Liberation of title can help Arsenal join Europe’s greats

In a final that feels like a free hit Mikel Arteta must find balance between newfound freedom and tried-and-tested solidity against Luis Enrique’s attacking machine

The club now has an asset to placate, to hang on to, the star of his own titlewinning project

30 May 2026 - THE GUARDIAN / Sport

Barney Ronay

Welcome to Budapest: city of stew, city of pavement squares, city of men in cotton smocks offering brisk muscular relaxation in geothermally heated cubicles. Eleven days on from the profound emotional release of winning the Premier League title it seems fitting Arsenal will approach their season’s endgame in a city that is basically perfect for a restorative summer city break.

This evening at the Puskas Arena already looks like a twin-track event for Mikel Arteta’s team, an occasion that changes shape according to the angle from which you see it. On one hand, victory against Paris Saint-germain in the Champions League final would represent the greatest day in Arsenal’s history. On the other, this occasion feels strangely light, fun, celebratory, a free-hit kind of final.

And this really is something new for a team whose entire public identity in the age of Arteta has been defined by the curation of anxiety, every step or stumble pitched as a referendum on the validity of the project, on the basic character of the knitwear-clad avatar of pain striding along at the front of the parade.

When was the last time this team were able to approach a day like this without some deep clog of existential dread? How will a non-tortured, fully validated, daddy-does-actually-love-us Arsenal carry themselves? What does this team playing without fear even look like?

Even the well-meaning performative attempts to enjoy the title run-in felt painfully stiff and processed. Get on the fun boat. Bring the fire. Join us as we micromanage the liberating of our own emotions. Suddenly Darth Vader is doing stand-up. Spock wants to disco dance.

And now we have this, a chance to breathe, to take the air by the Danube, and to luxuriate in a slight but significant shift in the tone and texture of this Arsenal era.

Perhaps the travelling fans can simply enjoy looking around for omens. English teams have played four Champions League ties at the renovated Puskas Arena, winning four and not conceding a goal, although admittedly none of their opponents could field a furiously irresistible Georgian goal-werewolf.

In the real world PSG will be favourites, and with good reason. They’ve done it before. They have a clear advantage in attacking personnel, a team that approach these occasions armed to the teeth, a bayonet in each sleeve, a back-up Kalashnikov in their waistband.

But there are new variables now, fresh unknowns. Two key things have changed. The most important is Arteta himself. A few weeks ago some more deranged elements of the wider online fanbase were calling for him to be sacked. The scepticism wasn’t confined to the hysterical fringe. There have always been doubts, and a surprisingly heartfelt wider desire for Arteta to fail, to be exposed as a helmethaired fraud, an empty pair of grey slacks; annoyance at the paperclipsalesman sloganeering, the sense of being lectured by a male wellness tycoon. As recently as this season’s semi-finals the French press was making sly references to Arteta’s “overly emotional register”.

Well, not any more. Football is an outcome-based industry. Elite clubs crave success. Elite players respond to it. And Arteta is now unarguably an elite coach. Getting to a Champions League final is an act of levelling up. It makes you a Max Allegri, a Mauricio Pochettino. Winning it would be something else, a fresh name on a list that over the past 12 years reads Carlo Ancelotti, Zinedine Zidane (three times each), Luis Enrique (twice), Jürgen Klopp, Hansi Flick, Thomas Tuchel and Pep Guardiola; basically the capi dei capi.

Arsenal’s executive has never publicly wavered on Arteta. But

that gravity has shifted. The club now has an asset to placate, to hang on to, the star of his own titlewinning project, and a manager who will be of interest to Spain’s big two, to PSG themselves, to the Football Association in due course.

Another interesting note of trivia: Arteta would be the first English coach to win the European Cup since Joe Fagan in 1984. Well, he does have a British passport and lives in London. And he is also the best qualified British candidate to manage the England team. Maybe this is his destiny. Maybe the set pieces, the big lads at the back, all make sense in this light. Maybe the game isn’t actually gone, but back.

Perhaps not. But that moment of status-uplift is hugely significant. Arteta has a Scottish Premiership title as a player at Rangers and FA Cups as captain and coach of Arsenal. But winning the Premier League is by some distance the most significant moment of his 27-year professional life.

This is a football personage who has made an elite-level career out of almost but not quite reaching the summit. As a kid he made it to La Masia, but not through La Masia, blocked by an extreme wealth of talent, including, among others, Luis Enrique. He went to PSG for almost 18 months, but in a period when this meant winning the Intertoto Cup. He went to post-peak-wenger Arsenal, the years of shrinkage and falling away.

Perhaps he could find elite validation with a steamrollering Spain? But steamrollering Spain already had Xavi, Andrés Iniesta, Xabi Alonso, Cesc Fàbregas, Sergio Busquets and Arteta never won a cap. Hang on, maybe he can play for England! Except, no, Fifa says he can’t.

Arteta’s coaching career also kicked off with a spell of standing near someone else while they won things, before three successive second places at Arsenal. He may project certainty, process chat, trusting the methods. But Arteta is also human. He has spoken of doubts, of a feeling that maybe it’s just not me. Except, it is him. Arteta is the captain now. Will he look, speak, walk differently?

Ideally not. There is a theory out there Arsenal will experience The Freeing Up. The ankle weights are off. The handbrake will not just be released via the annoying electric button, but jimmied out with a screwdriver and thrown through the side window.

Is this a good idea? Does it make sense for Arsenal to abandon the disciplines that took them to this place, just as they come up against Europe’s most unforgiving attack? Live by the rigidly disciplined tactical straitjacket, die by the rigidly disciplined tactical straitjacket. You’re not going to outdance Michael Jackson. But you may beat him at a really long and painful game of Scrabble.

Arsenal are not the defensive nihilists they have often been cast as. Much of the season has been spent managing the absence of their most creative players, with a centre-forward who runs about as if he’s being chased by a sheepdog. PSG are also less freewheeling than they have been painted. Both of these teams start from a position of achieving control. They rank one and two for fewest shots conceded in Europe’s top five leagues. PSG have four attacking players of genuine high quality, but their effectiveness is built on a structure that allows them to run forwards and seek out duels. This is not a free-flowing, off-the-cuff team.

It is attacking super-strengths implanted into a system.

It seems likely the outcome will rest on how Arsenal defend and counterattack in wide areas. There is a precedent here. It is easy to forget that for 26 minutes in Paris last May, Arsenal dominated these same opponents, and in an interesting way.

Luis Enrique’s team pinned Arsenal’s full-backs in their own half in the first leg of that tie. At the Parc des Princes Myles Lewis-skelly and Jurriën Timber came inside fearlessly, flooded the midfield and enabled a hugely aggressive pressing structure. Arsenal couldn’t finish the chances they made. Fabián Ruiz scored a brilliant goal to kill the tie. But the plan worked while it worked.

Logic still suggests PSG have too much attacking power. But if Arsenal can keep it goalless for an hour the game may just start to lean towards this new-look champion team, out there just living for the moment (context: probably not just living for the moment). It will as ever come down to details. And maybe, just maybe, to that absence of fear.

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‘We have one – now we want the second one’: 

Arteta hungry for more

30 May 2026 - THE GUARDIAN/ Sport

Ed Aarons

Mikel Arteta has dismissed suggestions the pressure is off Arsenal in tonight’s Champions League final after their first Premier League title for 22 years and insists he and his players are hungry for more trophies.

Paris Saint-germain, who defeated Arsenal in the semi-finals last year before being crowned European champions for the first time, saw off Chelsea, Liverpool and Bayern Munich in the knockout stages and are strongly fancied to retain their crown. Jurriën Timber looks likely to start after Arteta confirmed the Netherlands defender had recovered from a groin injury, although he has not featured since the win over Everton on 14 March.

Arsenal have yet to win the Champions League and reached the final on one previous occasion, in 2006, when they were defeated by Barcelona. Arteta is determined Arsenal seize their opportunity on the biggest stage in club football after finally ending their long wait for the league title.

“The ambition is bigger,” the manager said. “We have one, and now we want the second one. That’s all we’ve been talking about. There has to be a platform to reach bigger destinations and to aim for more. And the team is capable, because we’ve shown it in the last two seasons, in this competition. What we’ve done this season in the competition, and I want the players to be so confident that we’re going to win.”

Arteta, asked whether he had noticed something different when he looks in the eyes of his players, said: “That they want more. Going through those moments brings you a different kind of desire. Because you lift it, you know exactly how it feels. You want to reproduce that feeling as many times as possible.

“We have the opportunity to write a new chapter in the history of this football club. And in order to do that, we have to play with such clarity, a lot of courage, and a relentless desire to win. We have those three aspects, and I’m sure we’re going to be close to winning.”

Bukayo Saka, who scored Arsenal’s goal in last season’s 3-1 aggregate defeat by PSG, revealed that Thierry Henry – part of the team that lost to Barcelona 20 years ago – had been in touch this week to offer encouragement. The England forward said it would round off a perfect season if they can beat PSG and that winning the Premier League after finishing second three years in a row had given the players plenty of confidence.

“We all know where my journey started as a seven- or eight-yearold at Hale End – it was a long, long way away from trying to win the Champions League with Arsenal,” he said. “It feels like this last week it’s all become a reality and tomorrow is another exciting opportunity to create more history and win another for the club that I love. That goes a long way and it helped us win the title and hopefully it will give us an advantage on the pitch here.”

Tonight’s game will be Arsenal’s 63rd of the season, more than any other team from the top five European leagues. It will be PSG’S 56th but Saka insisted fatigue would not play a part.

“We’ve had a week to recover and we’re ready to go again and a game like this is not going to be decided on minutes,” he said. “It will be decided on moments and which team can produce a bit of quality and be well organised.”

Luis Enrique, who has won 11 of the 12 finals he has contested as a manager, insisted PSG’S motivation to retain their title was greater than Arsenal’s quest to be European champions for the first time.

Arteta caused a stir in the week when he said: “We will be European champions on Saturday.” Luis Enrique refused to say whether that had provided his players with extra motivation but said the chance to become only the second team in the Champions League era to retain their title, after Real Madrid, and ninth in total was driving his players.

“Yes, it is powerful,” he said of Arsenal’s desire. “But do you know how powerful trying to win the second one in a row is? It’s bigger. So we’re ahead. I don’t think there’s any better motivation than winning the Champions League. We will see tomorrow who is better – we both won our respective leagues and I’m going to focus on what is positive for my team. So that we can show the best of ourselves.

“It’s a source of motivation for us. We have already gone down in the history books as one of the best teams in Europe. But that’s what we’re looking for. You never know when you’re going to be back in the Champions League final and you have to make the most of it.”

Forward Ousmane Dembélé and full-back Achraf Hakimi have both been included in PSG’S squad after recovering from injury.