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Opinions, the game loves them, and after Arsenal’s hugely divisive final, here’s my truth – feel free to yell backWhat the world needs now is one last hot take on Arsenal and the Champions League final before we are all brought together in beautiful symbiotic harmony by the World Cup.Key questions such as: was it a good game? Was this the perfect way to take on the best midfield and attack in world football or the ultimate illustration of footballing cowardice? Why didn’t all the people in the UK want Arsenal to win? Why did some Arsenal fans find that annoying? Could it possibly be that people are different and want different things from football matches they consume in very different ways?The big question is about Arsenal’s approach to the final. I am not totally comfortable saying the words “game state” out loud, but it is clear Mikel Arteta had a decision to make once Arsenal went 1-0 up after six minutes. A decision, we presume, he had made a long time before Kai Havertz roofed it over Matvey Safonov and into the Paris Saint-Germain goal.Does he keep attacking or does he take the best defence in the world, who have won the Premier League by being defensively brilliant, and see whether PSG can break them down? It seems the most sensible decision he could make at that time.It is not without risks. Not having the ball is physically and mentally exhausting. PSG, despite not creating a clear chance in the first half, were so close with quite a few final balls. That is the hard bit of breaking down a low block: choosing when to try the difficult pass, choosing who makes it, choosing who receives it. That was this game in microcosm: move the defence around until a tiny gap appears.Parking the bus is often used as a criticism. But parking a bus is presumably incredibly difficult – as is maintaining your shape, keeping your discipline and deciding when you have to go to ground to block or make a last-ditch tackle. So maybe Arsenal did park the bus and maybe we’ve got that phrase wrong all along.But aren’t Arsenal the best team in the best league in the world? Surely they can offer more than that? It’s an understandable question. This Arsenal team were not going to go all-out attack, especially once they had a lead. So what’s the choice? Defend as they did or attack 5% or 10% more? What does that look like? And do you by definition leave yourself 5% or 10% more open, making those PSG final balls 5%-10% easier? Arsenal had the only other clear chance in the first half. It was almost perfect.It is fair to criticise Arteta’s substitutions and their inability to change things after the equaliser, but that is perhaps as much down to the fact that despite building a brilliant squad, with two excellent players in each position, they are a galático or two, or three, behind PSG.And it didn’t work. Eventually a through ball pierced the backline and Cristhian Mosquera fouled Khvicha Kvaratskhelia. PSG are better at football. That’s quite a key part in all of this.It feels as if this was Arteta’s best plan for winning the Champions League and to be clear I did not want Arsenal to win this game (although I’m not entirely sure I wanted PSG and their project to win it either).Was it a good game? Once Arsenal scored, I was completely invested in watching the best attack try to break down the best defence. Yet there is a high chance I’ve watched very similar games with teams in different shirts in different competitions and found them insipidly boring. There is a high chance I’ll watch England struggle to break down a low block in a few weeks’ time and start moaning about handbrakes (Handbremse, if you want to yell at Thomas Tuchel in his native tongue). I have four decades of match-worn scars watching the Three Lions do that.We don’t approach every game in the same way. Had this been Monday Night Football, after watching nine Premier League matches and a Cambridge game I’d have been checking my algorithm or hanging up the washing by the second half. But I gave it my full attention and found it compelling.Enjoying this game doesn’t mean you want every match to be like that. You don’t need to compare it with the PSG-Bayern Munich first leg. You probably don’t eat the same food at every meal. You can enjoy eggs and enjoy Haribo, ideally separately.There is always a danger I just want to take a different view on this game to appear more intelligent than I am, to be the thinking man’s observer of football. Do I want a thousand likes? Or just a WhatsApp from Rory Smith agreeing with me? Hopefully, this is my truth.Then to the endless wider reaction. Enter the bantersphere. You may live an Instagram-free life and just be left to develop your own opinions or you may find yourself doomscrolling on the toilet. What does that ubiquitous Manchester City fan with his bottle think? Oh, it’s my colleagues Jason Cundy and Gabby Agbonlahor dancing around the TalkSport office in PSG shirts.What does Chris Sutton think about what Martin Keown thinks about what Jack Whitehall thinks about what Jeff Stelling thinks about Arsenal? Perhaps you’re agreeing with Ollie Holt that it’s sad that not every English person wanted Arsenal to win. You could be drowning in your own myopic club podcasts or listening to and shouting at mine.Whatever your view of the final, you don’t have to go out of your way to find an opinion you will find annoying. Perhaps this article is the very thing. Then you have a choice: to quietly disagree and put your phone away or yell back. Perhaps football has always been this way.Even if you just didn’t get a dopamine hit when you yelled it to yourself in your living room, you were still a content creator. Now it’s just created for all of us, by all of us, all the time, and not even Arteta can park a big enough bus to keep it out.

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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 qualitySince 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.Although it’s the attacking verve that catches the eye, PSG also have a midfield that, particularly when Fabián Ruiz is available, is capable of controlling possession and stifling a game, just as the great Spain sides have done over the past couple of decades. In that sense Luis Enrique’s heritage as part of the great Barcelona team of the late 90s, when he played under Louis van Gaal and alongside Pep Guardiola, is clear. Luis Enrique now stands as one of the greats of European coaching: only Carlo Ancelotti has won more European Cups or Champions Leagues and only Bob Paisley, Zinedine Zidane and Guardiola have won as many as his three.As the world grapples with the end of the Guardiola consensus, Luis Enrique has perhaps found a model for the future. Allied to the technical quality and control in midfield, his sides display a thrilling directness wide – similar to that offered by Lamine Yamal and Nico Williams in the Spain side that won the Euros in 2024. Khvicha Kvaratskhelia may have supplanted Yamal as the best player in the world on form right now. Give him room to run into, as Bayern did too often, and there is an inevitability about the outcome. Arsenal did well to restrict him in the final, with Bukayo Saka doubling up with Cristhian Mosquera, but even then, Kvaratskhelia was the source of the PSG equalizer, the slightest hesitation and panicked response from Mosquera producing the penalty.Go toe to toe with PSG, as Bayern did, and Kvaratskhelia and Desiré Doué will inevitably revel in the space. Arsenal had little option but to sit deep and absorb pressure. While that may frustrate those who want all soccer to be like the first leg of PSG v Bayern, defending is also part of the game. With better forwards, the approach might even have worked for Arsenal. But they struggled late on, in part because Viktor Gyökeres could not hold the ball up, and in part because Noni Madueke could not replicate Saka’s quality of delivery from set plays. Even then, they were one small mistake from a 1-0 win; and even after that they lost because they twice missed the target in the shootout. The gameplan wasn’t the problem; a couple of minor details were.But however appealing PSG’s soccer, there are a couple of caveats. Firstly, their players are much fresher than those of most of their European rivals – Arsenal especially. David Raya, Declan Rice, Martín Zubimendi, Gabriel and William Saliba all played more than 2,500 minutes of league soccer this season, while a further four players played more than 2,000. Of PSG’s starting XI, only Vitinha played more than 2,000. And that’s before taking into account how much more demanding the Premier League is than Ligue 1: Wolves, Burnley and West Ham offer significantly more of a test than the French equivalent bottom three of Metz, Nantes and Nice.PSG’s wage bill is roughly double that of the next highest in France, Marseille, and more than 10 times that of Le Havre, the lowest in Ligue 1. Their wealth has effectively destroyed the domestic circuit as a contest, and the source of that wealth should never be forgotten. It’s 15 years now since Qatar Sports Investment bought PSG and, having finally realized that celebrity soccer players are rarely the way to (on-field) success, they have the sort of team they must have dreamed of. All 10 outfield players started the last two finals and, with only two of them 30 or older and five 25 or under, there’s no reason they should not continue to be successful for a long while yet.The question, though, is at what cost, both to the balance of the French league, and to any notion that soccer may yet retain some sort of community or spiritual value, rather than simply being the propaganda tool of an autocratic state.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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Analysts trace illegal views to 3.7m IP addresses in UKChampions League final watched legally by more than 7mArsenal’s Champions League final defeat by Paris Saint-Germain attracted more than 16.2m views on illegal streams in the UK after not being made free-to-air.Analysis conducted for the Guardian by the technology analyst Gaming Compliance International (GCI) shows there were 16.2m illegal stream views of longer than 90 seconds, traced to 3.7m unique IP addresses. The final was watched legally on TNT Sports and HBO Max by more than 7 million people.TNT sparked a political row with its controversial decision not to make the final available free-to-air for the first time since the tournament’s rebrand as the Champions League in 1992, with Sir Keir Starmer writing to the broadcaster urging it to reconsider.TNT is understood to have been happy with its combined linear and streaming viewing figures of more than 7 million and 25.6% audience share, but the large numbers who watched illegally will be a major long-term concern for it and all broadcasters, as well as for TV rights owners such as Uefa and the Premier League.The absence of free-to-air coverage appears to have been a factor in the large numbers watching illegally. The 2022 Champions League final between Liverpool and Real Madrid, which BT Sport streamed for free on YouTube, attracted a peak audience of 12.6m.The exact size of the illegal audience is impossible to discern because there is likely to have been more than one viewer for many of the 3.7m unique streams, and some viewers will have accessed more than one stream owing to technological problems and forced refreshing because of advertising, which explains the 16.2m figure.There is a large overlap between the piracy of premium sports rights and unlicensed gambling, highlighted by the fact that 89% of adverts on illegal streams of the Champions League final were for gambling brands not licensed in the UK.“A dark nexus has existed between illegal streaming and unregulated gambling since the pandemic, when unregulated gambling approached illegal streaming to create fake sports and gambling events to make up for the lack of professional sports at that time,” GCI’s president, Ismail Vali, told the Guardian.“Now, as markets shift with changing sports rights and rising costs for consumers, illegal streaming has become part of a new arms race for illegal gambling. They are using ‘free sports streaming’ as a unique selling point in their war against regulated gambling operators.”TNT stood its ground and made the final available only on the subscription channels TNT Sports and HBO Max, although monthly packages for the latter start at £4.99. Industry sources said the audience there would have been higher had Uefa not brought forward the kick-off from 9pm in Budapest to 6pm, to make life easier for match-going fans.TNT’s viewing figures for the final rose from about 4.5m for PSG’s 5-0 thrashing of Inter last year owing to the presence of an English club but declined in France because of the earlier kick-off time.TNT disclosed that more than 9.2 million people watched at least one of the three Uefa men’s finals, with 3.5m watching Aston Villa’s Europa League win and 2.7m viewing Crystal Palace’s Conference League triumph. Its average audience for European football was up 5% from last season.Starmer, an Arsenal fan, made a second public plea for the Champions League final to be made available for free in a joint statement with the Football Supporters’ Association.TNT had made the past two Champions League finals available for free on discovery+, and the previous rights holder, BT Sport, streamed them for free on YouTube.Before BT Sport bought the rights, Champions League finals had been live on ITV, which had exclusive rights from the competition’s launch, as the rebranded European Cup, until 2003, then joint rights with Sky Sports until 2015.

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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.Considering how close they came to actually winning Bigger Cup, Football Daily isn’t about to suggest Mikel Arteta’s approach to the game once his side went a goal up after six minutes was the wrong one. When your greatest strength is your defence and you’re up against the best attacking side on the planet, then clinging on to your lead with an almost-but-not-quite perfect masterclass in backs-to-the-wall defending and breathtaking time-wasting is probably as good a way of going about things as any. That said, when you see the champions of a league that purports to be the best in the world playing like a team of National League South minnows trying to close out an FA Cup third-round upset, you can’t help but wonder if Arteta might have placed a little more trust in his excellent attacking players. Some could have used the time they weren’t wasting by performatively dawdling at throw-ins and corners by doing a little bit more ... y’know, attacking.“We had to be patient when playing against a team like Arsenal,” chirped PSG orchestra conductor Vitinha after the game. “Because they take a lot of time in everything; throw-ins, goal kicks, everything. Especially as Arsenal were leading at one point, it’s difficult. Arsenal waste a lot of time at every opportunity. Apart from that, they play with a low block. It’s difficult.” While Arteta, his players and their travelling fans were clearly devastated to let such a massive opportunity slip, not everyone was sorry to see them lose. Even before Gabriel’s penalty had landed in the Danube, Tottenham striker Richarlison, the Irish flag-carrier Aer Lingus, and whatever Chelsea Football Club is these days had taken to various Social Media Disgraces to riff, bebop and scat all over Arteta and his players’ pain.“They are a superb team and I congratulate them,” he said of the winners. “You have to go through the emotions and if you’re in pain, then go through the pain. If you think you could do something else, then learn from it. Reflect on that and show the ambition that we want to have again.” The question of whether Arsenal’s paucity of ambition on Saturday was a contributory factor to their defeat or helped them avoid an absolute shellacking is one that will be debated endlessly but never answered. Still, the mood yesterday around Islington was chipper in the extreme as several open-topped buses were unparked to travel the five-mile route. While their many detractors will continue to hate and bait a team who can be difficult to warm to, the atmosphere in north London was a welcome blend of joy, inclusivity and love.“Liverpool’s 20th league title belongs to all of us and it will remain an important chapter in its history. For that we should all be proud … I also leave knowing the club is exactly where it belongs: among Europe’s elite. Securing Champions League football was an important responsibility and one that ensures Liverpool can continue competing at the highest level next season and beyond” – Arne Slot issues a classy statement, with a couple of pointed reminders, after being heaved through Anfield’s Door Marked Do One on Saturday.“Not really my thing to be nice about Liverpool, but when I was young, they did actually deserve to win a lot, and most of my more bovine classmates were happy most years. But occasionally, they did need to revamp a previously successful, but now ageing team. For example, someone once had to tell Jimmy Case he was being replaced by Sammy Lee and was now only good enough for Brighton, which must have taken some cojones. They’d then do something random, like sign someone from Chester, and win everything the next year. My point being, if various no-marks like Shankly, Paisley, Fagan and Dalglish could pull this off, perhaps they don’t need to go down the route of ruining managers because their fanbase have no patience. Just saying” – Jon Millard.“Re: Tim Payne’s song [Friday’s Football Daily]. I was disappointed to discover it doesn’t go ‘You’re Tim Payne’, sung to the tune of this soft rock classic” – Andy Korman.If you have any, please send letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. Today’s prizeless letter o’ the day is … Andy Korman. Terms and conditions for our competitions, when we run them, are here.Declan Rice insists Arsenal will “go even stronger” next season after their Bigger Cup final penalty heartbreak, while eco-conscious Mikel Arteta wants his players to turn the pain of defeat “into fuel”.Lille have appointed Davide Ancelotti – son of Carlo – as their new head coach, while over in Spain, Iñigo Pérez has left Rayo Vallecano to take the reins at Villarreal. Plymouth Argyle have told most of their women’s first-team players their contracts will not be renewed – and gave them the news via email.Khadija ‘Bunny’ Shaw has been praised by Manchester City coach Andrée Jeglertz for keeping her focus on the pitch after recent transfer speculation. Shaw opened the scoring in City’s 4-0 Women’s FA Cup final win over Brighton on Sunday.Socceroos coach Tony Popovic has rolled the flamin’ dice with his GWC squad selection, reports Jack Snape, giving the nod to two uncapped forwards.And in news nobody wants to hear, John Barnes has reprised his Italia ‘90 rap as part of a (perhaps unnecessary) campaign to get England fans to the pub this summer.The former *deep breath* Leeds, Newcastle, Aston Villa, Manchester City, Liverpool and Brighton midfielder, James Milner, announced his retirement on Monday, ending a career that lasted so long he played against footballers who are now managers, pundits and, in some cases, probably grandparents. Milner made his debut for Leeds at the age of 16, and leaves the sport with a record 658 Premier League appearances, three league titles, a Big Cup, two FA Cups, two Fizzy Cups, a Club World Cup and the distinction of having spent the past decade looking exactly the same age.“I could never have dreamed of the journey I’ve been on,” Milner tooted on social media. “I’ve been fortunate enough to experience some unforgettable moments, from fighting for survival to winning trophies, playing in Europe, and representing my country, England. To those who supported me every step of the way, your encouragement meant more than you’ll ever know. And to those who gave me grief along the way, thank you too – you all played your part in making the journey memorable and helping shape me as a player and person.” Take that, haters.Suzanne Wrack felt the sense of community spirit at Arsenal’s trophy parade, while our picture desk has put together a snazzy gallery of the day’s festivities.Now for the doom and gloom: Jonathan Liew asks if this is as good as it gets for Mikel Arteta’s men, while David Hytner wonders who exactly picked their penalty takers.Andy Hunter looks at Arne Slot’s departure and how fans and Mohamed Salah shaped the decision. Philip Cornwall laments Slot’s season from hell starting with Diogo Jota’s death and ending without a trophy.Who’s next? Ben Fisher reckons Andoni Iraola can bring the swagger back to Arsenal, while Will Unwin looks at what he needs to do to win back the Anfield faithful.John Brewin had the difficult task of making a Bigger Cup team of the season with players from 11 different teams. Somehow, he snuck a Spurs player in there …Big Website has served up a glorious visual guide to all 16 GWC stadiums in the US, Mexico and Canada.The USA USA USA saw off Senegal in a pre-GWC friendly, as Christian Pulisic’s imperious 45 minutes put some questions to rest, wing-backs delivered and Mauricio Pochettino’s impromptu video session raised some brows.And our GWC Guides continue. Haiti! Morocco! USA! Paraguay! Turkey! Scotland! Australia! Côte d’Ivoire! Go, go, go!It’s the first day of June and there’s a World Cup taking place in Mexico soon. Time then to relive the hazy, dream-state magic of the triumphant and iconic Brazil 1970 team. Rivellino scored the eventual champions’ first goal of the tournament, firing in a free-kick to equalise after Ladislav Petras had given Czechoslovakia a shock early lead. Jairzinho’s double and a goal from Pelé completed the 4-1 rout in Guadalajara.

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Met says non-fatal stabbings took place after most of the crowds had dispersed on Sunday eveningSix people were stabbed after Arsenal’s Premier League victory parade in north London on Sunday, police have said.The Metropolitan police said the stabbings took place in the evening after most of the crowds had dispersed. Twenty-four people were arrested.One man in his 20s was taken to hospital in a life-threatening condition but has since been stabilised. The force said most of the victims did not suffer serious injuries.Hundreds of thousands of supporters lined streets around the Emirates Stadium as Arsenal celebrated winning the league title for the first time in 22 years. More than 500 officers were deployed to police the event. Ten of the arrests were on suspicion of assaulting police officers.The Met said one officer suffered a slash wound to the hand and another was struck on the head by an object thrown from the crowd.Three people were arrested on suspicion of sexual assault, with other offences including grievous bodily harm, being drunk and disorderly, obstructing police, affray and breach of a dispersal order.Police also arrested three people in relation to alleged drugs offences, including one person who was also arrested on suspicion of possessing a knife. Four police vans parked on Theberton Street in Islington were damaged, with broken lights and dents reported.The arrests came after emergency services dealt with a number of incidents linked to the celebrations throughout the day. On Sunday, the London fire brigade said it had rescued about 75 people who became stuck at height after climbing on to rooftops and other structures to watch the parade.The brigade also attended a small fire at a hotel that was believed to have been caused by a flare.Police said extra stop-and-search powers were authorised overnight after patterns of violence in north London. Commander Stuart Bell, who led the Met’s public order operation for the parade, said there had been “pockets of antisocial behaviour” during the event.“As the evening progressed and the majority of the crowds made their way home, there was sadly further violence, including gang-related incidents,” he said. “Officers were swiftly on scene to each stabbing and investigations are ongoing.”Ch Supt Jason Stewart, who leads policing in Islington, said officers would continue patrols in the area while investigations continued. “Our officers are back out on patrol today to provide visible reassurance and our investigation teams are working hard to identify offenders and bring them to justice,” he said.The Met said inquiries into all six stabbings were continuing.

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It’s real and physical, it scars and heals: sport is a visceral high – and the Gunners have reminded fans just what it meansIt’s going to take some time to shake this feeling. Frankly, I don’t want to shake it. I don’t want the flare smell, akin to a thousand party poppers going off at once, to leave my skin, I don’t want the stream of content to subside and I don’t want this joy to leave.When the final whistle blew in Manchester City’s 1-1 draw at Bournemouth the tears flowed, I pulled on jeans and trainers, told the lad to change out of his pyjamas and headed to the Emirates Stadium. Then, on Sunday, I was back, champagne in hand, for an emotional lap of the stadium and a pilgrimage to the old East Stand at Higbury to sit on the steps in front of the marble halls.I was 17 when Arsenal had last lifted the Premier League trophy. I’m now 39, married and have a 12-year-old. A lot has changed, but one thing hasn’t: football’s capacity to produce emotion after emotion, from pain to euphoria. The idea that football can inspire such strong feelings may be alien to the uninitiated, but it is real, it is physical, it scars and it heals.I’ve reflected a lot in the past two weeks on what brings joy to people’s lives and concluded nothing really compares to what sport provides. Football offers a collective experience that is religious without the religion or akin to being part of a mass political movement, but the unpredictability and longevity set it apart.Plenty of other things have brought me joy and still do; my family and being a parent or being creative through drawing, painting and writing. Nothing, though, is capable of a twisted gut punch or tight embrace the way football does. It can also make you loudly and gutturally cry, in pain or with joy, with a freedom few other settings allow.That’s why, when walking through the streets of Hackney and Islington on Sunday to and from the parade, the crowd spilling through sidestreets like slow-moving lava, I looked sorrowfully on those not part of the celebrations, but caught up in the flow.I pity a void in their lives they probably aren’t aware of, which increasingly I don’t think anything else can fill. In the week before the title was won, I stuck on Fever Pitch for the first time in years and watched as Sarah, who is reluctant to get into football, hostile to it in fact, slowly has her interest more and more piqued, until she has the moment. She sees the beauty of shared collective joy on an epic scale when fans pour on to the streets after the 1989 title win.The similarity to the spontaneous party when City handed Arsenal the title was striking and the joy electric, the baby thrust into the air as if it were a trophy prompting fans to cheer as if they were watching the trophy lift they were being denied.That night, the Sunday after the final league game at Crystal Palace and the parade also gave Arsenal fans things this increasingly divided society is missing: connection and community. No one on the parade cared who they were standing next to and few things today have the power to bring people together in a shared collective feeling that nothing else matters. That is wonderful to experience and cuts across the selfishness and individuality that feel the dominant features of modern Britain.Arsenal are far from the perfect club, though. The owner, Stan Kroenke, is experiencing a reputational comeback, but the billionaire, who made his fortune through real estate and his marriage to the Walmart heiress Ann Walton, is far from a pure antidote to the sovereign wealth fund football club ownerships of Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia, countries with questionable human rights records. Arsenal’s sponsorship deals with Emirates, the United Arab Emirates-owned airline, Visit Rwanda and Deel have provoked frustration and the decision to keep playing Thomas Partey while a police investigation was under way into allegations of rape, which their now former midfielder denies, also drew consternation.You could be forgiven for wondering, in this context, how up to a million people took to the streets on Sunday to celebrate this club. These are extremely important issues that should be discussed, written about and, where necessary, protested against.But the connection between fan and club runs deep. The club may belong to its owner, but the soul of the club is its supporters who, from generation to generation, will outlast each owner and sponsorship deal. Your relationship to your club may be eroded a little, or temporarily, but nothing can destroy your story, your connection or how the club’s highs and lows act as the backdrop to, or even shape, key moments in your life.These connections, between club and fan and club and place, have felt to the fore in these two weeks, or even the past few years, for Arsenal supporters. Fans aren’t consumers; they don’t just want to watch a show, they want to feel the feelings and Arsenal have done a very good job at cultivating that, not least through the incorporation of the song The Angel, which most will know as North London Forever. It has been much mocked by rival fans, but it is not a song about Arsenal or football – it is about place and a celebration of working-class communities.What we’re all looking for, overtly or otherwise, is community and Arsenal have provided the forum to give fans a reminder of what that feels like.

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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 teamThis 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.Even as Arsenal lost the final’s penalty shootout to PSG in Budapest, Raya was heroic, making a save from Nuno Mendes. During the game itself, Raya’s decision-making was up to the standards of his exemplary season. He closed out the Champions League campaign with nine clean sheets, having conceded just five goals in 14 matches. Robert Andrich’s header from a corner for Bayer Leverkusen was the last non-penalty to beat Raya in the competition, and it came in the round of 16.Yes, a Spurs player made the cut. Remember Thomas Frank? A decent record in Europe served as a fig leaf for the Dane’s unpopular regime. Spurs managed to finish fourth in the group stage, and Porro’s skills as an overlapping full-back were to the fore, such that he has recently been linked with a return to Manchester City, where he spent three years as part of the club’s loan army.Although this season will be remembered as the one where Bastoni’s red card in the playoff against Bosnia wrecked Italy’s chances of making the World Cup, he remains his nation’s best defender. Inter, runaway Serie A champions, remained stingy in defence in the Champions League, conceding just seven in the group stage, with Bastoni as their organiser and deep-lying playmaker.The Norwegian club from the Arctic Circle were the romantic story of the season, beating Manchester City, Atlético Madrid and Inter before surprisingly losing heavily to Sporting in the last 16. If Jens Petter Hauge was the headline maker off the left wing, it was a defence led by Bjørtuft that laid the foundations. He ranked third in ball recoveries, on 81, behind only PSG’s Mendes and Pacho.Left-back: Matteo Ruggeri (Atlético Madrid)Another Italian, and a player who represents the latest stage of Diego Simeone’s dynasty at Atlético. Ruggeri set up Alexander Sørloth’s goal in a crucial quarter-final first-leg win at Barcelona, helping the club to the semis for the first time since 2016-17. Ruggeri, who joined Atleti from Atalanta last summer, is very much a Simeone player; a defender first and foremost. He was assigned to Barcelona’s Lamine Yamal in that quarter-final and lived to tell the tale even when the teenager was showing off his full array of tricks.Defensive midfielder: Morten Hjulmand (Sporting)Though they surrendered their Portuguese title, Sporting had a fine Champions League season, finishing in the top eight of the group stage among five English teams, Bayern Munich and Barcelona. Their Danish captain was at the fulcrum, though he was sorely missed for the first leg of an attritional two-legged quarter-final with Arsenal. Hjulmand is set to be heavily featured in summer transfer talk as a midfielder of poise and tenacity.Central midfielder: Aleix García (Bayer Leverkusen)Leverkusen’s run to the last 16 was something of a surprise in a disappointing European season for Bundesliga clubs. García, a well-travelled former Manchester City youngster, serves as his team’s metronome, completing 91.25% of his passes. He scored a spectacular group-stage goal against PSG, leaving their goalkeeper, Lucas Chevalier, flat-footed with the venom of his shot.Central midfielder: Dominik Szoboszlai (Liverpool)The postscript to Liverpool’s unhappy season was Arne Slot’s departure on Saturday, although few others escaped with credit. Szoboszlai was among the exceptions. There has been talk of the Hungarian ascending to club captaincy, and it makes sense considering that when Liverpool were good, he was usually at the centre of it. Often asked to play at full-back, his best football came as the marauding midfielder he was bought as. He rattled in five goals in 12 Champions League matches, and was star man when Liverpool smashed Galatasaray 4-0 at Anfield. His opening goal set the tone for a rare Liverpool high point.Left-wing is where many of the best players could be found in 2025-26, sometimes even within the same club, with Vinícius Júnior and Kylian Mbappé both wanting to play there for Real Madrid. Bodø/Glimt’s Hauge was one of the season’s stars. Newcastle’s Anthony Gordon won himself a move to Barcelona with 10 Champions League goals from that position. There can, though, be little doubt that Kvaratskhelia has been the best of them all. Though he was not at his best in the final, as he left the field exhausted and battered, there were still moments of class. Over the season, his bewildering mix of orthodox left-wing play and the explosive power he generates places “Kvaradonna” above the rest.Injuries and growing pains slowed the progress of football’s most exciting talent this season, but there have been enough shards of brilliance to make him an inevitable choice here. There are moments when he pulls off skills that would have been beyond Messi and Ronaldo at their peak. In a losing effort against Atlético in the quarter-final, Lamine Yamal was often incredible, with one spin beyond two defenders followed by a 50-yard diagonal to Marcus Rashford on the opposite flank a vignette of pure footballing genius. Pray for his good health at the World Cup.Mbappé outscored Kane’s total of 14 by a single goal this season, but the Englishman gets the nod here as he has shown another side of himself within Vincent Kompany’s exciting Bayern Munich. Kane has always been about more than merely plundering goals, and the creative edge he showed at Tottenham with Son Heung-min was replicated this season in his keen understanding with Bayern’s flying wingers, Michael Olise and Luis Díaz. Kane has been a worthy successor to Robert Lewandowski at Bayern, totalling 61 goals overall for his club this season.

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Thirst for renewal is strong and new players could help bridge the gap to PSG but there are no guaranteesThe 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.Were Arsenal unlucky in Budapest, then? Once we sieve out the righteous rage and endless counterfactuals, the minor quibbles over major refereeing calls, Arsenal probably got what they deserved. To lose on penalties after making the defending champions sweat and fluster for 120 minutes is undoubtedly harsh. But by the same token it is hard to escape the conclusion that – through their tactics and their gameplan and their mindset – Arsenal largely brought themselves to this point.In its purest essence, and against the best opponents, Mikel Arteta’s style of football is geared explicitly towards narrowing the range of realistic outcomes, and then catching the breaks that remain. But a strategy calibrated to earn and defend a 1-0 lead, with four centre-halves and a low block, stands or falls by those same stark measures. Fine-margins football is all very well, until you find yourself on the wrong end of fine margins.Was any other approach remotely plausible? Probably not. Bayern Munich in the semi-final showed up the limitations of going toe-to-toe with Paris Saint-Germain on their own terms. And of course Arsenal do not possess a Michael Olise, a Harry Kane, a Luis Díaz, a philosophy based on drilled waves of lawless attack. They were missing their top two right-backs, and finished the game with a front three of Gabriel Martinelli, Noni Madueke and Viktor Gyökeres, which should at least contextualise what it was fair to expect from Arteta here.The gulf in resources is obviously a factor here, but so too the gulf in priorities. Arsenal’s recruitment in the last few windows has put a premium on bolstering the back line, adding depth, bringing up the overall level of the squad rather than signing the electrifying X-factor players who can win a big game with a moment of brilliance. Perhaps this is a strategy that met its match here. Perhaps this was a night when Bukayo Saka and Leandro Trossard, Martinelli and Madueke and Gyökeres – fine players all – were exposed just a little, handed the biggest stage in the world, and not quite filling it.Certainly this appeared to be the subtext of Arteta’s post-match reflections, when he spoke of “needing to improve” and “find different margins”. Arteta gushed about the talent at Luis Enrique’s disposal, lamented the way they warp the gravity of the game around them, force opponents to play in their least favourite areas of the field.And there appears to be a prevailing assumption that having finally broken their Premier League drought, with a squad approaching peak age, having pushed the best team in the world to their very last drop of sweat, Arsenal will surely take the final step before long. That this is just the start of the Arteta golden age. All of which may well come to pass. And yet it’s also worth asking: what if it isn’t? What if this is as good as it gets?For, buried within the eulogies and paeans to this side, is a kind of paradox. We are told that this is a team who – through good coaching, a good culture and a sound process – have made the very most of the resources at their disposal, allowing them to compete with the continent’s finest megaclubs and state-owned vehicles. And yet, we are also told by many of the same people, this is also a team with ample capacity for improvement in the coming years. Think about it. Can both these things really be true at once? If Arteta has squeezed every last drop of potential out of this squad, how likely is it that there are still levels to find? What if this is a club already operating at 105% of their capacity?The thirst for renewal is strong. New players will surely help to bridge the gap, and yet the cautionary tale of Liverpool last summer is a reminder that this process is rarely straightforward or devoid of risk. World-class players necessitate an enhanced wage structure, new tactical shades and notes, a subtly different dressing-room dynamic. A club as well run as Arsenal can count on signing more hits than misses. But the bigger the stakes, the bigger the risks.Meanwhile, clubs who can rely on the largesse of a state have much fatter margins for error. An expensive misstep on the scale of the Neymar/Messi/Mbappé fiasco would derail most clubs for a decade. Paris, on the other hand, can simply shrug it off and go again. Manchester City can drop £59m on Omar Marmoush, £50m on Nico González, £46m on Tijjani Reijnders, £27m on James Trafford, with no real urgency for any of them to work out.Beyond these two, many of the continent’s sleeping giants have ample room for improvement. Bayern Munich and Barcelona are clearly close. Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool and Real Madrid are all capable of waking from their slumber in a hurry. Future generations may marvel at Arsenal’s fortune in reaching a Champions League final by beating Bayer Leverkusen, Sporting Lisbon and Atlético Madrid. Will the circumstances really be any more favourable for them next time?Arsenal had a strong claim to be Europe’s best team this season. And while it may be some comfort to their fans and staff that they came so close, they will also need to realise the window of opportunity at the very highest level is vanishingly small, contingent on luck as well as skill, and has no guarantees of coming again. And if that doesn’t focus minds during the long summer months, nothing will.

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Re-enthroned Champions League-winning club should have always been this good but Qatar’s propaganda project is finally listening to an elite managerParis est mythique. There was nothing understated, no obvious shades of faux humilité about the headline in L’Équipe after Paris Saint-Germain had been re-enthroned as Champions League winners on Saturday night. Mythical. Storied. Ultimate. Yeah. But are they, though?In fairness it would be disappointingly un-Parisian not to consider your champion team the champions of all champions in the moment of victory. Give the people what they want. Play the hits. Nobody needs a polite Parisian waiter. Nobody wants to see an unstylish Parisian estate agent who has taken absolutely no care of his hair, or a Parisian bistro that doesn’t think it’s the VIP boarding lounge for the last arc leaving planet Earth. Hmm. Maybe there’s somewhere else more dismissive around the corner.In this case the Parisian exceptionalism is entirely justified. The PSG of Luis Enrique, Vitinha and Nasser al-Khelaifi has evolved into a sensationally good, beautifully watchable team. The way they beat Arsenal only adds to this. Mikel Arteta’s tactics worked in Budapest. PSG played below their level, and looked visibly drained at times from fiddling away around that solid red defensive structure.But they still found a way to guts it out, to win on the fine details. We got cork-popping football-of-the-gods in the 5-0 win over Inter in Munich last year. This was a different kind of champion quality.Plus, history tells us retaining the European Cup is very hard to do. Albeit, that degree of historic difficulty does rest on the assumption you’re simultaneously straining to win a domestic league, stretched on all fronts across eight gruelling months.Which is very obviously not the case here. Before we start doling out mythic status it is worth acknowledging the true nature of this feat. Essentially PSG have managed to win nine key games from February to May two years in a row, with a team, a schedule and an ever-giving ownership entirely geared to that spring mini-season.Another L’Équipe headline seemed to capture it better. “L’Europe a les champions qu’elle merite.” Now you’re talking. These are the champions European football deserves: beautiful, high‑craft, complex and also deceptive. This is elite performance for an overclass world, and a model that has successfully subverted the more established route to the very top.Ideally a European champion team, in the form first devised by L’Équipe itself 70 years ago, is supposed to express the strengths of its domestic league, to emerge from that crucible ready to show the rest of Europe why this system, right now, is the best.Instead the domestic league has been bypassed. The current PSG express nothing about Ligue 1 and everything about their own ambition and power. Nuno Mendes and Marquinhos have both played more minutes in the Champions League this season than in Ligue 1. Ousmane Dembélé started 11 of 34 Ligue 1 games and is basically a midweek player after Christmas, peaking for those dates. Does this really deserve a Ballon d’Or? How about half a Ballon d’Or?Here we have a football team recast as a luxury good, the kind of overclass product that can only be found behind the velvet rope in some elite private airport suite. Given the sole challenge here is to win the Champions League; given the will of the Qatari state, the clear and actionable plan, the domestic matches that are essentially tune‑ups, we should probably temper our feelings of awe when this does indeed happen.This is of course unfair on PSG. Most obviously it overlooks the achievements of Luis Enrique in creating PSG 2.0, a model of drive, focus and tactical coherence that bears no comparison to the celebrity machine that preceded it. PSG then: Neymar riding a snow leopard around his personal rooftop disco dressed in a solid gold bowler hat and chinchilla fur chaps. PSG now: Vitinha diligently revolving the ball, like a submarine captain down in the engine room twirling his pumps and sprockets, conductor of a team that loves to work as much as it loves the ball.The creative leader on Saturday night was Désiré Doué, whose super-skill is his ability to spin and stop with perfect balance, like a squirrel on a branch, and who embodies a new kind of elite footballer, the details-geek, the private chef devotee, a sleep student who takes timed naps to improve his energy levels. Which is definitely a step on from turning up to training three days into a week-long cheese and Red Bull bender.Luis Enrique has been empowered by the hierarchy and has entirely nailed the tactical architecture. This PSG play like a fusion of Pep-style possession ball and the direct attacking energy of peak Klopp Liverpool. The training methods have been innovative and data-heavy, with talk of an “immersive video simulator”, individual USB stick tactical notes, and training‑ground speakers pumping out stadium noise for Pavlovian visualisation vibes.It has been both surprising and also entirely unsurprising that this transformation has been effected so quickly. Who knew Qatar could make its propaganda project actually work by finally listening to a very good manager?The fact is PSG should always have been this good. There are no limits here. You don’t have to be a single-city petro-project glamour toy with an economically irrationally funding model to be successful. But it doesn’t hurt.There is in this context something telling that PSG are seen as European football’s good guys now, the purists, the keepers of the flame, not just good but good. Most neutrals seem to have supported them in Budapest, testament to a seductive, aesthetically pleasing style of play (based around an extreme wealth of talent). And also to the performative nature of sport, the way beauty disorientates the senses, the tendency to fawn over winners, as though this also confers some kind of character‑driven authority. Paradoxically so, given this remains a soft‑power project for a carbon dictatorship, driven by the same brutal process that built the Qatar World Cup. But hey. They do play some nice stuff.There is a further paradox here, because PSG also embody so many genuine sporting virtues. The average age of the starting XI this season is 24. Six academy players have made their professional debuts. PSG have five players in the France team. They’re also fantastically good at pumping out merch, at fluffing the “Rouge & bleu universe”, setting up hip little salons, pop‑ups and cultural events like the Ici c’est Paris la maison currently rolling out in LA and New York with its “immersive experiences combining sport, music, fashion, art and gastronomy”.The image-making, the energy of the cultural project is as breathtaking as the Parisian midfield. And in a way PSG do express Paris perfectly. The city is also a delightful illusion. Build the suburbs far out of sight on the edge of things. Preserve the perfect centre, the myth of existing only in beauty, art and culture, a place where residents get to act out the Parisian lifestyle, where every American tourist gets to pretend to be Hemingway.Here we have a model of beauty, a never-ending belle époque, with real-world grime and poverty just out of sight. And a place where PSG can also cosplay in victory, not just lovely, beautiful, free‑flowing but fundamentally pure. And yes, we’ll see you again in Madrid next year.