For the first time since 1996 we are about to witness the quarter finals of the Champions League competition devoid of any English representation.
Over and out: Dejected Arsenal players leave the field after losing to Bayern Munich on away goals
After Wednesday night, it appears the only thing the nation that invented the
game will provide for the final at Wembley, the supposed home of football,
is the catering staff. And the blokes manning the car parks.
Yet, even as former dominance fades, we can take comfort that there is one
thing of which English football retains its mastery: the glorious failure.
And how glorious Arsenal’s
failure was here.
This is the Allianz Arena after all, home to a Bayern Munich side that are currently perched twenty points clear at the top of the Bundesliga, a club with legitimate claim to be the favourite to lift the trophy in May. Everything in the preamble to this game suggested Arsenal were already beaten. Their manager even admitted as much, hinting that qualifying for next season’s tournament was more of a priority than trying to stay in it this year.
This is the Allianz Arena after all, home to a Bayern Munich side that are currently perched twenty points clear at the top of the Bundesliga, a club with legitimate claim to be the favourite to lift the trophy in May. Everything in the preamble to this game suggested Arsenal were already beaten. Their manager even admitted as much, hinting that qualifying for next season’s tournament was more of a priority than trying to stay in it this year.
But from the moment in the third minute that Theo Walcott swished through the
Bayern backline and set up Olivier Giroud to hammer the ball into the roof
of the home net, hope suddenly overwhelmed expectation.
And when Laurent Koscielny headed a second with three minutes to go, it sent
the visiting fans, stationed up in the top deck of this magnificent stadium,
into raptures. They had turned up assuming the best thing they could expect
was the avoidance of embarrassment and suddenly there was the tempting
possibility that it might just go their way after all.
If Arsenal were going to go down, it was fighting. On a night cold enough to
freeze the handles off a brass trophy, a night you might forgive him for
stepping out trussed up in his sleeping bag coat, Arsène Wenger strode
around his technical area in a jacket and tie.
And as Santi Cazorla started buzzing, as Tomas Rosicky started carrying the
ball forward at every opportunity, as Carl Jenkinson stoked up the
afterburners first to dispossess the electric-heeled Arjen Robben, suddenly
memories of another improbable victory by an English side in this city began
to stir. No, it couldn’t happen. Could it? Not 5-1 all over again?
For while it seemed they really did have a chance. They defended brilliantly, throwing bodies into the way as the Germans piled on the pressure in the second half. In many ways it was the perfect away performance at the trickiest of all away venues, a demonstration of what had been learned through the accumulated wisdom of all those successive seasons in this competition.
The problem Arsenal could not overcome, however, was the first home leg, that wretched night when they had been run off the Emirates pitch by this beautifully calibrated German machine. When it came to papal-style indicators of their immediate prospects, Arsenal’s future in this competition had gone up in smoke the moment Mario Mandzukic scored Bayern’s third in London.
“I have many regrets of our first game,” said Wenger. “To qualify is 180 minutes, it is similar to last year in Milan. It was not tonight’s game. It was the first game at the Emirates. The weight of that third goal we gave away with four minutes to go was massive.”
But failure to concentrate across two legs was only part of the reason English clubs have been summarily removed from the competition they so recently dominated. In 2008 and 2009 all four Premier League sides made the quarters; in 2008, three of them progressed to the semis.
Four years on, like a bunch of unpopular Big Brother contestants, all England's representatives have been evicted just as the tournament has turned interesting.
Maybe it is just happenstance. That was what Bayern’s Jupp Heynkes suggested, that if he luck had been theirs, England could have had two clubs in the mix on Friday. Maybe if Manchester United had not been distracted by a shoddy piece of refereeing they would be looking forward to the draw in Zurich relishing the possibility of Barcelona or Bayern heading to Manchester.
And, in truth, to a degree it is a matter of cycles. Arsenal are clearly not the team they were when they reached the final in 2006, nor United the side they were when they won the trophy in Moscow in 2008. Chelsea’s decline has been even more rapid. But then, their victory last May in this very stadium was the unexpected final hurrah of a golden generation, a group of individuals any club would struggle to replace.
Meanwhile, Manchester City, who, by dint of their financial backing should be stepping into the European breach vacated by their fading Premier League peers, have been dogged by treacherously tough draws.
The trouble is, at the same time as English sides have been bemoaning their ill luck, so the Spanish and German giants have not required recourse to fortune: they have simply won.
What’s more, the big money at Paris St Germain and Galatasaray is beginning to make its presence felt. In its latter stages this is becoming an ever tougher competition, one in danger of leaving the English behind.
So it was last night, even as Arsenal fought manfully against the dying of the light, that the Premier League found itself with nobody to left to cheer for. Not that England is now entirely devoid of representation. The arch patriot David Beckham is still flying the flag for his country as he turns out for PSG. And who would put it past the master of upstaging being there at Wembley come May?
For while it seemed they really did have a chance. They defended brilliantly, throwing bodies into the way as the Germans piled on the pressure in the second half. In many ways it was the perfect away performance at the trickiest of all away venues, a demonstration of what had been learned through the accumulated wisdom of all those successive seasons in this competition.
The problem Arsenal could not overcome, however, was the first home leg, that wretched night when they had been run off the Emirates pitch by this beautifully calibrated German machine. When it came to papal-style indicators of their immediate prospects, Arsenal’s future in this competition had gone up in smoke the moment Mario Mandzukic scored Bayern’s third in London.
“I have many regrets of our first game,” said Wenger. “To qualify is 180 minutes, it is similar to last year in Milan. It was not tonight’s game. It was the first game at the Emirates. The weight of that third goal we gave away with four minutes to go was massive.”
But failure to concentrate across two legs was only part of the reason English clubs have been summarily removed from the competition they so recently dominated. In 2008 and 2009 all four Premier League sides made the quarters; in 2008, three of them progressed to the semis.
Four years on, like a bunch of unpopular Big Brother contestants, all England's representatives have been evicted just as the tournament has turned interesting.
Maybe it is just happenstance. That was what Bayern’s Jupp Heynkes suggested, that if he luck had been theirs, England could have had two clubs in the mix on Friday. Maybe if Manchester United had not been distracted by a shoddy piece of refereeing they would be looking forward to the draw in Zurich relishing the possibility of Barcelona or Bayern heading to Manchester.
And, in truth, to a degree it is a matter of cycles. Arsenal are clearly not the team they were when they reached the final in 2006, nor United the side they were when they won the trophy in Moscow in 2008. Chelsea’s decline has been even more rapid. But then, their victory last May in this very stadium was the unexpected final hurrah of a golden generation, a group of individuals any club would struggle to replace.
Meanwhile, Manchester City, who, by dint of their financial backing should be stepping into the European breach vacated by their fading Premier League peers, have been dogged by treacherously tough draws.
The trouble is, at the same time as English sides have been bemoaning their ill luck, so the Spanish and German giants have not required recourse to fortune: they have simply won.
What’s more, the big money at Paris St Germain and Galatasaray is beginning to make its presence felt. In its latter stages this is becoming an ever tougher competition, one in danger of leaving the English behind.
So it was last night, even as Arsenal fought manfully against the dying of the light, that the Premier League found itself with nobody to left to cheer for. Not that England is now entirely devoid of representation. The arch patriot David Beckham is still flying the flag for his country as he turns out for PSG. And who would put it past the master of upstaging being there at Wembley come May?
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