta.
That may seem like a strange thing to say on the night when their Champions League hopes disappeared over the crossbar but the Arsenal coach came here to take PSG deep into the game on the back of the discipline and defensive surety that has been his team’s hallmark throughout their title winning Premier League season.
Arteta knew that his best chance of prevailing was to present Luis Enrique’s expansive team of French champions with the kind of challenge they rarely face. The fact Arsenal took PSG all the way to penalties shows that it paid off. His tactics gave his team a puncher’s chance and that was an achievement against a truly gifted attacking opponent.
What was missing was the final small details buried within a penalty shoot-out and that can happen to any team at any time.
However, this is also a defeat – as cruel as it was – that will leave questions about the next stage of the Arsenal evolution lingering all the way into the summer.
Arteta has made an art form of winning if not ugly then without the need to paint pretty pictures. Clean sheets, set pieces, winning the big moments. We know how it goes. It’s been impressive in its own way and it got Arsenal to within one centre half’s penalty kick away from the ultimate prize.
But does there have to be a tweak or a change to take Arsenal to the next level?
Can a team be truly elite or outstanding if it is prepared to come to its first Champions League final in two decades and attempt to prevail on the back of less than a quarter of the game’s ball possession?
Maybe not.
These possession stats were, after all, the kind you would expect to see in a Premier League game between Manchester City and Burnley.
Arsenal will doubtless garnish their squad with fresh talent this summer. It is already packed with gifted attacking players. There is no need to list them all here.
Maybe at some stage thought may have to be given to giving them a slightly different kind of platform on which to play.
Kai Havertz, ridiculed in his early days at Arsenal, has come on hugely under Mikel Arteta
A disconsolate Declan Rice walks past the Champions League trophy in the Puskas Arena
ARSENAL’S STRENGTH IN DEPTH GIVES THEM A CHANCE
If there is to be a process of development at the home of the new English champions then the good news is that they are starting from a heck of a base. Some of what happened in this game showed us that.
For example, PSG’s possession stat stood at 78 per cent when they equalised just after the hour and it felt at that time as though one goal for the French team may soon become two. It was a time for that Arsenal defence to stand firm and hold fast.
But the momentum shift that soon followed owed as much to Arteta’s use of substitutes as anything. Arsenal already have such strength in depth that Arteta was able to change his whole forward line during the second half and his team had its most progressive period of the night on the back of it.
For example, he has generational talents such as Bukayo Saka in his team but doesn’t rely on them to the extent that he feels they have to play every minute.
Arteta’s ability and willingness to shuffle his pack brought an energy and momentum to his team’s football that PSG struggled to match for a significant period.
This should be the platform of which we talk.
In terms of the penalty itself, Arsenal defender Cristhian Mosquera was a little lucky not to be shown a second yellow card. Equally, when a foul is punished by a penalty – as it was here – then there is an argument that the sanction is enough on its own.
DID TUCHEL MAKE MLS CALL TOO SOON?
There were Arsenal tears before bedtime but still the season has ended in a way that Myles Lewis-Skelly would not have expected during those long weeks and months when he seemed to be as far as could be from Arteta’s thoughts.
His return to prominence and excellence speaks volumes for the levels of emotional maturity needed to slot so seamlessly into Arteta’s midfield. The 20-year-old was excellent here for the 90 minutes he played – full of energy and diligence and brave enough to break forward from deep when opportunity arose.
Had this late season burst of form and opportunity come a little sooner then he may well have found himself in Thomas Tuchel’s World Cup squad. Tuchel is a huge fan of Lewis-Skelly but didn’t think he could take a player who hasn’t really been playing much first team football.
There is an argument – hypothetical as it now is – that he may have been a better bet than Kobbie Mainoo, given that he can also play at left-back.
His challenge late in regular time on the breaking Khvicha Kvaratskhelia deflected what may have been a PSG winning goal on to a post and kept Arsenal in the contest.
HAVERTZ A STORY OF BELIEF
It’s hard to watch Kai Havertz play for Arsenal without thinking back to the way that it started after he moved across London from Chelsea at the start of the 2023-24 season.
The German was so lost during those first few weeks that even the Arsenal fans used to lampoon him. It’s quite one thing signing a Chelsea player and another one entirely bringing one in who can’t hit a barn door from six yards.
PSG were not at their best but did enough to get over the line and retain their European crown
The way Arteta has not only shown such empathetic faith in Havertz but developed and shaped the way he plays has been quite something. With an injury record that has also caused him some problems, Havertz has nevertheless become a perfect outlet for this Arsenal style of play.
Not only can he score goals – this was his second in a Champions League final – he can hold up play and is willing to run channels in a way that he never really did – or was asked to – at Stamford Bridge.
Viktor Gyokeres was last summer’s big Arsenal signing and was man of the match as his team beat Atletico Madrid in the semi-final. But Arteta always knew the way he wished to present his team for this game in Hungary and Havertz proved himself fundamental.
He will be crucial again next season.
PARIS IN A PANIC
Having taken so long to win the Champions League, PSG have now joined the elite group of clubs who have managed to defend it. If you go back to the days of the European Cup, it’s a group that has only ten clubs it and PSG have become only the second – after Real Madrid – to do it since 1990.
‘We want more,’ said young forward Desire Doue at the final whistle.
Even so, they didn’t always play like history makers here. Indeed it was a surprise to see PSG panic the way they did when they went behind early on.
Luis Enrique’s team still had the whole game to turn things round but almost immediately started sprinting after throw-ins and racing to get the ball back to Arsenal whenever it was their opponents’ turn to restart play.
They played as though they had 10 minutes left rather than the best part of 90. This was one of the things that made them such a rabble in the first half.
Faced with a puzzle with which they were not familiar, the French champions just didn’t know what to do.
It’s a painful thing to say but had Mosquera not dived in so rashly on Kvaratskhelia for the penalty, Arsenal may even have seen this one out.
