Copy linkFacebookXPinterestEmailShare this article 0Join the conversationFollow usAdd us as a preferred source on GoogleNewsletterSubscribe to our newsletterFourFourTwo met Arsenal star Eberechi Eze two days after winning the Premier League title: the feeling still fresh; the lethargy of the euphoria still lingering. He wasn't even looking forward to the battle of Budapest, but the party at the Palace.After half a decade at Selhurst Park followed by the dramatic Arsenal transfer, scoring against Crystal Palace, then a hat-trick in the North London Derby to finish the story back where he began felt particularly fitting.Scripted, as Eze suggested. And it certainly felt so.Fans Have More Friends, with HeinekenHeineken and creator The Padded Seat sent competition winner Forest Robinson to the Puskas Arenas most isolated seat for a major final. But the fan wasn't alone for long; football legend Xavi surprised him with the pair watching the match from a luxury skybox and celebrated pitchside, proving that football is always best enjoyed together.Coincidence and destiny sit either side of a tightrope, after all. It can be argued, for sure, that in a world of infinite possibilities and potentially in this one reality of infinite parallel worlds that quirks like Ebere Eze's first season at Arsenal are simply that: a neat footnote that ultimately has little bearing, just as it was Bournemouth's no.22, Junior Kroupi, ended 22 years of hurt for the Gunners, or that Puskas roughly translates to gun; that Arsenal would dump Antoine Griezmann out of a European semi-final and ruin his farewell, just as he did the same to Arsene Wenger eight years prior, or that after West Ham United effectively ended Arsenal's title pursuit last season and proved a consistent thorn in the side of Declan Rice's new employers, a nervy 1-0 victory against the Hammers would effectively be the final major hurdle en route to the title.Just as you can't choose your destiny, you can't pick and choose parts of a script either. If some things are written, theory dictates that surely all things are written. If Eze was meant to win the title at Selhurst Park if Arsenal were meant to end the title drought in the manner that they did then Budapest was surely meant to happen.For so long, this team were labelled as bottlers on the page, on many, many screens, and in stands up and down our fair isle. Their own individual nadirs shaped each Arsenal player. This was a team built from the broken. William Saliba has never spoken publicly about losing a parent while living in a foreign country. Watching him claim crosses, you'd never know either that David Raya suffered a horror injury in 2018 in which his nose was described as hanging off his face.Raya played non-league football after arriving in England aged 16, later claiming the weekends to be the hardest for him, as he missed his parents. Ben White played deep in the Football League after being released by Southampton, while Gabriel Martinelli was passed up on by bigger clubs while in the Brazilian fourth tier. Declan Rice was released by boyhood Chelsea. Eze, himself, from Arsenal, before rebuilding his life in League One, and suffering a ruptured Achilles before the homecoming.Jurrien Timber tore an ACL 50 minutes into his debut for the club he'd always dreamed of representing. Riccardo Calafiori suffered a knee injury so severe that doctors compared it to a motorcycle accident. He had no right to ever play top-level football: yet he recovered, left home to develop at Basel and became a rock for his country. Gabriel, likewise, turned the heartbreak of missing out on the 2022 World Cup squad by becoming Brazil's most indispensable defender four years later. Most famously, Bukayo Saka stood on top of the world at Wembley Stadium, and fell. Let's not sugarcoat it: the racist backlash was one of the most disgusting episodes in England's modern sporting history. He never cowered. He had the bravery to stand on the spot again, to grab both his boyhood club and his nation by the scruff of the neck.They are led by a man who was told he wasn't good enough for Barcelona, his dream club. He forged a career, finding a home and a no.8 shirt elsewhere. On the eve of playing his first international cap, he tore his ACL. He never got to play for his country. And one day, he'd make Martin Odegaard his captain: a boy who was told he wasn't good enough for Real Madrid, before forging a career, finding a home and a no.8 shirt elsewhere. Chelsea beat Arsenal in Arteta's first home game. COVID-19 hit. Manchester City tore them apart. Eighth place beckoned. A terrible run in the winter of 2020 followed behind closed doors. Unai Emery beat them in the Europa League semi-finals. Eighth again. No Europe. Third-round FA Cup exits. Bullied by Brentford. Bottom of the league. The Aubameyang fallout. Suckerpunched by Spurs for fourth. Newcastle away, twice. Sporting in the Europa League. City little bro-ing them. Aston Villa away, then at home. West Ham at home, twice. That Rice red card. That Lewis-Skelly red card. The injury crises. The Be humble game. The it's not done game. A Carabao Cup final loss in between, and another FA Cup capitulation to boot. The lows have defined Arsenal almost as much as the highs in six years of Arteta's reign: to call them bottlers after all that after all they've each been through and to see their progress all the while, is banter, sure, but not wholly fair. Budapest was not to be the destiny but another marker on the journey. 2006's Champions League final defeat felt like the end of an era. This one does not. Dennis Bergkamp retired after Paris in the springtime, while Robert Pires' final Arsenal appearance lasted less than 20 minutes, the Frenchman devastatingly sacrificed after Jens Lehmann's red card. Goalscorer Sol Campbell left that summer, as did Ashley Cole; Freddie Ljungberg and Thierry Henry both had one more season in them. A whole spine of that team was ripped out within 18 months: yet 20 years later, on a blue moon in the last weekend of May, their counterparts are just getting started. Saliba, Rice, Timber, Calafiori, Lewis-Skelly, Saka, Odegaard, Eze and Havertz are all the right side of 28.And they won the title with the very obvious feeling that there was more to give. Arteta's men are flawed champions. They have clear weaknesses to address, having squeezed opponents all season rather than steamrolling them. Arsenal banished two domestic decades of ever-increasingly louder demons. They went an entire European campaign unbeaten up until a penalty shootout, without conceding in open play.They kept the best team in the world the best frontline on Earth quiet for two hours. They didn't even give the satisfaction to Matvei Safonov of a hero moment: Paris Saint-Germain didn't save a penalty in the Puskas. Arsenal missed both of theirs. The operation was very much a success: the patient merely died on the table.And yet Arteta will stand before the group at the start of next season and tell them they can go one better. As they have done every year: eighth, eighth, fifth, second, second, second, first, in the league. Quarter-finals, semi-finals, final, in Europe. Chelsea needed a few deep runs before they won it; City did, too. The lesson of Liverpool under Jurgen Klopp was that if you hang around long enough at the top, you'll have your time: Arsenal have already experienced that with a trophy this season, and now is the time to exercise similar patience in Europe. Even as he trudged away from Parisian celebrations, Ebere Eze looked inconsolable after missing his spot-kick. That's clearly not the ending he imagined to the dream first season: but he's right about the football gods, the sporting scriptwriters or, if you'd rather, coincidence and the ability for elite athletes to raise themselves from their knees. Maybe Arsenal were meant to lose in Budapest. Maybe Eze was meant to miss. Maybe there are better things to come. The chapter is over; the story is not.Get FourFourTwo NewsletterThe best features, fun and footballing quizzes, straight to your inbox every week.Contact me with news and offers from other Future brandsReceive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsorsBy submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.TOPICSChampions LeagueMark WhiteSocial Links NavigationContent EditorMark White is the Digital Content Editor at FourFourTwo. During his time on the brand, Mark has written three cover features on Mikel Arteta, Martin Odegaard and the Invincibles, and has written pieces on subjects ranging from Sir Bobby Robsons time at Barcelona to the career of Robinho. An encyclopedia of football trivia and collector of shirts, he first joined the team back in 2020 as a staff writer.
