Arsenal's deadly duo step up to show PSG how it's done in Champions League triumph

Arsenal's early excursions in Europe turned them into magnificent men in their flying machines. And almost a century later, the Gunners are reaching for the skies again.

Back in 1930, Arsenal godfather Herbert Chapman and Racing Club Paris owner Jean Bernard Levy hatched an annual friendly between the clubs played on Armistice Day to raise funds for Great War veterans.

‌According to the matchday programme, some of the passengers who boarded the club’s four-engine, 38-seater Handley Page bi-plane at Croydon airport for the inaugural fixture looked tense.‌

Gunners legend Cliff Bastin dreaded air travel and “needed to smoke a cigarette or two to calm down” before take-off.

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Bastin’s choice of sedative may have been questionable, but he scored four goals in front of a 30,000 crowd, earning him the nickname “Le Feu d’Artifice’ (The Firework) among French spectators.

Fast forward 94 years and Bukayo Saka, wearing the captain’s armband in the absence of injured skipper Martin Odegaard, is absolutely flying.

‌And Kai Havertz, who scored the winner in the Champions League final three years ago, was almost at a jumbo jet’s cruising altitude when he climbed to head Arsenal in front.

As Mikel Arteta’s fired-up side accepted Paris Saint-Germain keeper Gianluigi Donnarumma’s assorted gifts, the disappointment among 3,000 travelling emissaries from across the Channel matched their long faces as they explored north London before kick-off.‌

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If they were expecting Holloway Road to match the Champs Elysees for cultural finesse, their optimism was misplaced - just as their team has never quite touched the heights required to conquer Europe.

After spending £1.2billion on new signings since their Qatari paymasters moved in at the Parc des Princes, PSG have dominated Ligue Un but the European Cup has evaded them.

And if calamity keeper Donnarumma keeps waving free-kicks into his own net, like Saka’s teasing but hardly venomous bouncing set piece which made it 2-0 here, they will remain the most gilded club never to lift it.

PSG may have moved on from Kylian Mbappe, Lionel Messi and Neymar, but they are now a cohesive team, not a collection of crown jewels. Give them wings, and they could fly.

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