With the removal of the away goals rule, Champions League matchups have tended towards more open play and riskier attacks in search of goals, particularly in the first legs. It makes sense. Without away goals hanging on the home team's head, it can push forward more often, knowing that giving up a goal is merely bad instead of potentially catastrophic. With that in mind, though, the first leg of the first semifinal, the one between Arsenal and Paris Saint-Germain, felt more like a match from the away goals era.
In part this is because of the lateness of this tie in the competition. It is only natural for both clubs to play conservatively, not wanting to fall right on the doorstep of the final (this is also why most, though not all, Champions League finals tend to be a bit underwhelming as actual matches), and so the order of the day for both the host Gunners and the visiting Parisians appeared to be safety. The other reason, however, is that PSG scored its first half-chance on a day of half-chances, a goal that immediately changed the complexion of the whole tie just four minutes in, and one that showed the difference between the two sides, particularly in attack.
There wasn't much game before the goal, so let's get straight to it. In the fourth minute, Ousmane Dembélé received the ball just outside the center circle on his half of the field and shuttled it forward into the space between Arsenal's midfield and its backline. After cutting to his left to avoid a backtracking Declan Rice, he hit a diagonal on the ground to a charging Khvicha Kvaratskhelia. The pass was a bit too long for the Georgian to hit it with his first touch, but he wisely slowed it down, dribbled into the penalty area, then flicked it back to Dembélé at the edge of the box. The Frenchman then hit a left-footed first-timer through about six people in the area and into the far post, where it skipped past David Raya and in off the woodwork:
Dembélé has been stellar this season for PSG, playing the best and most consistent soccer of his career, and he doesn't have a weak foot, so maybe it shouldn't be shocking that his left-foot laser went in, but this was about as tricky a shot as any player will take on goal, and that it just barely went in speaks to the difficulty. I wouldn't say this was poor defense from Arsenal—it wasn't great to leave Dembélé of all people that open at the edge of the box, but I'd put this down more to Kvaratskhelia's dribble into the box contracting the defense than any mental lapses—but rather the type of chance that truly great players score with more frequency than their merely good counterparts.
I didn't know it at the time, but this would end up being the story of the match, for now I must focus on Arsenal's Gabriel Martinelli as a helpful counterpoint. Martinelli is a very good winger-slash-forward for the Gunners, and he has scored some important goals, most recently in the second leg against Real Madrid. Sure, that tie was probably over by the time Martinelli turned on the jets and clinched it for good, but it was against Madrid, in Madrid, so it was important nonetheless.
On Tuesday, however, Martinelli could only get himself in position for chances without the angle, timing, or finesse to convert into goals. Martinelli barely missed full contact on a cross on an open goal in the 40th minute (though he would have been called offside if he scored, anyway), and had a shot go well wide in the closing stages of the game. Neither of those chances were guaranteed goals, even against a goalie of less stature and skill than Gianluigi Donnarumma, who was the true obstacle in both Martinelli and Arsenal as a whole scoring their half-chances.
I feel like I have praised Donnarumma in every PSG article I've written recently, and it's with a bit of fatigue, but mostly just admiration, that I must do so again. Donnarumma at his best can turn any chance into a half-chance just with his size and reflexes, and he did so to Martinelli on Tuesday. Just before halftime, Myles Lewis-Skelly found an inch-perfect run from Martinelli on the left side of the PSG box. This was a tough angle to be sure, made even tougher by the presence of Donnarumma, who dropped low and dared Martinelli to go high over him at full speed. The Brazilian didn't do that, instead trying to go to the far post, but Donnarumma was equal to the challenge, using his long left arm to keep the ball out:
Later in the match, he had a similar left-handed save on a breaking Leandro Trossard, another chance that was maybe tougher than it should have been but which Donnarumma made sure would only dribble out for a corner:
This is where the real gap between these teams came into play on Tuesday. While PSG has at least one player, in Dembélé, who can be counted on for impossible goals, and a handful of others who it wouldn't shock anyone to see do the same (Bradley Barcola just barely missed hitting the post and in on an 84th-minute shot, Désiré Doué has shown his own prodigious skill, Kvaratskhelia is called Kvaradona for a reason, and even Gonçalo Ramos hit the bar just a minute after Barcola's miss), Arsenal is in need of shock and awe. This is where it must be pointed out that PSG had a brilliant gameplan on Arsenal's one player who most often does the impossible.
It seemed quite evident from the start that the plan was to defend Bukayo Saka out of the game as much as possible, utilizing the Englishman's incredible defensive work rate to tire him out and get him out of position before double- and triple-teaming him on the right wing. This worked flawlessly. On Tuesday Saka had only one shot and one key pass, and though he did his usual Saka business of being all up and down the right flank, it wasn't enough on a day when PSG's defense was not going to allow him to win the game on his own. This is why the chances instead fell to Trossard, and to Martinelli, and to Mikel Merino, who scored on a Rice free kick only to be ruled offside in the 47th minute. (Rice, for his part, can't be counted on to uncork gold like he did against Real Madrid; this is no knock on him, it's just not his role.) Those are good players, who have scored good goals, but Arsenal's injury-depleted bench forces players into roles they might just not be ready for, roles like the "savior" Arsenal needed as it came close, but not close enough, to salvaging something from the first leg.
In a match where both teams seemed afraid to let the scoreline get out of hand before next week's second leg in Paris, it was the combination of tight defending, Donnarumma's heroics, and Dembélé's individual moment of brilliance that carried the day for PSG, and it's why the Ligue 1 champions will be favored on home turf on May 7. As the competition gets tougher and everything gets more compact, a star like Dembélé, who can score from anywhere inside 30 yards in the blink of an eye, and a goalie like Donnarumma, who requires just that type of brilliance to beat, are the ones who can make the difference between a campaign ending and a ticket booked for Munich and the final. Arsenal will have to find a source of magic in the second leg to overcome this painfully close home loss, and with PSG sure to focus its attentions on Saka once more, the Gunners might need someone else to step up, even if just for a few seconds of glory when none seems likely to come.
