Splendorous Fàbregas leads his technicians to San Siro dethroning
Are Arsenal ready to replace Milan as champions of the continent? The mounting evidence suggests last season’s frustration-filled strugglers could just do so; becoming the first English side to win on Milan’s own patch has the jury preparing a unanimous verdict in the trial of the lethal youngsters who are wreaking havoc on the Premier League and most recently the peninsula.
As ever, Cesc Fàbregas was the architect. Barcelona remain obsessed with the one that got away, but are trying their hardest to convince the footballing world they have forgotten him. Their most recent statement claims he will never be welcome at the Camp Nou following his fully justified walkout when just 16 years of age, but the Catalans are playing a bad game of politics.
The ultimate political faux pas could be realised if Arsenal draw Barcelona in the last eight and Fàbregas exhibits his full array of talents.
He is Arsenal’s version of Kaká, and while the Spaniard is not yet at the level of the World Footballer of the Year he, ably supported by his team-mates, outshone the isolated Brazilian and won the game for Arsenal with a sublime strike and key build-up play for a deserved second at the death. While Kaká showed terrific instinct with a sharp shot from the edge of the area that flashed just wide in the first half, Fàbregas’s effort was equally impudent but on this occasion possessed a deadly accuracy.
Fàbregas is a different player from 12 months ago. His maturity has belied his years, his development been far more rapid than conceivable. That level of progress despite his fantastic raw talent as a skinny teenager trying to make his way amongst fellow youth pretenders at a distant club in the region of north London having made the big decision to leave his home country and family.
The 20-year-old struggled greatly for goals, and consistency, last season in an Arsenal side that lacked a predatory instinct in front of goal as Thierry Henry proved an overbearing rather than leading personality in his final season. With the Frenchman’s exit Fàbregas, who admitted that he and the club have benefited by the 1998 World Cup winner’s departure, excelled and he personifies the new spirit and proficiency about Arsenal.
Collectively, Arsenal were dictatorial in Italy exactly a year after they crumbled to a meek defeat at PSV Eindhoven that saw them exit the competition and left a promising squad with nothing to play for with months of the campaign remaining. In 2008, they were fittingly clapped off by the gracious home supporters who admire sumptuous, passing football like that of the Manchester United side they witnessed in the semi-finals last term and most lately from Arsène Wenger’s dazzling youth. They only wished their own coach Carlo Ancelotti, said to be hanging onto his job after the defeat, could inspire his squad to a similarly breathtaking degree of elegance.
Technically, Arsenal were superior, smashing the stereotypes of English clubs with their long ball and negative tactics. The Milanese support were highly critical of Liverpool’s style of play but ovation greeted Arsenal though the short supply of Englishmen perhaps offers rationale to the game’s greater technical level.
Yet after Fàbregas’s intuitive strike that provided the definitive moment of quality deserving of winning the tie, a shot that Željko Kalac couldn’t get near, it was an Englishman for the future who earned appreciation with a superb assist. Theo Walcott, who has disappointed Wenger after not making progress that was anticipated by the maestro coach, rode a challenge of sheer desperation from Kakha Kaladze after thoroughly outpacing him down the right flank before expertly crossing from the by-line into the feet of Emmanuel Adebayor, and the Togolese forward couldn’t miss from just a few yards.
The incumbent kings of the peninsula have been overthrown by a bunch of young revolutionaries intent on spreading their ideals across Europe and demonstrating that their footballing concepts are the ones worthy of the coveted Champions League crown. Aged and out-dated, Milan played the role of a docile emperor who knows his time is up and patiently sits, awaiting the inevitable mutiny.
Wenger’s Arsenal were so vastly superior that even the emperor’s most partisan supporters didn’t dare put up a fight, but instead yielded by welcoming the new guard with warm applause. Those supporters will now look forward and wonder whether their usurpers are appropriately gifted to become the powerhouse on the continent that Milan once were. That critical uncertainty can seemingly be answered by just one man: the ever-unassuming but always poised Fàbregas, the symbol of Arsenal’s newfound greatness.
Can Fàbregas lead Arsenal to the CL or is it still too soon for these young Gunners?
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