Arsenal and the European Problem

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Champions League: Bayern Munich 3:1 Arsenal

Sean O'Conor reports on a humbling night for Arsenal in Munich

Arsene Wenger looked ashen-faced after the match. Arsenal had just been outplayed 3-1 in the first leg of their Champions League second round tie and knew it.

Their conquerors Bayern Munich, traditionally strong at the Olympiastadion, were not considered to be one of the hot favourites in an exceptional knock-out stage line-up that featured Real Madrid, Barcelona, Manchester United, Chelsea, Milan and Juventus.

Wenger was more used to adopting a relaxed and modestly complacent air for the post-match interview, after Arsenal had demolished another hapless Premiership victim and won another three points.

How a season can unfold: Cast your minds back to the start of this campaign and the Gunners looked unbeatable, steamrollering all league opposition as they sailed past Nottingham Forest's 42-game unbeaten run with consummate ease.

Football analysts up and down the land scratched their heads to work out what it was about the Gunners' style that made them seem so unplayable and many voices were saying Arsenal would walk the Champions League this season given their supernatural football in the league.

No-one is saying that anymore.

We hear the same false claims at the end and beginning of every domestic season, about how Manchester United or Arsenal alternately have raised football to a new level and will now ride off into the sunshine and conquer Europe.

This is specious hot air. No matter how good a team looks in a domestic league, European football is a different kettle of fish. And there is precious little a manager can learn about the styles of play found in the Champions League from hammering lower-placed teams at home in England. Arsenal's defeat at the Olympiastadion did not resemble a Premiership game in any way.

The home side were wisely playing very deep in order to prevent Arsenal launching any of their rapier counter-attacks from which so many of their goals this season have come.

Bayern were also employing an Italian-style pressing game unknown in England that excised Arsenal's star players like Thierry Henry from the proceedings. The Frenchman looked shell-shocked throughout the match at not being afforded the time and space he revels in week in week out in the Premiership.

Freddie Ljungberg, another ace in Arsenal's pack, was nullified by being hustled off the ball or away from the Bayern goal every time he tried to create anything. Whenever an Arsenal attacker shaped to advance there was a natural chemical reaction of two or three Bayern players attacking the ball.

It is hard to recall the English champions having a shot on goal before their scrambled consolation at the end, thanks to a rebound off the post.

Questions must be asked of Wenger. The Frenchman's purchasing of defenders who appear less than stellar is a topic that has been raised before. But the fireworks created by an attack boasting Henry, Ljungberg, Dennis Bergkamp, Patrick Vieira and Robert Pires, players of unquestionable quality, usually drown these murmurs.

Yet at this level a strong back-line is crucial and Wenger must be held responsible for a list of buys including Igor Stepanovs, Gilles Grimandi, Pascal Cygan and Kolo Touré, who was at fault for two of Bayern's goals last night.

The loss of Bergkamp, whose fear of flying prevents him playing away in Europe, is also crucial as Arsenal noticeably lack an edge without his footballing brain, inch-perfect passing and laser-guided shooting.

We in England are guilty of football-myopia and every season we never to seem to learn from another European failure. Just like our national team has a woefully mediocre international record yet we expect to win every tournament, there was no sound logic behind claims Arsenal would win this season's Champions League.

In the six European campaigns under Wenger, the best the North Londoners have achieved is two quarter-final exits so why the perennial expectation?

This whole argument reminds me uncannily of the enigma of John Barnes. The Jamaican-born winger was devastating in the then First Division for Liverpool around 1988-89, charging down the wing each week past hapless defenders before planting effortless crosses in the paths of strikers John Aldridge and Peter Beardsley.

Liverpool and Barnes seemed unbeatable. Because of the Heysel ban we could not see the Reds in Europe but we could watch Barnes tackle foreign opposition for the national team. Yet whenever he donned the white of the England shirt, the country's outstanding domestic player was usuallyanonymous.

Up and down the land fans and media men alike pondered and brooded and wondered why, ignoring the one salient fact staring them in the face: international football is not domestic football.

Reading the newspapers you would think Arsenal struggling in Europe is some sort of jinx or perpetual conundrum but it is nothing of the sort: the level of competition is higher and the Gunners do not meet opponents of that calibre in the Premiership, apart from Chelsea, who of course knocked them out of last season's Champions League and Manchester United, who ended their record-breaking run this season.

Of course Arsenal still have the second leg to turn it all around and as an Englishman I sincerely hope they do. Despite the fact Wenger fielded eleven non-Englishmen last night, the first time that has happened in Europe since Chelsea under Gianluca Vialli did it five years ago, Arsenal are still ‘one of us' but regrettably, that in itself entails a short-sighted attitude to world soccer.

Sean O'Conor

Match Facts

Champions League 2004-5; Second Stage First Round, First Leg
Tuesday, 22 February, 2005, Olympiastadion, Munich

Bayern Munich 3:1 Arsenal

Scorers: Pizarro 3, 58, Salihamidzic 65; Toure 88

Yellow cards: Demichelis, Kovac; Vieira, Lauren

Attendance: 59,000.
Referee: Kim Milton Nielsen (Denmark).

Bayern Munich: Kahn, Sagnol, Kovac, Lucio, Lizarazu, Demichelis, Salihamidzic (Hargreaves 74), Frings, Ze Roberto (Scholl 57), Makaay, Pizarro (Guerrero 68). Subs Not Used: Jeremies, Linke, Rensing, Schweinsteiger.

Arsenal: Lehmann, Lauren, Toure, Cygan, Clichy (Cole 83), Ljungberg (Van Persie 76), Vieira, Edu (Flamini 36), Pires, Reyes, Henry. Subs Not Used: Almunia, Fabregas, Larsson, Senderos.

Related Links

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Achat Hotel
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