The fighting talk comes as standard. Arsenal are down after Tuesday night’s 1-0 home defeat against Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League semi-final first leg – but not out.
“This team … you can never give up on us,” Mikel Merino says. “Because I think we proved that we are always going to fight until the end. We have the technical quality and most important we have the motivation to go to the second leg and win this for our fans and for ourselves.”
Inevitably, the 2-1 victory over Real Madrid at the Bernabéu in the second leg of the previous round has been mentioned, even if the context was different; Arsenal were 3-0 up from the first leg. If you can win at the Bernabéu, you can win anywhere, is the gist of the message from the Arsenal dressing room. And, no matter what, this team always travel to win.
“Three-up or one-down … it changes nothing,” Merino says. “The mentality of this team is always going to win. Paris is a tough place to go but we have proved that we can compete against anybody and with all due respect to anybody, I think we are going to win the second leg.”
After Arsenal’s first-leg win over Madrid at the Emirates Stadium, there was some talk, ridiculous as it sounds – and born mainly of nerves and yearning – that 3-0 was somehow a dangerous scoreline. No such issue now; the handbrake is not an option. Arsenal can simply play in Paris. They have nothing to lose.
It is the kind of thought that percolates after a game as seismic and emotional as that on Tuesday and the hunt for positives from an Arsenal point of view is very much on before next Wednesday’s second leg.
Thomas Partey will be back from suspension, having been greatly missed, and so the midfield will be better balanced, Declan Rice freed up to play in the more driving No 8 role where he has thrived. Overall, Champions League comebacks are more frequent these days; crazy swings do happen. And nobody ought to overlook the pressure that this young PSG team are under.
What Merino wants to focus on, the most tangible source of optimism in his opinion, is that Arsenal did have some good spells on Tuesday. It is not something that most of PSG’s opponents have been able to say this season, especially since the turn of the year. And yet it is something that has happened when they have faced the very best from the Premier League.
PSG did give Manchester City, Liverpool and Aston Villa hope at various times. In the vital league phase tie against City at the Parc des Princes in January, PSG were 2-0 down after 53 minutes. That said, they roared back to win 4-2. Against Liverpool in the last 16, first leg, again at the Parc, they failed to make the most of a dominant attacking performance and were pipped at the end to lose 1-0. That said, they came back to win the Anfield return.
And nobody can forget how, from 2-0 up at Villa Park in the quarter-final, second leg for a 5-1 aggregate lead, they were so nearly unhinged. Villa scored three unanswered goals and so nearly an equaliser. PSG resembled a punch-drunk heavyweight, covering up desperately, just about dodging the knockout before regaining clarity.
Arsenal suffered for the opening 35 minutes at the Emirates, especially during the first 20. Mikel Arteta’s team did not get out of the starting blocks and conceded to Ousmane Dembélé after four minutes. The Arsenal manager later said he made a tactical tweak to combat the PSG onslaught, which involved enabling his players to show more effectively for the ball.
Arteta could say that Arsenal got on the front foot for the final 10 minutes of the first half and had a decent 15 minutes at the beginning of the second period. That was when Rice started to lengthen his stride and increase his influence. PSG sank back. Arsenal created one-on-one chances for Gabriel Martinelli and Leandro Trossard, superbly saved by Gianluigi Donnarumma.
There was also the set-piece threat, Merino almost getting one to work, heading home on 46 minutes from Rice’s free-kick only to be fractionally offside. Donnarumma, despite his 6ft 5in frame, does not inspire total confidence on crosses.
“You saw a team that can compete against a huge side like Paris,” Merino says. “I don’t know if you’ve seen them in the whole season but they are a really dominant team. They want to keep everybody [pinned] on their own box and we managed to play a lot. We created big chances.”
Everything comes with a counterpoint; the “yeah, but” argument. The way that the four-times Champions League winner Clarence Seedorf saw it, PSG chose to sit deeper in the second half, to line up the counterpunches, which they so nearly landed in the closing stages through the substitutes Bradley Barcola and Gonçalo Ramos. It was simply part of a well-calibrated game management strategy from Luis Enrique.
“PSG did what I expected Arsenal to do, knowing when to press high or go low and just sit back and wait for the opponent to force a pass, then counterattack,” Seedorf said on Amazon Prime. “This is how you have to play in the Champions League and I didn’t see that at all from Arsenal.”
PSG have the youngest team in this season’s Champions League and they must deal with spiralling levels of expectation. The club’s Qatari owners are obsessed with winning the competition; it is their 13th successive run to the knockout rounds, a fourth semi-final in six seasons. Cracks in the team’s mentality have been glimpsed, particularly the complacency they showed at Villa Park.
And yet there are good reasons why PSG have not only come to be considered the best team to watch in the tournament but the favourites. They were there for all to see at the Emirates, particularly their cohesion and composure. PSG’s attacking threat was clear, their work without the ball at a high level and there is no doubt they deserved to win. Arsenal will have to walk the walk in Paris.
