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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Sport
Barney Ronay at the Emirates

Declan Rice topples Real Madrid with black swans and silver bullets

Declan Rice Real Madrid Arsenal silver Martin Ødegaard Mikel Merino Rivaldo Thibaut Courtois Europe
Declan Rice celebrates after scoring one of his stunning free-kicks.
Declan Rice sparked jubilation around the Emirates with two stunning second-half free-kicks. Photograph: Catherine Ivill/AMA/Getty Images

So that’s how you beat Real Madrid then. Here it is, the silver bullet. Improbably brilliant, aesthetically lovely, statistically semi‑impossible right-footed free‑kicks. What’s the problem here exactly?

Before this fun, wild, unbound night at the Emirates Stadium Declan Rice had scored exactly zero free-kicks across his eight-year professional career. On Tuesday night he scored two in 12 minutes, against the champions of Europe, in Arsenal’s biggest European game in almost 20 years.

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