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Hello! Arsenal riding roughshod over the Champions League holders? Believe what you’re seeing.
— Arsenal (@Arsenal) April 8, 2025
Coming up:
🎯 Pinpoint Rice downs Madrid
⬆️ Tom Brady tastes promotion
💰 City eye Wirtz, Gibbs-White
🍻 Southend United party boat
Rice Twice, Baby: Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal come of age in 3-0 win against Real Madrid
There was something slightly sad about Mikel Arteta, pre-Christmas, defending his reign as Arsenal manager by pointing out that his honours list included two Community Shields.
Despite an FA Cup win, his record lacks another stellar trophy — something the Community Shield, the slow-paced prelude to each English season, is not — and after nearly six years, that’s a problem. But having tried and failed ad infinitum with the Premier League title, the Champions League is opening up in front of him.
Smacking Real Madrid out the park last night, 3-0 at the Emirates, was Arteta’s finest night. It’s definitely Declan Rice’s. His world-class free kicks — two of them, in full view of set-piece beast Roberto Carlos — means it’s almost job done before Arsenal even set foot in the Bernabeu for the second leg of this quarter-final. We’re all a bit speechless.
Two things to reference here. One is that Rice is an excellent striker of a dead ball. He talked in this interview last year about Arteta assigning him that duty. The other is that our tactics writers predicted Arsenal would hurt Madrid with set pieces — and they might not have been thinking direct free kicks specifically but Rice’s refined technique still did the damage.
Twice, Carlo Ancelotti’s wall failed him. First, in the 58th minute, when Rice curled a beauty around the outside of it, ignoring instructions from the technical area to cross…
… and again on 70 minutes, as Arsenal cleverly used a wall within Madrid’s wall to create room for Rice to pick out the top corner.
Some of Madrid’s players, including Kylian Mbappe and Jude Bellingham, were pictures of resigned admiration. In the words of Bellingham: “We were lucky to get away with three.”
Ancelotti facing the music at Madrid
After a trying year, Arteta suddenly has his eye on European club football’s biggest prize. Ancelotti, in contrast, will get slaughtered and he’ll realise that Madrid are highly unlikely to turn it around.
Rumours of Ancelotti’s summer departure from Madrid have been swirling for a while. Yesterday’s defeat will encourage the stars to align. Brazil’s national team want him. Bayer Leverkusen boss Xabi Alonso remains in Madrid’s sights. La Liga is threatening to slip away from Madrid, too, and whatever Mbappe has achieved since signing from Paris Saint-Germain, he hasn’t made them better. Sorry to say, a reckoning was coming.
Carlo Ancelotti is under pressure at Real Madrid (Molly Darlington/Getty Images)
But don’t sleep on Inter
Before we move on, a mention of Inter (who I’ve been banging the drum about constantly). They rarely lose. When they do, they usually take teams to the last kick. They’re brilliantly regimented and supremely reliable.
They won 2-1 at Bayern Munich last night — the first goal, below, from Lautaro Martinez was dreamy — and if we’re getting serious about Arsenal, shouldn’t we do likewise with Inter? The last Italian side to win the Champions League was them, 15 years ago. They’ve got it in them to break the spell.
Emery-demption? Aston Villa manager returns to scene of PSG implosion
Unai Emery and Marco Asensio during Aston Villa’s Champions League round-of-16 first leg against Club Brugge in March (Crystal Pix/MB Media/Getty Images)
They speak of Unai Emery as a Europa League specialist. The cap fits: he won it three times with Sevilla and once at Villarreal, flourishing like no other manager in the competition’s history.
But ‘Europa League specialist’ is faint praise because the tournament is the second rung on UEFA’s ladder. Champions League trophies are what coaches — including Ancelotti, whose hopes of a sixth are fading — desire and Emery scores poorly on that front.
Arsenal didn’t qualify during his short time at the Emirates and at PSG, where he takes Aston Villa tonight, they still twitch at the thought of the 2017 abomination in which Barcelona overturned a 4-0 first-leg deficit with a 6-1 extravaganza. Rarely does an elite team melt so spinelessly.
Tonight, then, could be his redemption: Villa causing the upset of the knockouts by surging into the semi-finals at the expense of his old club and the best-looking team in the last eight (our latest podcast is bowing down at Luis Enrique’s feet).
It doesn’t half help that Champions League rules allow Emery to play ace card and on-loan PSG midfielder Marco Asensio and, internally, he must be itching to break his reputational ceiling. Some would say it’s time.
📺 Champions League quarter-finals first leg — Barcelona vs Borussia Dortmund; Paris Saint-Germain vs Aston Villa, both 3pm ET/8pm UK time and Paramount+/TNT Sports.
News Round-Up 🗞️
- Leverkusen’s Florian Wirtz and Nottingham Forest’s Morgan Gibbs-White are two midfielders on Manchester City’s radar as they hunt for Kevin De Bruyne’s replacement. David Ornstein has the latest.
- A 20-year-old man is facing a charge of assault after allegedly slapping City’s Jack Grealish after Sunday’s Manchester derby. Alfie Holt will appear in court in July.
- Referees at the Club World Cup will wear body cameras as part of a FIFA trial. New rules aimed at preventing goalkeepers from time-wasting are also being implemented.
- On the topic of rules, the Brazilian Football Confederation has decided to impose yellow cards on any player who stands on the ball — a trick Memphis Depay used to kill a few seconds in a Brazilian cup game for Corinthians last month (below). Depay thinks it’s a bit draconian (he’s right).
Bom dia 🇧🇷💫 pic.twitter.com/Ok81ZAubTn
— Memphis Depay (@Memphis) April 6, 2025
Brady’s Championship Game 🏆: Birmingham promoted — will Wrexham follow?
A penny for Tom Brady’s thoughts as his first dabble with football-club ownership brought relegation from the Championship last May. Granted, Brady is not the money behind Birmingham City but he’s a minor shareholder and a man who’s not used to losing.
Had Mr Super Bowl checked out in haste, you’d have understood why but despite initial impressions, the model of Birmingham he chose to partner with was built to last. Their American owners have cash and, last night, the club chalked up a promotion from League One that has been in the post from the season’s opening weekend. All in all, the third tier has been a doddle.
They go up with a squad that should cope in the Championship, one step below the Premier League. They’ll spend again over the summer, too.
Wrexham, another American-owned odyssey, are odds-on to follow them. Judging by Wrexham’s 2023-24 turnover — £26.7million ($34.1m), which just shouldn’t be possible in League One — they’d have muscle to flex too. Don’t bet on this big step forward being either club’s last.
And Finally… 🛥️
It’s an easy mistake to make. You’re an American tourist in London, all set for a trip on the River Thames… when by accident, you step onto a party boat hired by a bunch of Southend United fans.
Those supporters were en route to a fifth-tier National League fixture (a big one — Southend have a shot at getting promoted back to the Football League) when Evan Johnston, a 21-year-old student from Arizona, mistook their boat for a cruise by a London landmarks tour company.
Not only did he shrug his shoulders and embrace the chaos (“they were making chants I didn’t understand,” is a truly great line), but he also carried on all the way to the match at Sutton United, which Southend drew 1-1. He says he’s now a fan for life — and the club will give him a tour of their Roots Hall stadium this weekend. Unless he tips up at the wrong ground.
(Top photo: Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)
