Gavin Cooney

AND SO WE finally learn the limit of Real Madrid’s Champions League sorcery: Arsenal were the miracle too far. 

Beaten 3-0 in the first leg, Madrid and their towering media complex tried to talk themselves into another comeback ahead of this return game at the Bernabeu, and it was an interesting case study. 

Could a team merely talk themselves into victory? Could Arsenal be beaten into submission by aura alone? 

One Spanish journalist forewent a question to merely warn Mikel Arteta to be ready. Madrid spokesperson Jude Bellingham said there was one word banded about the dressing room all week, Remontada. 

The word that should have been on everyone’s lips is an older favourite: Galactico. 

Having stumbled miraculously through a decade worth of European Cups, Madrid have finally tripped themselves up by falling back into old habits, as the surgical squad building of their middle management was detonated by Florentino Perez’ recidivist obsession with a glittering star. 

Kylian Mbappe is one of the best footballers of his generation and will end his debut season in Spain with an impressive scoring record but Madrid are out of the Champions League because of the extent to which he has imbalanced the team.

Madrid were fortunate to escape the first leg with only a three-goal deficit, because now they are carrying too many passengers without the ball. Mbappe and Vinicius have always been exquisitely disinterested in defending, and while a team can carry one of them at the highest level, they can’t carry both. 

Tonight Mbappe could find no space between Arsenal’s suffocating defensive block, continuing to look uncomfortable at playing through the centre. Vinicius has retained the left-wing spot, but he did nothing across the two legs aside from his theft on William Saliba to score immediately after Arsenal’s goal.

Mbappe’s position in the team has also forced Jude Bellingham to operate wider and further for goal, blunting his influence. Bellingham charged about tonight like a superhero looking for his cape, growing increasingly petulant and frustrated: he was fortunate to escape with nothing more than a rebuke from the referee when he grabbed Jurrien Timber around the neck and flung him out of the way. 

The remontada Madrid truly needed was Toni Kroos. Without him tonight, Madrid were clueless and tootheless, raking long, aimless balls forward for Mbappe and Bellingham as if they still had Joselu bustling about the box. 

It was a risible sight, that the whirlwind the Madrid players and media promised were a series of aimless lofts that made Rory McIlroy’s Sunday wedge into Augusta’s creek look like the stuff of fierce precision. 

Madrid ended the first half without a single shot on target, and their only reliable source of unpredictability and volatility was the referee, who decided to award a penalty for an invisible foul by Rice on Mbappe. The VAR eventually intervened to tell him he’d made an error. 

Madrid’s bloodlessness was evident in the fact that Arsenal started by doing all the wrong things: they came to Madrid and practically goaded on the dark magic. Saka missed a penalty; Saliba committed a black swan error by being robbed in possession by Vinicius. 

But ultimately there were untroubled, as tonight Madrid were praying to remote Gods. They have looked over these two legs like the best of the side from last season: maddeningly difficult to break down while being able to rely on the Saka’s joyous incision. 

Saka deserved to score, and so he did so just after the hour mark to settle the tie. If Saka was the classiest player on the pitch, then Declan Rice was the best. These were the statement games of his career: having won the first leg, he protected the second leg, twice galloping back to snuff out rare moments of Madrid danger, first dispossessing Bellingham in the box and then brilliantly intercepting a through-ball for Vinicius on the counter-attack. 

He would later tangle with Bellingham, who left a leg trailing on his thigh. It was galling for Bellingham to be so comprehensively outshone on the grandest stage by the guy who does his water-carrying for England. But then again, Mbappe’s arrival is forcing Bellingham to accept a diminished status in Madrid, too, to the team’s detriment. 

Gabriel Martinelli raced away in added time to give Arsenal a deserved win on the night, by which time Mbappe was watching on from the bench, limping off after rolling his ankle in a challenge with the omnipotent Rice. 

Madrid managers rarely survive humblings like this, even Carlo Ancelotti. The real issue is not their coach, however, but the man who will hire him.

Madrid have lapsed back into their old star-gazing habits. 

Arsenal were the better-coached and better-balanced collective at every moment over the two legs, and so logic has finally returned to the Champions League.