Arsenal 3-0 Real Madrid (Rice 58′, 70′, Merino 75′ | Camavinga 90+3′ red card)
EMIRATES — There are free-kicks, and then there are free-kicks.
The sort of free-kicks that come along once in a thousand games, that are dissected for decades to come, immortalised in replays.
And Declan Rice scored two of them in 12 minutes. Who knew he was even that good at free-kicks?
Which to discuss first? The first is as good a place to start as any.
DECLAN RICE WITH A MOMENT OF MAGIC
An excellent free kick from the Arsenal midfielder see's the host go in front#UCLonPrime pic.twitter.com/Vopmz8aCUZ
— Amazon Prime Video Sport (@primevideosport) April 8, 2025
Twenty-five yards out, facing a giant wall of Real Madrid players, and behind them on the goal line the great wall of Thibaut Courtois.
Courtois had been unbreakable in the near hour that had come before, it had felt like one of those nights when a world leading goalkeeper earns his reputation.
Then up stepped Rice, with the kind of free-kick – bending around the wall and so far out wide that its trajectory took it out outside the post before it whipped back just inside of it – that will be talked about in the same debates as David Beckham and Roberto Carlos.
How did he get that curl? Do the laws of physics permit it? Was some kind of sorcery involved?
That will come later, on the night Arsenal were ahead in an enthralling but, until then, frustrating Champions League quarter-final. The sort of game they draw, or even lose, on other evenings, and set a near impossible task for the second leg in Madrid.
DECLAN RICE HAS DONE IT AGAIN
Another excellent free kick puts Arsenal up 2-0 at the Emirates#UCLonPrime pic.twitter.com/xXezgRvfJq
— Amazon Prime Video Sport (@primevideosport) April 8, 2025
Then he went and did it again. Not quite as good, admittedly, but the bar could barely have been set higher by the first. This one was on the other side, roughly the same distance out. And Rice went for the same side, with more power and arrow this time, and the ball soared into the top corner.
In truth, until then Arsenal had been exciting without creating anything of much excitement: fuelling a stadium flickering with the fire of such a big occasion with half-chances and good intentions.
Madrid looked shaky from two early inswinging corners from Bukayo Saka – one Courtois fisted over, the other dropping in the six yard box and bouncing around bodies before being cleared.
Courtois pulled off a sharp double save as the first half neared its end – leaping down to his right to keep out Rice’s header, then sticking out an arm to block Gabriel Martinelli’s rebound.
The problem is, possession and shots on target can mean nothing against a side that can win a game via sheer belief in their deservedness to win it. That, and having Kylian Mbappe, Vinicius Junior and Jude Bellingham in your starting line-up, of course.
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It matters not that Luka Modric will be 40 years old in September, that Myles Lewis-Skelly was not born the first time he played at the Emirates – he still believes he is deserving to be on the pitch, and therefore he is.
Antonio Rudiger hauls his ageing frame around, knee heavily-strapped in white tape, knowing that his body will hold together because he simply believes it will.
Bellingham had started getting a foothold in midfield and turning over possession, and from one such moment he sent Mbappe through on goal with a fabulously weighted pass, but David Raya saved a chance Mbappe scores more often than not.
Federico Valverde played an outrageous ball bouncing across his penalty area, Saka steaming in, Rudiger calmly controlled the ball before hooking it on to David Alaba. Eduardo Camavinga slipped, surrounded by three Arsenal players, but still managed to knock the ball consummately back to Modric.
Raul Asencio thought nothing of dribbling right in front of his own goalkeeper, hunted fervently by Mikel Merino.
For 58 minutes, there was an assuredness that whatever was about to happen, Madrid would come out on top. Because, more often than not, that’s what they do.
Only then Rice shattered that belief with one barely believable swing of his right boot. Bellingham stood there, scowling. Mbappe’s face was stretched in shock.
Player of the match: Declan Rice
- You will not see two better free-kicks in one game from the same player
And then Rice crushed the broken pieces underfoot with another. Bellingham looked like he was having some kind of out-of-body experience. Mbappe blew his lips.
Madrid were shell-shocked, the shockwaves from those stunning Rice hits sending reverberations through the game that left the Madrid players wobbling all over the place.
Courtois had to pull off another stunning double save, in-between which Rudiger cleared desperately off the line.
And Arsenal made the situation count, in a way that old Arsenal sides wouldn’t have done.
Merino added a third, tucking the ball into the corner with a first-time shot, with 15 minutes remaining that should – should – put this tie out of reach.
You never can be too sure, because Madrid will never stop believing.
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