Where is la remontada? Seriously. There really was supposed to be a remontada around here somewhere. Of all the sprinkles of sugar, the crispy, salty, crunchy morsels for Arsenal’s supporters to pick over after Wednesday night’s brilliantly assured victory at the Bernabéu it is probably Myles Lewis-Skelly’s part that will give the most lasting satisfaction.
Sadly for the banter-angle it seems the immediate post-match rumour that Lewis-Skelly had approached Jude Bellingham and asked him: ‘Where is la remontada?’, as recycled across social media in a dizzying range of languages, turns out to have been, of all things, made up.
Presumably someone somewhere is already overseeing a furious first press of T-shirts and commemorative bucket hats carrying Lewis-Skelly’s new strapline. The memes will endlessly replicate. Already a backlash against the backlash is insisting, without evidence, that Lewis-Skelly did actually say this after all. We’re post-truth here people. Does it actually matter, if enough convincingly clipped-up noise is generated? There are fine people on both sides here.
More to the point, phantom Lewis-Skelly was right. There was no improbable act of sporting fan-fiction at the Bernabéu. And Lewis-Skelly, perhaps more than anyone else on the pitch, got to act out his own version of remontada-denialism, a tribute to the power and the clarity of being too young and too cool to care about That Thing Everyone Goes On About.
It is worth remembering on nights like these that Lewis-Skelly is still only 18. He has still played only 17 Premier League games. He also still isn’t really a full-back, more an ongoing hunch-based conversion.
No good has ever come from trying to predict the ceiling of a prodigiously talented footballer. What kind of player is he anyway? Utility marauder. Polyvalent semi-defender. All-purpose shithouse scamp. Lewis-Skelly had already got under Bellingham’s skin during the first leg, and the relationship is clearly a grower.
Bellingham made Lewis-Skelly’s goal on his England debut last month. He has now helped to make him a star, or a proxy-star in the Champions League disinformation wars, just as Erling Haaland did something similar at the Etihad last year after appearing to ask exactly who the cocky and abrasive youth in the No 49 shirt actually was. There he goes, out there taking them down one by one. Get this kid on the pitch with Messi before it wears off.
Lewis-Skelly has some very obvious gifts: tactical intelligence, inventive passing, bullocking dribbling style, understated physical strength. For now it is surely enough to enjoy the fact he was good enough to disrupt Real Madrid’s midfield in the first leg by wandering into awkward positions at just the right moments; and at the Bernabéu to disrupt something more profound, the enduring, indestructible pomposity of Madridismo itself.
This is Lewis-Skelly’s one obvious super-strength at this stage. Here is a footballer who is clearly an absolute dog of war on the pitch, an attitude monster, and in a fascinating way too, a teenager who seems totally at home with this goldfish-bowl world, and who has in the process become the spirit animal of Arsenal’s Champions League run.
The mythology of this place was also long overdue a youthful puncturing. Visiting the Bernabéu is not like other games, but only perhaps because everyone keeps saying so. The energy in the stands is more devotional than sporting. English crowds tend to comment constantly on the game. The mood is reactive fury.
At the Bernabéu people seem to be speaking to the skies, waving their arms wide as though summing down spirits. Before kick off on Wednesday night a vast tifo was unfurled across the home end portraying some kind of mythical bearded white-clad Madrid god toying with the chessboard of mortal human affairs. Which was nice. Here we are. Being Madrid, self-consciously imperious, cosplaying Galactic Super Race.
Bellingham had been at the centre of the invoking of spirits in the buildup, putting on a pretty decent show of suggesting somehow that football’s ultimate overlords were in fact underdogs, out there battling manfully against the pressure of expectation. But yeah, it’s fine, this is what we do, this is actually perfect for us.
It might have worked too. For Arsenal this was an occasion shot through with genuine jeopardy at kick-off. Lewis-Skelly’s own first act at the Bernabéu was to get a little lost under a bouncing ball as Madrid ganged up on his flank, at which point you slightly feared for him. A few minutes later, in almost the same spot, he dropped a shoulder, twirled away from Bellingham, and the game began to stretch out in front of him.
Above all this was a huge moment for Mikel Arteta. Just imagine the toxic consequences, the unshakable stigma if this tie had gone the other way from that first leg 3-0 lead, if Kylian Mbappé wasn’t offside while putting the ball the net with two minutes gone, if Madrid’s soft but still viable penalty kick hadn’t been scrubbed.
That first-leg lead always looked a genuine fork in the road for Arteta’s Arsenal. Either lose from there and face the ultimate, boss-level expression of Arsenal flakiness, Arsenal celebration crimes, stern-faced club legends talking urgently about the absence of Real Men.
after newsletter promotion
Or win and get to bask in the opposite of this, a register of genuine progress six years in the making. There was even vindication for the suggestion Arsenal’s failure to run away with the league might not be down to pigeon-chested cowardice, but the loss of their key attacking combination for almost the entire season. A disappointingly non-juicy narrative. But there was some convincing evidence here it may actually be true.
For now a Champions League semi-final is a hard, unarguable achievement. This is now a good Arsenal season, with a delicious-looking final lap as spring melts into summer. Arsenal have seven games, maybe eight, still to play. They have a trip to Paris. They have time to rest players while cruising towards a third successive second-place league finish, only the third time any Arsenal managerial era has managed this.
All of this with Mikel Merino still gamely wheeling out his karaoke turn as a pop-up striker, with the Skelly-Saka-Nwaneri emotional premium, and with a European run that will now rake in at least €118m (£101m) according to the financial blogger the Swiss Ramble, powerful ammunition for the coming summer transfer wrestle.
At which point, before the Bernabéu glow fades, it is worth noting that Paris Saint-Germain are a far more serious prospect, opponents that will stretch this team in very different directions. Strip away the voodoo and Real Madrid area pretty awful team right now, and awful in ways that fit snugly with Arsenal’s strengths.
Declan Rice will never find such perfect opponents again. Here is an elite team, champions of Europe, draped in champion mythology, but with no actual functioning midfield. Your direct opponent is a Ballon d’Or winner. Your direct opponent is also the 39-year-old part-owner of Swansea City. Get out there and run right over the top of him.
Rice understood the assignment perfectly, sinking his teeth into this tie from the opening seconds. PSG are something else. Like Arsenal they also have a three-man midfield of thrilling intensity. Unlike Madrid, they also have a supremely well-balanced attack.
For Mbappé in particular this was supposed to be a coronational year, final step on that golden ladder towards the optics of ultimacy, the ticker-tape podium, the appalling purple tuxedo, the Ballon d’Or smile.
Instead these two games provided further evidence of a built-in Mbappé obsolescence, a star player who will score goals and give you moments, but will also consume the team around him. In Spain there is a view the thrashing of Manchester City in February was the worst thing that could have happened to Madrid. It made them think they were still good, a team that thrive in a broken game, all the better to pull you apart with their superior invention. There wasn’t any of that here. Madrid played in straight lines, and just kept running into the same Arteta-built defensive geometry.
A single result doesn’t make an era. But sport is also about steps along the way. And while the Bernabéu might not have dished up another of its hammy old remontadas, it may just stand as another small staging post in the ongoing monta of Arteta’s Arsenal.