Despite a comfortable 3-0 home victory in the first leg of its Champions League quarterfinal against Real Madrid, Arsenal must have still felt in danger on Wednesday. Call it the Real Madrid Effect, or call it the Arsenal Had Only Been To Two Champions League Semifinals Ever Conundrum, but nothing felt safe as the Gunners tried to build on their monumental win last week in hopes of advancing. They needn't have worried, though. Despite a couple of ominous mistakes, Arsenal continued to prove that it was just the better team in this match-up, and one that can not only make a semifinal but actually win the whole tournament. The Gunners left the Estadio Santiago Bernabeu with a 2-1 victory, and a 5-1 aggregate romp, that felt as fair as any Real Madrid loss can.
While the first leg was a display of shot-making quality, the return match was instead won on the other side of the field, as Arsenal's defense conceded the ball to Madrid—thereby nullifying one of the defending champion's best strengths, its lethal counter-attacks—and instead held fast and strong for almost the entirety of 90 minutes, conceding a goal but never truly feeling threatened and, perhaps almost as importantly, never trailing even on just the day.
It wasn't unblemished, not entirely, and there was an early mistake in attack that on another day against another Real Madrid side could have been back-breaking. In the 10th minute, VAR awarded Arsenal a penalty for a Raúl Asencio foul in the box on a corner kick. Up stepped Bukayo Saka to the spot, but Arsenal's best player got a bit too cheeky, attempting to finesse a shot past Thibaut Courtois, with demoralizing consequences:
Typically, when Real Madrid does its bit of dark magic and pulls Champions League wins out of its collective ass, it does so with help from opponents, who beat themselves almost as much as Real does. A missed penalty, one that could have taken almost all of the pressure off of Arsenal's shoulders, felt like history repeating. Again, though, this was not that type of match; a few minutes after Saka's miss, Madrid was awarded a penalty that was then overturned by VAR. Elsewhere, Madrid didn't have enough firepower from a standing start to truly challenge David Raya's goal, and when the hosts did get something going, one of Arsenal's defenders, or Declan Rice, would get stuck in with a tackle or a key interception.
An hour ticked on by with much of the same story playing out, and Arsenal seemed content to let a surprisingly calm Madrid attack simply bounce off of its North London wall. That lack of urgency bit Madrid in the ass in the 65th minute: Off a long goal kick, Mikel Merino won a header—turns out playing a defensive midfielder at striker when out of other options due to injury can work—and the ensuing passing move saw Merino get the ball back and hit a defense-splitting pass to Saka, who made no mistake with his finesse this time, chipping Courtois to make 4-0 Arsenal on aggregate:
I did mention Arsenal had a couple of costly mistakes, and the biggest came two minutes after Saka's goal: William Saliba, strong otherwise on Wednesday, tried to control and dribble the ball at the edge of his box, and an alert Vinicius pounced, stealing the ball and scoring into an open net; Raya was nowhere nearby, though that was not exactly his fault.
Again, this felt like the moment, The Moment, when Real Madrid turns on the jets and steamrolls a shell-shocked opponent, but Saliba and Arsenal just dusted themselves off and got back to suffocating their opponents at every turn. It's not quite correct to call this a boring match, but it was a placid one, even after two goals in two minutes.
Part of that is because Real Madrid could simply not hit the frame of the goal. Despite peppering in 18 total shots, only three of them went on target, and even if all of those three had gone in the goal, it wouldn't have been enough. I don't want to pick on any particular Madrid player, but Endrick's 91st minute miss was a perfect example of the attacking futility on display: It wasn't an easy shot, but after Vinicius hit a cross into the box that found his fellow Brazilian, the 18-year-old could only control the pass and then shoot wide while half-turning, sending the ball harmlessly into the crowd.
It was Arsenal, instead, who hit a deadly counter-attack, one last bit of excellence to round off a perfect quarterfinal. In the 92nd minute, with Real Madrid finally sending everyone it could forward, Merino picked up the ball in his own half and dribbled up quite some distance before spotting a pitch-perfect diagonal run from Gabriel Martinelli. Merino hit the ball with considered weight away from a chasing Fran García, and Martinelli turned on the afterburners to beat his defender and then slot a finish as sweet as apple juice into the bottom right corner, sending Arsenal into the semifinals with aplomb:
Despite trailing Liverpool by 13 points with just six Premier League matches left, and despite having to deploy the Merino-at-striker gambit, Arsenal showed that it is one of the very best teams in Europe this season, and really, one of the best of the last few years. There's no respite coming—despite a nervy second leg, Paris Saint-Germain awaits in the semis in a match-up of sides looking for a first Champions League trophy, while previous winners Barcelona and Inter will face off in the other semifinal—but no one else can say that they beat Real Madrid quite as handily as the Gunners just did. Will that be enough confidence to paper over some personnel-related cracks en route to a historic trophy? Thanks to a near-flawless performance, Arsenal has the privilege not afforded to many teams who have come up against the Real Madrid buzzsaw in the Champions League: It gets to find out just how far it can go.
