For Arsenal this has been a season defined by wasted opportunities and littered with what-ifs; by red cards, injuries and forgetting the credit card PIN in January. But when Mikel Arteta reflects on the campaign this summer, he will not find a night with greater concentration of nearly-moments than this one.
What if Declan Rice had not headed just wide right at the top of a blistering Arsenal start? What if first Gabriel Martinelli and then Martin Odegaard had not been thwarted by the giant and infuriatingly brilliant goalkeeper, Gianluigi Donnarumma, before ten minutes were even out? What if Bukayo Saka had scored from Riccardo Calafiori’s cross late on to make it 3-2 on aggregate and put Paris Saint-Germain’s famously brittle bottle to the ultimate test?
