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.
This wasn’t a black swan event. This was two black swans. Inside a Martian shuttle. Scripted by typewriting monkeys. But it was also a two-part moment of pure adrenal skill, a night to mark a career, executed with perfect stillness, a man suddenly playing with a kind of light around him.
So which is your favourite? Which was the best brilliant second‑half Declan Rice free-kick goal? The first one, the opening goal in this stunning 3-0 victory, arrived with 58 minutes gone and Arsenal starting to drive the game. It was probably the more beautiful of the two, a moment that required no other presence on the pitch, isolated in its own clean crisp square of light.
The ball was planted to the right of the goal, with a five-man Real wall and just Rice behind it. The contact was sweet, pinged off the top of Rice’s right foot, sending the ball around rather than over the wall, heading for the crowd at first; then – hang on – heading for the stanchion; then coming closer, spinning on an upright axis like a perfect new-ball seam, swerving more violently as it reached the hot zone.
By now this was one of those snapshots football gives you, a glimpse of the thing that’s about to happen, that white and black orb hanging there, lovely under the lights, showboating to the crowd, the flailing hand of Thibaut Courtois intruding on the frame, then drawing a vast, barrelling roar as it hit the rigging and time restarted.
Although, maybe, maybe, the second one was even better. This made the score 2-0. It was a little more to the left. Rice paced back, no disguise, all intent. But this time it was vicious, the ball hit so hard it was still rising as it found the top corner on the same side, hit with the top of the foot with pure abandon, hip driving through. This time the net bulged outwards, such was the violence of the angle.
At which point: re-eruption, bodies tumbling, shoulders grabbed and shaken, and another disbelieving roar shot through with something that sounded like laughter. But then, this is the thing with Arsenal. They’re just a set‑piece team.
It was in isolation the best moment of Rice’s career to date. Has anyone ever done this so close together, at this level? Thoughts turn vaguely to Rivaldo’s hat‑trick against Valencia – which was, to be fair, just the kind of thing Rivaldo did. But Rice also deserved the moment. He had an excellent game, imposing his running power from the left, looking urgent and incisive.
This is a player who has been criticised for lacking an obvious super strength. What does he do? What is his magic dust? There has always been a feeling of other gears, of power in reserve. Well, it turns out there’s this.
The whole evening was a lovely spectacle. The optics were dreamy, Real in putty-coloured kit, the stands fluttering with red and white plastic flags, the air turning deliciously chilly as the light died above the lip of the stand.
The first half was a gripping, high‑rev affair. Arsenal dominated steadily on shots, possession and general threat. They huddled at the start of the second half like they knew something. And they really should have scored in between the two free-kicks as the ball was blocked on the line four times in a couple of minutes.
At which point it is necessary to talk about Mikel Merino too, who worked incredibly hard and who also got to score the third after another piece of Rice, a drive down the left and a swift clip to Myles Lewis-Skelly. He fed the ball to Merino. The finish was lovely, first time, perfect contact, again curling out of the reach of Courtois.
It will of course mean nothing if Arsenal don’t win the tie. Real can score three goals. The plan is always essentially: be Real Madrid. They came to the Emirates Stadium with the blazing squad, the full hyper‑mobile attacking quartet. The message is: we are Real Madrid, and you will allow us to be Real Madrid. Even the mythology is self-fuelling.
Arsenal had their own potent right-side back. Martin Ødegaard got to face the club that scooped him up as a teenager. Are you ready to face your father? Well, who is, really, ever? But Ødegaard was excellent all night, combining expertly with Bukayo Saka.
By the end Real had begun to moan and kvetch, Jude Bellingham wide-eyed and somehow also mortally offended, as though someone had just sworn in front of his pet rabbit. This is not to be mistaken for collapse. This is how Real win, by refusing to lose. Here, though, they met someone else ready to assert their will, in two perfectly pure moments of contact.
