I write this column as I return to London from Madrid and honestly I find it difficult to summarize exactly how I feel after the events of last night at the Bernabeu.
It is simply not greater than what the arsenal did at the house of the 15 times European champions. They came to the age in front of our eyes. It was very, very special to witness.
Rice Declan was phenomenal on the two legs.
It was such a good performance of 180 minutes as you will see from a player On the biggest stage.
He obviously made a great praise after his free launches in the first stage, and rightly so, but the representation he produced at the Bernabeu was as good as it was.
He was a colossus in the heart of the midfield. I don’t think there was a single leaf of grass in that pitch that did not cover.
It was a tireless screen. A performance for ages in the greatest stages of a man of 105 million pounds in the Arsenal.
No matter who was against, no one could approach.
He was everywhere, from breaking the attacks of Madrid at one end to driving to the Arsenal to the other.
You can’t really do something when it comes to its performance and this is what makes it so special. Just encapsulated everything you need or wish from a midfielder.
The perfect screen of the whole round.
Jude Bellingham could not deal with Declan Rice, and he showed it
You could see how it was frustrated in Jude Bellingham. Like all the best players, Bellingham has clearly an ego, you can see that, by the way, it is fair and to be fair, it is the arrogance that sees him notable for most other players. He feeds.
But his ego was clearly forceful by the way Rice bit him on his two legs.
There was only one star midfielder in England on the pitch in the Emirates and Bernabeu, and it was certainly not Bellingham.
It was a difficult season start for rice. Like most players who had been in the euros and deepened the competition, he struggled to really achieve their first form during the campaign’s opening months.
But now it is there and it has been for the last two months.
Very few signs of big money are kept on their price labels. Just look at the biggest transfers in football history to see it.
Price tags weigh most of them, but not rice.
“Declan Rice, We Got Hit Half Price” is the song that Arsenal fans sing. It is very difficult to argue –
