If you were choosing a team to whisper something magical on a night of the Champions League, you would decide in the colors of Real Madrid. Something happens to the other team when they move to Santiago Bernabéu on a great European night. Carlo Ancelotti expressed it better amid the recriminations after the game on Tuesday.
“In football, anything can happen. Many times, something happens in Bernabéu,” he said.
Immaculate vibes and a rich story, they are good things to have on the greatest occasions. However, they are not a patch is a team that can cancel a three -goal deficit for the best defense in Europe.
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Starting with the most obvious part of the task, did this really seem a team capable of scoring three times at Emirates Stadium? Nine shots for the middle of an expected objective (XG) would suggest otherwise. Jakub Kiwior and Bukayo Saka’s mistakes gave him moments that threaten visitors from the beginning. A moment of exceptional quality on the left by Jude Bellingham gave Kylian Mbappe his best opportunity of the night, bent too close to David Raya. Once the Arsenal cut the carelessness of the first half hour, Madrid found himself driving to a brick wall in the form of William Saliba.
His teammates were equally robust. The starting point for Arsenal’s defensive excellence is quite simple: excellent defenders. Jurrien Timber proved to be one by one with Vinicius Junior and what Myles Lewis-Skelly lacks experience, compensates him with a supernatural anticipation about where a game could go. Rodrygo did not receive a quarter of them.
Among the young left and Saliba was Jakub Kiwior, who promised to be the obvious weak link for Gabriel. Instead, he proved to be what has always been, a real talent defender who will need repetitions to look better. “After the game I felt really good,” said Poland’s international. “You know that after a game like that, there is no other way, you feel really good, but I still feel that it is not over yet. The most difficult is still ahead. I still have a great head.”
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His feelings will be shared by the rest of the Arsenal side on Wednesday night. Marked by the “years of jokes” and reflecting the manager who joined as a player with the mission of finishing those days, this is an outfit without regrets. They do not shrug the granting of the objectives and will make it implacably difficult for Madrid to get shots. When they do not have the ball, their shape is perfect, which leads Sander Berge de Fulham to notice earlier this month that it was “as if someone was sitting in row 50 that controls them remotely.”
However, most of the time, it is possession that is its most effective defensive weapon. They attack only when their rest defense is established. A team in the Premier League has renounced less counterattack shots than those of Mikel Arteta. That is even more impressive given the extent to which they pushing high bodies when they are building attacks.
You have to return to December 2023 and a 4-3 victory against Luton for the last time that the Gunners granted three goals. He has come to two years since they were defeated by the margin of three goals that Arsenal needs to take this draw with extra time.
Brentford could have escaped with a draw on Saturday, but after having seen his team three shots and 0.24 xg that his manager can attest how hard it is an arsenal of nuts. “One thing, looking from the outside, Arsenal works hard,” said Thomas Frank. “They are very good to the defensive, they are very good in defensive pieces. So, I think they will be fine.”
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To what the answer could be, well, it is one thing to keep Fulham and Brentford to a goal, but Madrid is a step forward in the second and third best team in London. It is true, although that was not immediately apparent in the first leg. Without a doubt, there will be now work to do. Less from Bellingham will revolve around Martin Odegaard and Bukayo Saka, more approaching Mbappe and Vinicius Junior. The same will be true for Rodrygo, who spent an hour in the Emirates protecting Federico Valverde. This will have to be a total attack from minute one.
Given the talent, I might believe that it would be a way to obtain the more than three objectives required. What happens, however, when Arsenal is going through a press that has tended to the deceased in the rare occasions in which it really unfolds? Oppositions tend not to allow Declan Rice to be the opportunity to obtain the transition. The reason why it was evident on Saturday.
Then there is the perspective that Saka and Odegaard obtain open space to attack or vinicius that do not track and leave David praise is isolated against one of the games of two most devastating men in sport. Gabriel Martinelli on the other flank is another that rarely runs in the open field precisely because it looks very dangerous when it does.
Playing his normal game, Madrid has a clean sheet in his name in his last 10 games, which occur when his 10 men discarded by Alaves over the weekend. The opponents have had more than 10 shots in 15 of their last 17 games. In the course of the season, the Ancelotti team has allowed an objective expected by game in all competitions, and at the highest level of the Champions League, that number is up to 1.4 xg with its only clean sheet against one side of Brest with little to play. Atrolled by injuries, his defense is there to be obtained.
He could have taken two bright rice kicks to balance the path of Arsenal, but from the open game, more opportunities came to the manner of the hosts than their opposition, a half -adjusted saka found that everything is too easy to explode towards the Byline line and reduce from there. That was against a Madrid team that seemed to have the intention of keeping it tight with the eye of winning the draw at the Bernabéu next week.
That failed in a fairly spectacular extension. No one associated with Arsenal would allow to believe that their task is done as they are directed to the Spanish capital, but if their opponent does not align in the target of the 15 times European champions, would anyone be giving them a prayer? On the basis of its performance of the first leg, the Aura Madrid could be the most powerful weapon available for Ancelotti. It will not be enough.
