Key events
24 min Arsenal’s first corner of the night is a load of nonsense, underhit by Madueke and headed away by Griezmann.
21 min A bit of a quiet period. Gyokeres has a bit of a nose bleed after being caught, possibly by Madueke, while scrapping for a cross from the left.
17 min “I’m too stressed out to actually answer your Premier League/Champions League question, and we’re less than 20 minutes hour into this match,” writes Russell Eberts. “I mostly just want this season to be over, so I don’t have to watch Arsenal again for a few months. This season has felt like being in a relationship with someone who’s emotionally manipulative, and has been about as fun as watching someone get their teeth cleaned.”
15 min: Fine defending by Carodoso! Gyokeres barrels irresistibly down the left, holds off Llorente and arrows a cutback towards the onrushing Odegaard. His shot from about 10 yards is crucially blocked by the stretching Cardoso.
14 min: Good save by Raya! Julian Alvarez controls a sharp square pass on the edge of the area, works a tiny bit of space with some lovely footwork and whacks a curler that is pushed round by the diving Raya.
14 min “I… I may have forgotten which leg this was,” hics James Humphries (see 7.48pm). “In my defence, tell me you don’t look at any Arsenal-Atletico fixture and immediately assume it’s the second leg of a grim/proper football (delete as appropriate) game standing at 0-0.
”Also, as a Motherwell fan I’m not used to a grinding defensive mindset… this season.”
13 min This already looks like it’s developing into an unyielding arm-wrestle. Both teams have had promising moments in attack, but Hincapie’s volley is the only half-decent chance.
10 min “After last night’s family-sized helping of Haribo, tonight will probably be the quinoa salad that we need but aren’t quite so excited about,” harrumps Andy Gordon.
9 min Arsenal have found their feet and it’s an even, relatively cagey game now.
6 min: Chance for Hincapie! Shrill whistles from the home fans as Arsenal enjoy their first extended spell of possession. Madueke beats two defenders beautifully and stands up a cross to the far post.
The diving Martinelli can’t reach it but his attempt serves to put off Hincapie, who slices a sidefoot volley wide. Not an easy chance, but a chance nonetheless.
5 min “Champions League,” says Gary Stover. “If you win the Champions League this year, beating Bayern or PSG in the final, you could lay claim to being the best club side ever.”
I wouldn’t go that far, but I agree it would add another layer of glory.
4 min Atleti have made a forceful start and are trying to set traps for Arsenal, who haven’t made an entirely assured start. To prove the point, a routine pass from Gabriel to Hincapie goes straight out of play.
3 min “I’ll take the league please BRob,” writes Paul Curievici. “Because this season has felt as long as the whole 22-year-drought, because it’s been so bitterly attritional, in the hope that if we finally win the bloody thing we’ll start to look like we enjoy playing football again. And also so my little lad can lord it over the glory-boy City fans at school for a change. Obviously the Champions League wouldn’t be a bad second option.”
2 min A slip from Hincapie allows Atletico to break. Alvarez, 25 yards out, has a shot blocked.
This isn’t the smoothest pitch in world football, as Spurs found out in the last 16, and moments later Raya shanks a clearance out of play.
1 min A couple of minutes later than advertised, Atletico get the second Champions League semi-final under way.
This is the first Champions League semi-final at the Wanda Metropolitano, and the atmosphere is specfreakintacular. Also: there is toilet roll everywhere.
“I suspect that Justin Kavanagh’s wish will be met tonight; after the Lord Mayor’s Show/ Last Night of the Proms/NASA moon landing fireworks of last night, pretty well anything will be a comedown,” writes Charles Antaki. “At least one team can be fairly guaranteed to lower the pulse, until, that is, their fans’ feelings about the effectiveness of the MGM start to get the better of them MGM? They’ve been more like Pathé news on previous outings, so some work required there.”
“It’s been an effortful few days,” writes James Humphries, “so I had clean forgot yesterday was PSG v Bayern and only discovered it when I started getting ‘football, bloody hell’ messages.
“Today however has been a day so beautiful I got waylaid in a beer garden on the way home and might end up watching this one – my apologies in advance for the 120 minutes of filth which will no doubt result.”
How do you know there will be half an hour of injury time? And how long have you been in that beer garden?
Mikel Arteta has just WhatsApped his pre-match thoughts
You can’t wait to play these kinds of games – as a club, as a player, as a manager.
[Viktor Gyokeres] is fresh and it’s an opponent that can fit him very, very well. We have options from the bench, though certain players are restricted to playing a certain number of minutes. [Bukayo Saka and Eberechi Eze] have done really well to be available.
[What have you learned from last year’s semi-final?] Every game is different. Every detail matters; you have to be ruthless in both boxes.
A fun bit of pre-match reading
“It’s 10 years since Saúl Ñíguez scored an amazing solo goal for Atlético against Bayern in their semi-final first leg,” writes Andrew Goudie. “I’ll never get tired of watching this, especially when he beats the last man.”
An entirely straightforward question for Arsenal fans
Premier League or Champions League? And why?
“Right,” says Justin Kavanagh, “let’s have a nice quiet 0-0 draw with top-notch defending and lots of safe, secure sideways passing tonight. My old heart can’t take another evening of racing palpitations and excitations like yesterday’s. And as for Mikel Arteta’s heart rate, well, if he’d been coaching either team last night, I fear for his well-being today.”
David Hytner
Martin Ødegaard has accepted that Arsenal will remain open to criticism until they shed their nearly-men reputation and is confident the club are primed to do precisely that this season.
The captain cut a convincing figure on the eve of Wednesday night’s Champions League semi-final first leg at Atlético Madrid, insisting he and his teammates were ready to respond to the lessons of the past and deliver silverware.
Ødegaard was referring to the Champions League semi-final exit against Paris Saint-Germain last season but he might also have been thinking about the Premier League runners-up finishes in each of the previous three years. Arsenal are top of the table and chasing a first league title since 2004.
“It’s always going to be there until we win and that’s something you have to live with,” Ødegaard said. “We need to take all our experiences and the lessons and use them in a good way. It’s part of football and part of the journey.
Atletico are renowned as a tight, pragmatic side, but their identity has changed a little in the last few years. Their 14 Champions League games this season have produced a whopping 60 goals.
Arsenal’s games have been a lot tighter, particularly at their end. In 12 games they’ve scored 27 and conceded only 5.
The players on a yellow card
Nobody. Yellow cards are wiped going into the semi-finals.
Sid Lowe
At the beginning of the final training session before their biggest game in a decade, Atlético Madrid’s players lined up by the centre circle at the Metropolitano and waited for their coach to come. Diego Simeone arrived and ran through the middle of them, from Juan Musso and Jan Oblak at one end to Antoine Griezmann and Ademola Lookman at the other. As he passed, head down, they cheered and hit him – if not quite as hard as they do when it’s a player’s turn. Gauntlet run, applause echoed round the empty stadium. Happy birthday, mister.
Simeone turned 56 on Tuesday. He has spent almost 20 of those here: first as the captain who won the double, then the coach who lifted Atlético’s next league title, 18 years on, and now leads them into his fourth and their seventh European Cup semi-final, nine years since the last. What do you get the man who has it all? “Buah! You can’t imagine how good it is to be in the four best teams in Europe,” he said after the quarter-final; “I have no birthday wish,” he said before this semi-final, “just pure gratitude to be able to be with my three sons on my birthday, with my two daughters, my mum, my wife, my lifelong friends.”
One of the sons was hidden in the crowd somewhere, hitting him. The day that Simeone bade farewell to the Vicente Calderón as a player in December 2004, he carried his youngest son, two-year-old Giuliano, in his arms. The days before he came back to Madrid as coach in December 2011, he stopped in a cafe in Mar del Plata and, over a croissant and a glass of milk, asked Giuliano, then eight, what he thought. “You’re going to coach [Radamel] Falcao?!” the kid replied, excitement giving way to reality. “But … if it goes well, you won’t come back.”
David Hytner
It was the night when Arsenal made their first big statement of the season in the Champions League, when they advertised their desire to go all the way in Europe’s most glamorous competition; to create club history. They had welcomed Atlético Madrid in the third round of league phase matches and it turned into a showcase for all of the best bits about Mikel Arteta’s team.
The bolted-door defence. The furious counterpress. The physicality. The speed and ruthlessness. The set-piece productivity. And, linked to everything but trumping the lot, the total self-belief. Arsenal were unable to find a way through in the first half or the early part of the second – it was tight – but they did not panic because they knew the goal would come. It was inevitable. They were inevitable.
When Gabriel Magalhães scored it in the 57th minute, it was the prompt for a devastating salvo, Arsenal raining in three more by the 70th minute. The game finished 4-0, Atlético departing battered and bruised. It was late October and the performance and result were very much of a piece with the Arsenal of the first half of the season.
Team news
Mikel Arteta makes two changes, both in attack, from the nervy Premier League victory over Newcastle on Saturday. Gabriel Martinelli and Viktor Gyokeres, who scored three of the four goals when Arsenal trounced Atletico earlier this season, replace Eberechi Eze and the injured Kai Havertz. It’s the MGM attack – Madueke, Gyokeres, Martinelli – so we’re contractually obliged to link to a lion roaring.
Bukayo Saka isn’t yet to fit to play a full 90 minutes; Riccardo Calafiori joins him on a strong Arsenal bench.
Atletico make four changes from their 3-2 win over Athletic Bilbao at the weekend. Julian Alvarez, David Hancko, Johnny Cardoso and Ademola Lookman come in for Clement Lenglet, Pablo Barrios, Alex Baena and Alexander Sorloth.
Atletico Madrid (4-4-2) Oblak; Llorente, Pubill, Hancko, Ruggeri; Simeone, Cardoso, Koke, Lookman; Griezmann, Alvarez.
Subs: Musso, Esquivel, Sorloth, Mendoza, Baena, Almada, Lenglet, Molina, Vargas, Le Normand, Bonar, Julio Diaz.
Arsenal (4-3-3) Raya; White, Saliba, Gabriel, Hincapie; Odegaard, Zubimendi, Rice; Madueke, Gyokeres, Martinelli.
Subs: Arrizabalaga, Setford, Mosquera, Saka, Jesus, Eze, Norgaard, Trossard, Calafiori, Lewis-Skelly, Dowman, Salmon.
Referee Danny Makkelie (Netherlands)
This is the fourth meeting between Atletico and Arsenal. The first two came in the Europa League semi-final of 2017-18, when goals from Antoine Griezmann and Diego Costa put Atleti through 2-1 on aggregate. The other was in the league phase of this season’s competition, when Arsenal ran riot in the second half.
Preamble
History is made! Or rather, it will be at 8pm BST tonight, when Mikel Arteta’s oft-maligned Arsenal play back-to-back Champions League semi-finals for the first time in the club’s history. It’ll count for little if they don’t win either the Premier League or Champions League this season, but it’s an undeniable marker of their progression from the 15th-best team in England to one Europe’s finest.
For the second year in a row, Arsenal’s semi-final involves arguably the two best teams never to win the European Cup or Champions League. Paris Saint-Germain’s glorious triumph last season left a vacancy for Atletico, though they would argue they were already in the top two. After all, no side has played in more Champions League finals without winning the thing. On all three occasions, in 1974, 2014 and 2016, Atleti came agonisingly close.
Either they or Arsenal, who lost their only final to Barcelona 20 years ago, will get another crack in Budapest on 30 May. It should be a fascinating struggle between two teams best known for their defensive excellence. Even if the reality is more nuanced, we’ll have none of that nine-goal nonsense tonight.
Kick off 8pm BST.
