Latest Sports Stories

Football News

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.

Football News

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.

Football News

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.

Football News

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.

Football News

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.

Football News

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.

Football News

Penalty misses from pre-season were repeated in Budapest while summer signings could help Gunners exert more control in biggest gamesWhen it was finally over – on the night and for the club season, devastation the overriding emotion for everyone connected to Arsenal – Declan Rice wanted to go back to make the point. To last July and his club’s first pre-season game, against Milan in Singapore.Arsenal won 1-0 before the teams agreed to stage a penalty shootout. The idea was clear: to practise in front of a crowd because you just cannot replicate this particular aspect of the game on the training ground. Arsenal lost.So at least there was a kind of symmetry to how it all ended on Saturday night in the Champions League final, Arsenal losing on penalties to Paris Saint-Germain, Gabriel Magalhães missing the decisive kick in round five. As an aside, Arsenal had two other shootouts in pre-season, against Villarreal and Athletic Club. They lost the former, Gabriel missing the fifth, again. They won the latter.What Rice wanted to stress was the marathon nature of a season that has brought the club’s first Premier League title since 2004 and defeats in two finals: the Carabao Cup and now the Champions League.“This season from start to finish … we started in July in Singapore and we’re now coming up to July again,” Rice said. “We’ve just played our 63rd game in all competitions. It’s been really tough, mentally draining. Since October, it has been three games a week.”Nobody had the heart to mention what is up next for Rice: the World Cup with England in North America. It will be the biggest, most congested one of them all, the heat and travel demands incredible. Rice will approach it having played in 55 of Arsenal’s matches (not including pre-season). Plus, six more for England. And battled through the pain of a persistent injury problem for months.When Rice was forced to withdraw from England’s friendly against Japan at the end of March, Thomas Tuchel revealed he had been at “70%” for “quite a while”. When he returned for Arsenal, Mikel Arteta came to play him as more of a midfield No 6 than a No 8. Was it to manage his running?“We know what we’ve been through internally this season,” Arteta said as he tried to digest the PSG defeat, and it was easy to imagine he had Rice’s internal battle in mind. Yet all the way through the final, Rice resisted. Up until his very last action – his successful conversion in round three of the shootout. He was not the barnstorming presence of so many Arsenal games. But as a symbol of their character, their sheer bloody-mindedness, he was there.There were many others and what had to please Arteta the most was how his players executed the gameplan. After Kai Havertz’s early goal, Arsenal were watertight against Europe’s most feared attack until Cristhian Mosquera conceded the penalty for Ousmane Dembélé’s 65th-minute equaliser.Thereafter, Arsenal pushed again, they asked questions and, were it not for a clutch of poor final passes, they may have nicked a winner, most notably before the end of regulation time. You didn’t like the approach? You haven’t liked Arsenal this season? They don’t care. Neither do their fans.“You can’t play the game against PSG like others have done where you are following them all around the pitch because that’s what they want,” Rice said. “We really nullified them.”There was a moment after PSG had got past Bayern Munich in the semi-final and were looking ahead to the final when Luis Enrique referred to Arteta as “Mikelito”. The PSG manager was an established Barcelona player when Arteta was a young hopeful at the club, trying (and failing) to break into the first team. Luis Enrique’s use of the old nickname was affectionate and yet it felt slightly patronising, too. He has to see Arteta as more of an equal now.The bad bits of the final for Arsenal took in that lack of care with their final ball. Their pass-completion rate was an extremely low 69%. PSG’s was 91%. They simply did not enjoy enough possession; they made 196 successful passes to PSG’s 806. Or create enough in front of goal. Some of the individual attacking statistics were startling. Bukayo Saka completed only four passes and was nought out of four on his dribbles. Martin Ødegaard touched the ball 12 times.Gabriel’s miss from the spot made the headlines but what about Eberechi Eze’s in round two? He took a penalty for Crystal Palace in their Community Shield shootout win against Liverpool at the start of the season. He made a stuttering run, paused and shot weakly for the bottom left-hand corner, with Alisson getting down to save.In a video captured on the Wembley pitch, as Eze’s miss was replayed on the big screen, the Palace defender, Tyrick Mitchell, can be heard saying to him: “You’d better stop taking it like that, I’m telling you.”“Yeah, I think it’s done,” Eze replies. But he went with exactly the same technique against PSG, the only difference being that he dragged the ball past the post.We also really have to talk about the referee, Daniel Siebert, and the sense that Arsenal antagonised him with their time management. It was an extraordinary episode when he blew for the end of the first half of normal time as Saka prepared to take a corner, feeling the Arsenal winger had dillydallied too long.PSG were back out early after the interval but where were Arsenal, Siebert seemed to wonder? He walked over towards the tunnel and stood on the sideline waiting for them. He looked exasperated. Two minutes after the restart, he booked Mosquera for time-wasting on a throw. Then, at the last, as Gabriel prepared to take his penalty, did Siebert absolutely need to have a chat with him and fuss over his placement of the ball? Gabriel respotted it before blazing high.Moving forward, it will be interesting to see if Arteta can turn the dial more towards attack in the pressure games. He talked about having to “make some very important decisions if we want to reach another level.” The Atlético Madrid striker, Julián Alvarez, will be a prime summer transfer target. Arteta will reflect on whether the club can make improvements on the medical and conditioning side to better withstand the demands of the schedule.For the moment, though, it will be the snapshots and emotions from after the final that dominate. The PSG celebrations as they retained their Champions League title. Even the image that was projected on to the magnificent facade of the main train station in Budapest. It featured Dembélé, his teammate Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, and the caption: “Back to Back”.“We’re gutted but we move on,” Rice said. “There’s been so many top players who have taken so many years to win their first Champions League. We’re going to use these feelings … seeing them lift that trophy … to go on and win this competition. We’ll be back, for sure.”

Football News

Some struggle to love Mikel Arteta’s side but they went toe-to-toe with PSG in a gruelling, high-grade contestIt always seemed likely, somehow, that Arsenal’s season was going to come down to Gabriel Magalhães and a set piece. Just not, ideally, like this.After half an hour it was already the kind of day where it becomes impossible to remember a time when this game wasn’t happening, where the Puskas Arena is just the universe now, when there is just always this single humid moment, the same rolling bowl of noise, the red, white and blue shapes, the constantly shifting patterns.Even as the game edged into penalties at 1-1 close to 9pm the night still felt like a series of weirdly vivid moments. Here is David Raya being simultaneously triple-maintained by the Arsenal pit crew, pounded on both thighs, brain fed with data by a pair of crouching men, another flooding his mouth with fresh fluids.In the stands the same Arsenal fan had been leaping up all night, stringy arms beating the air, chain bouncing, king of the stairwell, a man completely lost in this time and this place. Down on the pitch Mikel Arteta had come to Budapest in his summer wardrobe, the light grey slacks jettisoned in favour of some very dark grey slacks and a silky polo shirt, poised on his chalk line like an unusually trim and energetic darts player.By now Arteta was into his sixth dance-battle rondo-huddle of the night, crouching and clenching and barking every word. He loves to talk about suffering. Across his three hours here Arsenal’s manager must have done 20,000 star jumps and 650 shuttle sprints, never letting his intensity drop. How will this man ever sleep again? They’re going to need some kind of elephant tranquilliser gun to put him down for the night.And so PSG have retained their title, completing the much-trumpeted two-peat. They are a hugely deserving champion team. All the more so at the end of a game that was made beautiful by Arsenal making sure anyone who wanted to win this thing had to be good enough to beat them, insisting that every trick and feint and moment of grace was gouged out of something hard and real.By the end this was a reminder too that some things are long, difficult and nuanced, that the world’s most popular form of entertainment is still like this at its best: a saga, grudging in its rewards, despite what you might hear about instant content, reel culture and the allegedly junk attention spans of young people.For Arsenal’s supporters there will be genuine pleasure in the performance of a young team with five English players in it; in Arteta successfully asserting his tactical plan at this rarefied level; and most specifically, perhaps, in the performance of Myles Lewis-Skelly, who was given the hardest job in football, taking on Vitinha in a Champions League final, and was sensationally good.The Puskas Arena is a huge grey metal bowl, steeply tiered on all sides, its white mesh tubing roof leaning in over the pitch. Budapest had been clammy all day, with a landlocked central European summer stillness in the air. The noise at kick-off captured the fan culture of these two clubs. The Paris sound is always dominated by the endlessly drumming ultras end, who basically just sing whatever is happening, a wall of people making noise near a football match; the Arsenal half of the stadium was less choreographed, more reactive, the familiarly English sense of a crowd having a conversation with itself.The Killers came out and did a really fast, sweaty medley of their songs and nobody really asked why and it was fine. And from the start there were some intriguing notes in the team Arteta picked.Right-back had to be Cristhian Mosquera, who is not a right-back, who seems too upright, too square, too long in the limbs to turn and twist like a right-back, and who was up against the frankly terrifying Khvicha Kvaratskhelia. But he played really well in his time on the pitch.Then there was Lewis-Skelly, who completed the most extraordinary bends-inducing redemption arc, from ghost player, filler in a vest, to facing off against the best midfield in Europe. He played 90 minutes and was fearlessly good in every one of them. Not on the bare numbers perhaps, but in his energy and covering and game intelligence, the ability to plug every gap and always offer an angle. There were some lovely moments. A surge through midfield in the first half, and a thigh-shredding charge back to dispossess Désiré Doué on 78 minutes. Lewis-Skelly and Declan Rice would have looked a very good option as England’s starting midfield pivot at the World Cup.Arsenal scored with the first proper piece of football in the game. It was made by a Leandro Trossard block-assist, the ball deflected into the path of Kai Havertz, suddenly all alone and spidering his way in on goal, and finishing brilliantly into the roof of the net. Matvey Safonov can often look like he’s just wandered into a pub in Maidstone and is trying to sell you a bag of kidneys. He had a good game here, although Arsenal will regret that he didn’t actually have to get a hand on any of their penalties in the shootout. He did though make the choice easy for Havertz, basically squatting down and saying, go on, put it up there.For the first quarter of the game Arsenal’s plan worked. They gave up the ball, but in the process de-fanged PSG. On his touchline Luis Enrique already looked like he’d just run a desert marathon in swimming trunks, eyes boggling, T-shirt darkened with sweat. Arsenal’s defensive interventions were superbly timed, always calm and high-craft. The best part of the Premier League is its utter focus, its extreme levels of intensity in every moment. And there was something fascinating in seeing PSG asked to rise to that level, after a season playing in a domestic league that has basically been turned into the County Championship. Doué and Kvaratskhelia will be fidgeting their way up the steps when they get home, waiting for William Saliba to jump out of the bushes, wondering if when they flick on the lights Lewis-Skelly is already going to be there occupying the chaise longue.On 61 minutes, Paris finally found their moment, Mosquera drawn into a foul in the box by Kvaratskhelia. Ousmane Dembélé rolled the kick into the corner. Arsenal might have folded. They didn’t. PSG also kept coming, finding their own more bloody-minded gear.And so we went to penalties. A word about Gabriel and the final miss. He was made to wait by the referee, who insisted on speaking to kicker and keeper. This really was a moment of random chance, the day suddenly veering into something else, losing its edge at the very last.Gabriel had played superbly well. His kick ballooned mockingly into the crowd. The fireworks erupted. Arsenal’s players didn’t crumple, but walked slowly around the pitch as it was invaded by scampering wonks, applauding the fans and drinking in a moment that they will be hungry to taste again.A season and a champion team that some have struggled to love, or at least to watch as a TV production, dished up a thrillingly intense, high-quality end note here. The game may be cruel, gruelling and hostage to details, but the lesson of Budapest was that it is undeniably still good.

Football News

‘We will have to improve to try to get a different outcome’Manager unhappy Arsenal not given extra-time penaltyMikel Arteta spoke of his heartache after a skied penalty from Gabriel Magalhães in the shootout against Paris Saint-Germain ended Arsenal’s hopes of being crowned European champions for the first time, but emphasised the need to take that pain “and turn it into fuel”.Kai Havertz’s early strike and a defensive masterclass in the first half of the Champions League final that frustrated the holders had Arsenal supporters dreaming of a double after their first Premier League title for 22 years. But PSG hit back in the second half through Ousmane Dembélé from the spot before Arsenal thought they should have had a penalty of their own at the end of the first half of extra time.Arteta was booked for his protests after Noni Madueke tangled with Nuno Mendes. He then watched David Raya pull off a brilliant save from Mendes in the shootout after Eberechi Eze had put his spot-kick wide. It came down to Arsenal’s fifth penalty from Gabriel and the Brazilian was inconsolable after sending his effort over the bar.“Pain, that’s it,” said Arteta when asked to sum up his emotions. “When you are so close in the competition, and you are a few penalties away from winning the biggest club competition, that’s the way we should feel.”He added: “First of all you have to go through that pain, digest it, and turn it into fuel. To improve and to reach a different level, because it would demand a different level with the quality around Europe. I want to congratulate PSG because they are in my opinion the best team in the world.”Luis Enrique’s side have become only the ninth club in the competition’s history to retain their title and only the second in the Champions League era. But Arteta was disappointed that the German referee, Daniel Siebert, decided against awarding a penalty when Madueke went down in the area under pressure from Mendes.“I watched all the penalties in the competition in the last 72 hours, but that easily can be a penalty,” he said. “It is not what happened and that’s it. We will have to improve to try and get a different outcome. I will take a few days with my family and then we will start the process to review what we’ve done and decide to make some very important decisions if we want to reach another level.”Declan Rice admitted coming so close was a difficult pill to swallow but backed Arsenal to bounce back. “We will try to take some perspective from how far we have come as a group,” the England midfielder said. “Some of the best teams ever have lost on penalties in finals. It’s cruel, but that’s football. The manager has told us how much he loves us as a group. This is only the start for us.”Luis Enrique, who started with the same outfield players who defeated Inter 5-0 in last year’s final and has now won the Champions League three times, paid tribute to Arsenal’s defensive efforts.“Maybe today both teams deserved to win, but the way we played the whole season, I think we deserve it,” he said. “We are used to attacking [against a low block] but they are strong physically, they know how to defend and it was very tough. We’ll try to do it again next year. Why not?”