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While the match itself may not have been up to much, the spectacle and occasion of Arsenal’s win over Atlético Madrid on Tuesday night made it a unique and memorable evening in the club’s history. Pre-match smoke and pyro provided the soundtrack to the raucous welcome their players received as they arrived on the team coach. The rabble-rousing Over Land and Sea tifo couldn’t have looked less like its dismal, forlorn-cannon-on-a-bedsheet counterpart of yore. The unifying roar that greeted Arsenal’s gladiators as they strode out from the bowels of the colosseum they call home was off the scale. It was as if a sizeable proportion of match-going Arsenal fans had finally twigged there’s more to supporting your team than turning up five minutes before kick-off and sitting in nervous near-silence for 90 minutes. “We felt it,” cooed Bukayo Saka, in a post-match interview with the CBS Bigger Cup B@nter Show. “Since we were on the coach, I’ve never seen the Emirates like this in my whole career. It was so special. When the game started, they pushed us. It was just a beautiful moment.”
Atlético, meanwhile, reverted to their factory setting of five-at-the-back, belt-and-braces caution, hoping to catch their hosts on the break. As an attacking force they offered little or nothing. Not long after the hour mark, their four most potent threats had been withdrawn and replaced by – among others – a Norwegian targetman who could scarcely have received worse service if he’d been staying in a one-star hotel where all the staff were on strike. It made for an uncharacteristically comfortable final 25 minutes for Arsenal, whose post-match celebrations were so exuberant that chief superintendent Wayne Rooney felt compelled to make a statement on behalf of the Celebration Police. “I think the celebrations are a little bit too much,” he tut-tutted. “Celebrate when you win.”
