{"id":11066,"date":"2025-04-07T17:23:55","date_gmt":"2025-04-07T16:23:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=11066"},"modified":"2025-04-09T09:58:30","modified_gmt":"2025-04-09T08:58:30","slug":"19-years-later-a-meeting-long-overdue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=11066","title":{"rendered":"19 Years Later – A Meeting Long Overdue"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Arsenal vs Real Madrid. Champions League quarter final. Two powerhouses of European football. A staggering 15 European Cups between them. It doesn\u2019t get much bigger than this. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And yet remarkably this will be the first meeting between the two sides in almost two decades. March 2006 was the last time we met at Highbury. But before that came the first leg at the Bernabeu. We all know the story. Arsenal, the underdogs, pitted against the Galacticos\u2019 of Madrid – Zidane, Beckham, Roberto Carlos, Ronaldo and, of course, Jonathan Woodgate. Arsenal were without Sol Campbell and Cashley Hole and travelled to Madrid with a back four which included two midfielders in Flamini and Eboue at full back and Phillipe Senderos. We soaked up the pressure and then Thierry Henry did his thing and scored one of the most famous goals in our history. Perhaps our most famous in the Champions League. The first English team to win at the Bernabeu. In a knockout stage game, no less. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We held on for the win and took it back to N5 and held on some more for a 0-0 draw to take us to the next round as we went on to reach the final without conceding. A good omen perhaps? We shall see. One thing we can be certain of though is that a meeting with Los Blancos is long overdue. Considering Real Madrid are the undisputed Kings of Europe, and we have been Champions League regulars over the last quarter of a century, albeit with a six-year exile, the rarity of the two sides locking horns seems unusual. Of course, Madrid regularly reach semi finals and finals, whereas before last year we hadn\u2019t made the last eight for 14 long years. However, we have reached the round of 16 in all our last 15 UCL campaigns, (not including this year) a record which stretches back to 2003\/04 and that 2006 showdown was our sole encounter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Real Madrid are, of course, the current European Champions having lifted their 15th<\/sup> title at Wembley last year, defeating Dortmund 2-0 in the final. They have won the UCL a staggering six times since 2014. If you think Liverpool have won it six times in their entire history and that is rightly considered to be a very good record, well\u2026Madrid have matched that in a single decade. And when you look at some of the players, they\u2019ve had over the last century it\u2019s not difficult to see why they win it so regularly. Tomorrow night, we will certainly be up against many the world\u2019s best. Despite defensive duo Dani Carvajal and Eder Militao being long term absentees, they still boast the likes of Antonio Rudiger and Raul Ascencio at the back. In midfield they have 2018 Balon D\u2019or winner and former N17 sufferer Luka Modric, Eduardo Camavinga and of course Jude Bellingham. I suspect that will be the trio Carlo Ancelotti will go with. And, as for the three fellows in attack, well it\u2019s probably best to think about those guys as little as possible over the next week or so. It will of course be the Brazilian tricksters Vinicius Jr and Rodrygo on the flanks with the lesser-known Kylian Mbappe down the middle. I reckon he\u2019s a decent prospect. One to keep an eye on mefinks! They do have a significant number of players who are one booking away from suspension for the second leg including Rudiger and Vinicius. So of course those players will be allowed to make as many fouls as they wish. Those are the rules when it comes to Real Madrid. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite the incredible pool of talent at their disposal, Real are lucky to be at this stage for several reasons. They have ridden their luck in the Champions League all season as they often do, but even more so this year. They were average in the league phase finishing 11th<\/sup>, losing to Liverpool, AC Milan at home and Lille. They comfortably swatted aside 115 FC in the play off round but were incredibly fortunate to eliminate their city rivals Atletico in the Round of 16. They won 2-1 at home in the first leg but a 1-0 defeat at the Wanda Metropolitano forced a penalty shootout in which Real prevailed after Julian Alvarez saw his penalty disallowed by VAR for an alleged \u201cdouble touch\u201d despite replays showing very inconclusive footage. In the same way Arsenal gets penalised for incidents no one else does, Real get given decisions in their favour that no one else would. We will have to be on our best behaviour to avoid any ridiculous punishments. That means no kicking the ball away 0.0000000000001 seconds after the whistle is blown and not violently tapping your opponent on the leg 85 yards from goal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In terms of Arteta\u2019s team selection, you would expect Kiwior to start alongside Saliba and hopefully Saka is fit enough to start after playing the second 45\u2019 at Goodison Park. Predicted team is as follows;<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Raya<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Timber, Saliba, Kiwior, MLS <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rice, Partey, Odegaard<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Saka, Merino, Martinelli<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rice, Timber and Martinelli are all one booking away from suspension. Raheem Sterling misses out through suspension. How on earth will we cope?!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Realistically, we probably need to win by two goals to have a good chance of progression to the last four going into the second leg. And that is what I am going to predict with Arsenal triumphing 3-1 on a famous night in N5. I would like to make it very clear that what I would like to happen and what I think will happen are two very different things and I have opted to go for the former here. Arteta said earlier that he wants everyone in attendance to \u201cplay the game with us\u201d and not be a spectator for 90 minutes. I think we all know exactly what he meant by that. Let’s hope the fans were listening and grant Mikel his wish. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

COYG<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Arsenal vs Real Madrid. Champions League quarter final. Two powerhouses of European football. A staggering 15 European Cups between them. It doesn\u2019t get much bigger than this.  And yet remarkably this will be the first meeting between the two sides in almost two decades. March 2006 was the last time we met at Highbury. But […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11066"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11066"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11066\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11083,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11066\/revisions\/11083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}