Women’s Champions League triumph will redefine how Arsenal see themselves | Jonathan Liew | OneFootball

There is always a little more time than you think. A red number 7 blinks across the pitch from the fourth official’s board. Seven minutes of injury time: it’s a lot. Against Barcelona, it’s an age. Against this Barcelona, in this heat, in this game, it may as well be all of eternity.

But you push through. You pace yourself. Beth Mead goes down under a challenge; there’s 30 seconds right there. Kim Little rolls the ball up the left touchline to no one: eight seconds. Daphne van Domselaar hesitates over a free-kick, squeezing out those seconds like drops from a towel. You push through because whatever happens in these seven minutes, however those minutes make you suffer, seven minutes is still less than 18 years.

There is a whistle, and then there is a scream, and then there is pure confusion. Arsenal have planned this game to the very last detail, rehearsed every last contingency, mapped out every possible scenario. But not this one. Some run; some stagger. But in these earliest moments of triumph, wherever they are on the pitch, somehow it feels telling that the first instinct of these Arsenal players is to find each other.

Meanwhile Barcelona collapse, not just in distress but in a kind of violent shock: a shock that seems to consume them physically, to shake every fibre of their being. As if they cannot truly believe anyone would dare to do this to them. Next to the centre circle a podium is hastily being erected, a confetti cannon winched into place, and they still can’t believe it’s not for them.

People often say, with a vaguely fatalistic subtext, that you have to play the perfect game against Barcelona. Which is all very well, but then what happens when you make a mistake? Arsenal did not play the perfect game, even if several individuals got pretty close. But they won anyway, because they understood that finals are not simply a form of expression but a form of combat, not simply a vehicle for skills and stratagems but a vehicle for courage.

And we should be clear at this point what kind of courage we mean. This is not simply the courage of crunching tackles and lunging blocks, of putting your head where it hurts. It is the courage of playing the forward pass when the backward pass is on, of keeping the ball on the ground when every impulse tells you to get rid, of taking your time on the ball, because there is always a little more time than you think.

It is the courage of starting well, having a goal disallowed, missing chances, but not succumbing to fatalism. Of Leah Williamson stepping in to win the ball, even though she risks getting turned. Of flooding the area with bodies even though you know how well Barcelona can transition. Of showing the greatest team in the history of women’s club football all the respect they deserve, but not an ounce more.

Arsenal’s goal, a masterclass of grace under pressure, was perhaps the best example of this. Mariona Caldentey receives the ball on the right wing, and immediately the options flutter in front of her. The first-time cross is on. The sliding pass to Katie McCabe in the channel is on. Instead she waits, waits for the picture to unblur in front of her. And eventually Mead presents herself, and the pass is perfect, and the shot from Stina Blackstenius is perfect, and in the most perfect twist of all, she’s actually onside this time.

For Arsenal, this changes everything. There will be a parade on Monday, and a mural on the side of the Emirates, there will be award ceremonies and tie-in merchandise, there will be functions and reunions. Over time Lisbon 2025 will take its place in the club’s mythology, as surely as Meadow Park 2007, White Hart Lane 2004, Anfield 1989.

But of course it changes so much more than this. For those fans today who were not fans 18 years ago, Arsenal have slowly become the sort of club that dares but does not do, that fails elegantly and succeeds rarely, that wants to win but ultimately does not need to: a trendy leisurewear brand with a football team attached. These are traits that hard-wire themselves over time, and yet can be magically undone in the course of one sweltering afternoon.

Arsenal are European champions. Those four small words now define how this club sees itself, how these players step on to the pitch, how opponents treat them, how prospective signings view the project. For Little, for Williamson, for Blackstenius, for Renée Slegers and for Clare Wheatley, the director of women’s football, and the Arsenal board, it is a form of vindication that will sustain them in their toughest moments. Each of them will walk a little taller on Sunday morning.

Most days, nothing changes. The games and the sessions and the seasons all blur into one eventually. But then there are the days that will be remembered in perfect clarity, forever: days when a plan comes together, days when the wheel of history is stopped in its tracks. Together, Little and Williamson clasp the trophy, raise it aloft. The music plays. The confetti flies. When it lands, nothing will be the same again.

Header image: [Photograph: José Sena Goulão/EPA]