Importance Score: 2 / 100 🟠
Team news: Saka starts
Bukayo Saka starts for the first time in 2025. That’s the big news, in part because both teams are largely as expected. Jakub Kiwior, who played at well at Everton on Saturday, is Mikel Arteta’s preferred replacement for the injured Gabriel Magalhaes. Mikel Merino will start up front.
Real Madrid have a couple of changes from the second leg of their win over Atletico in the last 16. David Alaba replaces the injured Ferland Mendy at left-back; Eduardo Camavinga comes in for the suspended Aurelien Tchouameni.
Arsenal (4-3-3ish) Raya; Timber, Saliba, Kiwior, Lewis-Skelly; Odegaard, Partey, Rice; Saka, Merino, Martinelli.
Substitutes: Neto, Setford, Tierney, White, Zinchenko, Trossard, Jorginho, Butler-Oyedeji, Gower, Nwaneri.
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Real Madrid (4-3-3ish) Courtois; Valverde, Asensio, Rudiger, Alaba; Modric, Camavinga, Bellingham; Rodrygo, Mbappe, Vinicius Jr.
Substitutes: Fran Gonzalez, Sergio Mestre, Arda Guler, Endrick, Lucas Vazquez, Vallejo, Fran Garcia, Brahim, Gonzalo, Jacobo, Chema, Lorenzo.
Referee Irfan Peljto (Bosnia and Herzegovina).
Key events
25 min Timber is up and about.
23 min Mbappe, slightly offside, wafts over the bar from the edge of the area. The oprning stemmed from an exceedingly dodgy square pass from Kiwior that put Saliba in trouble. Vinicius Jr challenged him and then played in Mbappe, who started his run too early and was offside.
Timber has hurt himself while trying to challenge Mbappe. He’s down and needs treatment.
22 min “Are Real already time wasting?” sniffs Joe Pearson. “Come on!”
Are they?
21 min Odegaard seems to be fouled by Camavinga, 25 yards from goal, but the referee waves him up. Real break and Vinicius, on the edge of the area, shoots a few yards of the far post.
Had that gone in, there would have been mayham because it looked a clear foul on Odegaard.
19 min Lewis-Skelly gallops forward and tries to find Martinelli on the left side of the area. Asencio comes across to make a good sliding challenge.
So far Lewis-Skelly has looked eerily composed. I was going to compare him to Ashley Cole when he emerged, but at the same age Cole hadn’t played for the first team.
18 min Odegaard, leading the press, fouls Modric and gets a warning from the referee. It was a free-kick but no more than that.
16 min Possession stats so far: Arsenal 68-32 Real Madrid.
15 min: No penalty Football is mad, but it’s not that mad.
15 min: VAR check for an Arsenal penalty Just before Partey’s shot, a volley from Rice hit the arm Asensio at the near post. It’s never a penalty in a million years, to my eyes, but it’s still being checked…
13 min: Courtois saves from Partey Martinelli roasts Valverde on the left and crosses to the near post. Rice’s adroit left-foot volley hits Asensio, barely a yard away, and runs loose. The ball is then touched back to Partey, whose low shot from the edge of the D is pushed away unconvincingly by Courtois. He was unsighted I guess.
11 min It’s been a pretty good start for Arsenal, but they do look susceptible to the counter-attack, particularly through Vinicius Jr.
Halfway through typing the previous sentence, it dawned on me that there isn’t a team in the world who aren’t susceptible to counter-attacks led by Vinicius Jr.
10 min We’ve just seen a replay of that second Saka corner. It was missed by Partey, who couldn’t get under the ball as it started to dip, and then hit the unsighted Saliba almost on the goalline.
9 min Lewis-Skelly feeds a sharp pass into Rice, unmarked on the left side of the area. His cross on the turn is cut out at the near post by Asencio. That was a promising move.
8 min “An Arsenal supporting London cab driver asked me today if I’d be supporting Arsenal tonight and I admitted sheepishly that I felt it would be disloyal to my beloved Bristol City to do so,” says Kim Thonger. “He grunted and proceeded directly to his second favourite topic of conversation, the outrageous price Gordon Ramsay charges for burgers, and the recent purchase by said restaurateur of a million pound Aston Martin. I have no idea if that was pure invention, but may I please wish Arsenal well tonight, and I hope they don’t spend their match win bonuses on overpriced burgers OR sports cars. They (and Gordon) could donate to this instead.”
7 min Saka’s awkward, inswinging corner is pushed over the bar by Courtois. The second corner from Saka is even better, teased just above head height into the six-yard box. It beats the players at the near post, hits somebody in the middle and bounces to safety. That could have gone anywhere.
56min: Arsenal go close! Saka’s low cross takes a slight deflection and rolls towards Rudiger in the six-yard box. He whacks it into the arse of his teammate Camavinga and it deflects just wide.
4 min Odegaard’s free-kick is poor and Real break ominously. Vinicius Jr seizes upon a loose pass from Saka, runs 60 yards down the left and tries to flick a cross towards Mbappe at the far post. The ball hits Saliba and ricochets into the loving arms of Raya. That was a bit of a warning shot.
3 min Saka is fouled just outside the area on the right by Modric. The noise is quite something, possibly the loudest the Emirates has been since Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona came to town in the early 2010s.
2 min “Hi Rob,” says Simon McMahon. “2010, eh? A great year. Inter winning the Champions League for the third time a week after Dundee United won their second Scottish Cup. Two giants of European football. And both with history against Barcelona.”
1 min Mbappe has an early pop from distance after a misjudgement from Kiwior (I think). Raya saves comfortably.
1 min Real Madrid kick off from right to left as we watch. The atmosphere is spectacular.
Mikel Arteta and Carlo Ancelotti embrace warmly on the touchline. When Ancelotti first managed in this competition, Arteta was 16 years young.
A reminder of the teams
Arsenal (4-3-3ish) Raya; Timber, Saliba, Kiwior, Lewis-Skelly; Odegaard, Partey, Rice; Saka, Merino, Martinelli.
Substitutes: Neto, Setford, Tierney, White, Zinchenko, Trossard, Jorginho, Butler-Oyedeji, Gower, Nwaneri.
Real Madrid (4-3-3ish) Courtois; Valverde, Asensio, Rudiger, Alaba; Modric, Camavinga, Bellingham; Rodrygo, Mbappe, Vinicius Jr.
Substitutes: Fran Gonzalez, Sergio Mestre, Arda Guler, Endrick, Lucas Vazquez, Vallejo, Fran Garcia, Brahim, Gonzalo, Jacobo, Chema, Lorenzo.
Referee Irfan Peljto (Bosnia and Herzegovina).
Mood music
It’s been a season of incessant frustration for Arsenal. Yet it could end with them winning the European Cup for the first time. Right now, in this exhilarating, occasionally bowel-loosening window just before kick-off, anything is possible. And nights like this don’t come along very often: it’s only Arsenal’s second Champions League quarter-final in the last 15 years.
This is great fun: Sean Ingle’s minute-by-minute report of Arsenal’s win in the Bernabeu 19 years ago.
47 min – GOAL! Real Madrid 0 – 1 Arsenal Brilliant from Thierry Henry! Absolutely brilliant! From just over the half-way line he turns past Ronaldo and ghosts past three Real defenders before coolly sliding it into the far corner from 15 yards. Superb.
Thibaut Courtois on Arsenal’s set-piece threat
We’ve worked on it. We know how we have to try to defend against them. The first thing is not to concede too many corners. It’s a matter of concentration, activation – sometimes the quality of the opponent plays a factor too. If the ball arrives perfectly, it’s difficult to defend. But we are ready to do it, we believe that what we have prepared will work out well for us.
The players on a yellow card
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Arsenal Timber, Rice, Martinelli
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Real Madrid Rudiger, Modric, Camavinga, Vinicius Jr, Endrick, Lucas Vazquez (and Carlo Ancelotti)
Real Madrid lost at home to Valencia on Saturday and are four points behind Barcelona with eight games to go, but Carlo Ancelotti is calm. Calmer than you are.
Bukayo Saka, who starts his first game in almost four months, is ready and raring
I think mentally [the enforced break] was really good for me. It was really tough initially to find out the extent of my injury, that I was going to have to have surgery … But once it was done and it was successful, I was just focused on coming back stronger and had a lot of time.
Obviously the past five years I’ve been playing game after game, so it was the first proper break I’ve had and it was really good for me. I got to do a lot of things that I don’t really normally do. I can give you many, many examples, but you will get bored. It’s really nice to be back and I feel fresh mentally for sure.
Tonight’s other Champions League game is a repeat of the 2010 final: Bayern Munich v Internazionale. Niall McVeigh is covering that one.
Team news: Saka starts
Bukayo Saka starts for the first time in 2025. That’s the big news, in part because both teams are largely as expected. Jakub Kiwior, who played at well at Everton on Saturday, is Mikel Arteta’s preferred replacement for the injured Gabriel Magalhaes. Mikel Merino will start up front.
Real Madrid have a couple of changes from the second leg of their win over Atletico in the last 16. David Alaba replaces the injured Ferland Mendy at left-back; Eduardo Camavinga comes in for the suspended Aurelien Tchouameni.
Arsenal (4-3-3ish) Raya; Timber, Saliba, Kiwior, Lewis-Skelly; Odegaard, Partey, Rice; Saka, Merino, Martinelli.
Substitutes: Neto, Setford, Tierney, White, Zinchenko, Trossard, Jorginho, Butler-Oyedeji, Gower, Nwaneri.
Real Madrid (4-3-3ish) Courtois; Valverde, Asensio, Rudiger, Alaba; Modric, Camavinga, Bellingham; Rodrygo, Mbappe, Vinicius Jr.
Substitutes: Fran Gonzalez, Sergio Mestre, Arda Guler, Endrick, Lucas Vazquez, Vallejo, Fran Garcia, Brahim, Gonzalo, Jacobo, Chema, Lorenzo.
Referee Irfan Peljto (Bosnia and Herzegovina).
Real Madrid have faced 141 different teams in European competition. Only four are unbeaten against them: Ipswich Town, Aberdeen, Lille – and Arsenal, who beat Real 1-0 on aggregate in the only previous meeting between the sides. That was in the last 16 in 2005-06, when Thierry Henry’s majestic solo goal was enough to see off the ageing, ailing galacticos.
Preamble
Hello and welcome to live coverage of Arsenal v Real Madrid at the Emirates. It’s the first leg of a mouthmoistening quarter-final between the best team never to win the European Cup (probably) and the team that has won it the most (definitely).
That imbalance gives this game a slightly strange feel – part Clash of the Titans, part David vs Goliath. Madrid are strongish favourites to win the tie but Arsenal have more than enough ability to make life uncomfortable for them, particularly in front of a feral Emirates crowd tonight.
Arsenal surely need to take a lead to Madrid, ideally two goals or more. They can’t afford a repeat of last year’s quarter-final first leg, when a 2-2 draw at home to Bayern Munich set up a largely miserable night at the Allianz Arena.
Had Arsenal gone through they would have faced Real Madrid in the semis. If you want to win this trophy – their trophy – chances are you’ll have to beat them en route.
This is the ultimate test for Arsenal, one that elicits fear but also excitement and a powerful sense of opportunity. If Arsenal can get past Madrid, they’ll fancy their chances against anybody.
Kick off 8pm.