ZAmina Mina. Waka, waka, hehe. By the end of this awful, bruising, deep-tissue experience of a football game, it felt as if the first 96 minutes had been staged as an extended tease for a surprisingly light-hearted final 30 seconds.
Up until that point, Arsenal and Chelsea were producing the footballing equivalent of removing the scales from your eyes with a wire brush. This was a dense, gruesome kind of physical ballet. Johan Cruyff once said that the clock is never your friend in football. You’re either moving too fast or too slow. The clock didn’t seem to be running or going backwards at all here. The clock hated everyone.
And then suddenly, when it started to dawn on me that this was really going to end, school was out for the summer. It was the Gloucestershire Cheese Rolling Championship. Arsenal broke, the pitch emptied and Kai Havertz was left alone to score.
Havertz tiptoed past Roberto Sanchez and rolled the ball into the net to win the second leg of the semi-final of the night 1-0, 4-2 on aggregate. Then the time for release came. Submarines in blue puffers ran towards the pitch, bodies writhing and rolling in the stands.
Arsenal’s dominance continues to grow. We’re here in the foothills, approaching the final battleground of this strange, slow-burning season. And the game is almost, if not completely, advanced. A carefully micromanaged version of afoot. Arsenal still have a final game to play in next month’s Carabao Cup. It doesn’t matter how you win. This semi-final was always just a stop-gap. Arsenal have three games in eight days, then a week off and then nine days off. All that matters now is winning.
However, their season has reached its early stages. They maintained their lead in the league. The path for the Champions League was set. Whether we like it or not, the road from here is starting to get narrower little by little. It’s time for micromanaged dreams.
The chances of winning it all remain very remote. That won’t happen. But the fact remains that Arsenal could win a quadruple title within the next four months. It is worth noting the fact that this is just a small step closer from possibility to possibility. Nowhere, in fact, should it be, nor will it be. Here’s what you need: There are 11 league championships left. Six domestic cup matches, one in the final and the other in the FA Cup, next against Wigan. The fourth round of the Champions League (OK, yes, it was very tough, but they made it to the top of the mega table).
What does that mean? Win 23 times between now and June to earn 4x. Hyper pressure game. Finals. A small margin. That won’t happen. That will never happen. However, it’s a very comfortable space.
It’s just a reward for not falling. Above all, this point expresses itself with a strange and painful sense of danger, because so far nothing has been won. This is all a ploy, a performance scare and a referendum on Artetaism. Are we witnessing an ultimate situation that is not nearly perfect? Or will an entire era be harvested in the coming months? Is this actually happening? Is it true?
Such subtext was very welcome on a dreadful night in north London, drenched in rain that fell sideways, upwards and diagonally, and fanned by a malicious wind, the only thing to worry about was that the corners of your trousers were riding up.
Emirates Stadium was still a cauldron of smoke, lights and semi-final glamor at kick-off. At that point, not much happened for a really long time. Energy was consumed. But it felt like a sham, a confinement, a series of patterns being played out.
Actually, one thing happened. Chelsea interfered with Arsenal’s corner kick and two attacking players ran up the field where the kick was about to be taken. It was an interesting move. It disrupted Arsenal’s plans. Chelsea fans have a hard time understanding Liam Rosenior right away, but he seems smart and likable.
Otherwise, Arsenal wouldn’t be able to play like trophy hunters, merchants of fortune and a team on the verge of greatness. But no one really does much in the process of these things. When you win, everything becomes an afterthought.
It was interesting to see Declan Rice do well in a new deep role. Before him, Arsenal had three creative players, plus Victor Gokeres, who basically played corned beef while playing awkward football. Eberechi Eze was tenacious but also restrained as a number 10. He sometimes looks like someone playing soccer following a set of instructions written in 17 languages. Are they giving him some grease?
According to the statistics, after one hour, both teams had only one shot on target, giving the impression that they were at ease. Then came the delirium of the last seconds and the rush of all the swirling possibilities.
