Arsenal’s destiny in Group A has a distance to run from here, but even in the glow of a second half rally on a horribly still, clingy night in Paris this still felt like a very Arsenal kind of night. Arsène Wenger’s team played with heart and grew into a game they looked to be losing from the opening 42 seconds. They left the Parc des Princes with a point well earned, creditable parity, a comeback draw, and with a fine performance by Alex Iwobi in particular, who seems to like playing away from home against the giants of Europe.
And yet this was still a missed opportunity for Arsenal in the Champions League. This was Arsenal in the Champions League. This was Arsenal. Arsenal with heart and spirit. But make no mistake, PSG were here for the taking, a team clunking through a few gears of their own, lacking snap in their combinations and without the aristocratic edge of the best Zlatan‑era teams.
PSG could have scored four here. Edinson Cavani could have scored four if his finishing had been the same quality as his imperious foraging. But they look like a team in progress. At times it was tempting to conclude they might struggle to respond to the very specific demands of Unai Emery, who insists on working at high pressure all the time, but who must now manage a team for whom the pattern is two, maybe four high-pressure matches in March and a handsome stroll the rest of the year.
For all that, Arsenal were there but not quite there. Over 90 minutes they matched Paris Saint-Germain. Alexis Sánchez’s late equaliser was well earned. And still it is a familiar Arsenal refrain: what a team this could be! The team glimpsed through the bars, the team lurking behind the cranky habits and self-imposed limits that make late-Wenger Arsenal so fascinatingly themselves. Even Olivier Giroud, who did not get on to the pitch until midway through the second half, and who helped to create the platform for Sánchez’s equaliser, was sent off at the end for two inglorious yellow cards and will miss the home game against Basel, another needless little obstacle.
Wenger had picked a surprising team here. Iwobi’s first start of the season was a progressive move given his performance in Arsenal’s last away Champions League match at Barcelona. In goal David Ospina played his first game since April, a chance to erase the memory of that ball-dropping gaffe against Olympiakos a year ago. He played well here, too, making saves and rushing out off his line willingly.
The noise from the home fans comes in peculiar bursts in this ugly concrete brute of a stadium, skirling around the steeply banked sides then disappearing into an anxious lull just as quickly. The first real burst came after 42 seconds as PSG took the lead. Serge Aurier, who seems a lot happier now, bullocked away down the right, finding space too easily to cross. Cavani just had to stand near the penalty spot, unmarked, and flick his header into the corner.
As Arsenal scrabbled for parity, the surging runs of Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Sánchez foundering on PSG’s muscular blue wall, Wenger strode around the edge of his rectangle, hands on hips, head bowed, puzzled, shocked that such a thing could have happened. New combinations all over the pitch, ungrooved starting players, a centre-half signed late in the summer, a 20-year-old patrolling left midfield against the man of the match in the final of this competition not so long ago. And somehow they concede a soft goal from the kick-off.
As ever, Arsenal rallied promisingly. It is another paradox. For a team whose spirit is questioned so regularly, Arsenal do play often with real heart. Mesut Özil fought to find space between Adrien Rabiot and Grzegorz Krychowiak’s deep defensive block. The speed of Arsenal’s flanks troubled PSG’s more ponderous banks of four and three. Özil, Oxlade‑Chamberlain and Héctor Bellerín all made ground on the right and crossed towards a non-existent, striker-shaped hole, a hole filled not just with a Giroud-shaped absence, but with the ghosts of every not-quite, every rumour, every linked-with and rumoured-to-be, and failed bid.
And for a long time this looked like being a night defined by baffling choices. Where was Granit Xhaka, the bought-in muscle for just these occasions? How could a midfield pairing of Francis Coquelin and the brilliant but dinky Santi Cazorla hope to fend on its own against the great stomping power of Rabiot and Blaise Matuidi?
And yet Arsenal did rally, the skill and passing smarts of Cazorla, Özil’s gathering influence, and above all the appalling finishing of Cavani dragging them back into this game. A point here is an excellent result. Perhaps it might even signal a shift in their group stage destiny.
The real issue for Arsenal in the Champions League has been an existential one. Progress here. A late rally there. But the stasis by the end. Somehow after almost 20 years, after a process of paring away and honing down, this is still a team in transition. It could have been more, but a point in Paris is a fine result for now.
