Eleven days ago Arsenal were watching Bournemouth versus City on television waiting to see if they were going to be Premier League champions. They were. Now it is Saturday, Budapest, the Puskas Arena, the Champions League Final.
Twenty years since the last one. Paris 2006, Henry and Pires and Lehmann getting sent off after eighteen minutes and Arsenal holding on until the 76th minute and then conceding twice and losing to Barcelona. That was the last time. Arteta was 24. He is the manager now. Saturday in Budapest. The biggest game of his life.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
Puskas Arena. Budapest. Saturday 30 May. 8pm BST. TNT Sports.
PSG won it last May. Beat Inter 5-0 in Istanbul, one of the most complete performances in a final anyone had seen. Back to back would make them the first club to do it since Real Madrid eight years ago.
Arsenal have not won it. One final, Paris 2006, lost. Saturday is the second attempt.
First final since 2006
League
Final
Won it in Istanbul 2025
WHAT ARSENAL DID TO GET HERE
Fourteen games in this competition, not one defeat. No club has done that in the first fourteen of a single Champions League season. Not United in 1999, not Real Madrid in any of their runs, not anyone.
Ten clean sheets in a single Champions League season is the record. Arsenal set it in 2005/06. Real Madrid equalled it in 2015/16. Nine so far this campaign.
Eight wins from eight in the league phase. First in the table. Leverkusen, Sporting Lisbon, Atletico in the knockouts. Saka did not score in many Champions League games this season. He scored in both legs of the Atletico semi-final and Arsenal did not concede in either of them.
The contrast with the Premier League season is everything. The league was won by grinding 1-0s and corner routines and defensive solidity. The Champions League has been exactly the same. Arteta builds teams that are very hard to score against and this one across fourteen European games has been the hardest of all.
WHAT PSG DID TO GET HERE
What PSG do is score goals. Forty-four in fourteen Champions League games this season. Not manage games. Not soak up pressure and pick their moments. Just score.
The semi-final against Bayern was nine goals in the first leg alone. PSG 5-4. Highest scoring Champions League semi-final in history. Kvaratskhelia twice, Dembele twice, Joao Neves. Kane got two back for Bayern, Upamecano scored, Luis Diaz scored. Nine goals. Second leg in Munich, Dembele in the third minute, PSG held on for a 1-1 draw, through 6-5 on aggregate.
This is how they play. Not a team that manages games. A team that plays, scores, presses, creates, and has enough in the final third to outscore the problems their defensive structure creates. Forty-four goals in fourteen games is not a run of form. It is what they are.
Kvaratskhelia and Dembele starting in the same forward line in a Champions League Final. That is what is waiting in Budapest.
THE BIT NOBODY WANTS TO TALK ABOUT
PSG knocked Arsenal out of the semi-finals twelve months ago. Dembele at the Emirates, 1-0. Then Paris, Fabian Ruiz, then Hakimi, Saka with one back but not enough, 3-1 on aggregate over two legs.
Then PSG went to Istanbul and beat Inter 5-0 in the final. So Arsenal watched the team that knocked them out go and win the trophy. The whole season, the whole run, and then watching PSG lift it on television knowing they were the team that ended that particular chance.
Dembele starts on Saturday. Fabian Ruiz starts on Saturday. Same players, different occasion, one year later.
Seven meetings between these clubs in European competition. Two wins each. Three draws. The most significant of them went to PSG by three goals on aggregate and twelve months ago.
SIX GOALS
Six. That is how many Arsenal have conceded across fourteen Champions League games this season. PSG have scored forty-four in the same number.
PSG will have the ball. They always do. Luis Enrique’s team presses high, moves quickly, and does not spend long periods sitting deep and waiting. Arsenal will be okay with that. They have absorbed pressure in every knockout game this season and won all three. The shape is compact, the transitions are quick, and the corner routine that scored seventeen Premier League goals this season does not disappear on Saturday because it is a Champions League Final.
Last season at the Emirates, Kvaratskhelia got behind the right-back in the first half and scored. Arsenal spent most of the rest of the game chasing it. Mosquera has that right-back position on Saturday. He is 22. He has done well in the league phase of this competition. Nobody knows what he is like in a Champions League Final against someone who can do what Kvaratskhelia does, because nobody has seen it yet. That is the honest answer. Saturday is the test.
Saka on the other side. Scored the only goals Arsenal scored across both legs of the Atletico semi-final. His Achilles has been managed carefully since March and Arsenal have been protective of him through the run-in. How close to fully fit he is shapes everything about how Arsenal approach the final third.
Gyokeres against Marquinhos and Pacho in the centre. PSG will press him, will not let him settle, will try to make the service into him difficult. He has to hold the ball, has to bring Rice and Eze and Saka into the game, has to be the focal point that Arteta needs him to be. If PSG squeeze him out of it for long periods in the first half Arsenal’s route to goal becomes considerably harder.
Set pieces. The corner routine. The delivery that has beaten every defence in the Premier League this season. PSG have conceded goals in Europe this campaign. If Arsenal stay compact, absorb pressure, and get their opportunities from dead ball situations, one of them will go in.
THE ARTETA PART
December 2019. Arsenal eighth. No managerial experience. Six and a half years later he is in the dugout for a Champions League Final having won the Premier League eleven days ago.
Arsenal have never won this trophy. Never. One hundred and forty years as a football club and the European Cup has not once come close to landing in north London. Winning on Saturday alongside the league is the double, which nobody in English football has done since United in 1999. That is the scale of what is at stake. For the full story of how Arteta built Arsenal from eighth place to this moment, our piece on Arteta’s six-year journey at Arsenal covers every step of the rebuild, and all our Champions League 2025/26 coverage including both sides’ routes to Budapest is in one place.
PSG were here twelve months ago and won it. They have scored 44 goals getting back to this final. They have Kvaratskhelia and Dembele and Fabian Ruiz and the experience of lifting the trophy recently enough that the memory is still fresh. They know what winning a final requires because they did it in Istanbul a year ago against Inter and made it look comfortable.
Arsenal are doing this for the first time. Arteta is doing this for the first time. The entire club is doing this for the first time. That is either a disadvantage or it does not matter at all, depending on what kind of night Budapest turns into.
THE PREDICTION
Probably PSG win. The semi-final last year. Forty-four goals this season. Kvaratskhelia and Dembele in a final together with the experience of winning it twelve months ago. The logic of the football points that way and ignoring it would be dishonest.
But nine clean sheets. Six goals conceded. Saliba and Gabriel unbeaten at home in every knockout game this campaign. The defensive record Arsenal have built across fourteen Champions League matches this season is unlike anything seen in European football in recent years. Arteta has built a team that genuinely knows how to win difficult games by not conceding, and that is the best argument for them on Saturday.
Arsenal win it. One goal, from a set piece, in the second half. Arteta’s double. Arteta’s legacy. Budapest.