This is how you beat Real Madrid in the Champions League. What Arsenal did in Tuesday's first leg of the quarterfinals was as thorough a beating as the dark magic wizards have received in recent memory, and the London side put in kill shot after kill shot en route to a dominating 3-0 victory that, perhaps ominously but mostly euphorically, could have been more. As Real Madrid's history in this competition teaches us, no team is ever truly safe until Los Blancos are fully eliminated, but the Gunners have put themselves in fantastic position to nullify whatever counter-punch might come their way.
If it sounds like I am doing some form of reverse jinx on Arsenal, allow me to dispel that notion: Arsenal is not home free yet and into the semifinal round, but my goodness did the club step up to the hardest challenge in continental soccer. From the word go, the hosts were on Real Madrid's ass, constantly pushing the defending champs back and into frantic defending. A shaky clearance from Antonio Rüdiger early on, in which a mishit of an inch the other way would have led to an own goal, served as a blaring klaxon, and even though the goals took their sweet time to arrive, the statistics were heavily slanted in Arsenal's favor.
It's not surprising that Arsenal won possession for the game at 54-46; under Mikel Arteta, Arsenal likes a healthy amount of the ball, and that's a battle Real is willing to lose, given the usual brutality of their counter-attacks. But on Tuesday, Arsenal's defense snuffed out any inkling of offense from Real, holding the visitors to nine shots, only three on target, and only one or two of them of any real danger. Going the other way, Arsenal was clinical, putting 11 of its 12 shots on goal, and forcing a hell of a game from Thibaut Courtois, who was the main reason why the scoreline wasn't even more lopsided.
It took until the 58th minute to beat Courtois, and when it happened, boy was it gorgeous. Declan Rice has been an incredible signing for the Gunners, constantly involved in every facet of the game, but what he did on Tuesday is a new height that I'm not sure anyone but Declan Rice himself could have seen coming. With two swings of his foot, both from free kicks, he not only changed the scope of the game, but of the tie and maybe of Arsenal's season.
The first kick came in that aforementioned 58th minute. Standing over the ball from some 30 yards out on the center right of the field, Rice curled the ball from outside the goal into just inside the near post, screaming past Courtois's massive wingspan and in. Though the wall in front of the kick maybe didn't offer as much cover as it could have, there wasn't much the Belgian could do against a perfect shot like this. Arsenal's set piece coach might have tried to "claim it" after viewers confused some pre-shot sideline gestures as the coach instructing Rice to shoot, but as the Englishman explained after the game, the coach had actually instructed him to cross, so every ounce of the credit for this beauty belongs to Rice:
The goal gave Arsenal an even stronger grip on the steering wheel, and it's by some miracle goalkeeping and an inch-perfect David Alaba stop that Arsenal didn't score a second in a wild sequence in the 67th minute:
Three minutes after that, though, from the other side of the field, Rice did it again. Brimming with confidence after scoring that first one, the midfielder went to the same side of the goal with a far-post curler that was as top 90 as possible. Even if one might think Courtois should have been closer to that side, I'm not sure there's any positional adjustment that saves this absolute beauty:
I have to admit, despite the perfection of both free kicks, it was around this point that I had a funny feeling in my stomach. I've seen this play out many times before: An opponent takes a big lead over Real Madrid in a tie, only to let off, and let Madrid sneak its way back in. So, Arsenal going up 2-0 with 20 minutes to go, plus a whole other leg, gave me dread more than jubilation. But this is not your typically fearsome Real Madrid side. Indeed, the game was still one-way traffic after Rice's brace, and five minutes after scoring the second, Arsenal struck another crack in Madrid's shield. Rice himself started a counter-attack, finding Leandro Trossard on the left wing with plenty of space to pick out a cutback to Myles Lewis-Skelly at the top of the box. The teenager, who was fantastic all game, relayed the ball to Mikel Merino, who one-touched a left footed shot through traffic and past Courtois once more:
Even up 3-0, Arsenal kept attacking with full conviction, and though a fourth didn't come, the club showed exactly how it can beat Madrid, or at least not lose by enough to force extra time and penalties, in the second leg. It's simple, really, at least in theory: choke out Real's vaunted counter-attack, and continue to pepper Courtois's goal. Eventually, some shots might go in, especially when they are struck as well as all three Arsenal goals were, and that just might be enough.
Arsenal is strong enough defensively to do the former, as it did on Tuesday and as it will have to do next Wednesday; it's hard to see Real countering three times successfully against a team that knows it's coming, and for months now the Blancos haven't shown much aptitude for building attacks without the benefit of space to counter into. Maybe it won't go that way, and the champs will rebound from this and dominate the return leg. But even though Arsenal has injury issues up the wazoo in attack, the Gunners should have already scored enough to secure a spot in the semis. At the very worst, it would take a generational collapse for them to lose, and even though Real specializes in forcing those kinds of collapses, I'd have to bet on the side that looked completely in command for the first 90 minutes of this tie. Things get weird at the Bernabéu, but there was nothing weird about the beatdown Arsenal laid on the final boss of the Champions League.
