Arsenal pass a brutal rite of passage to overcome Porto’s spiky resilience

In the end this was the perfect way for Arsenal to win this tie. Beating a Portuguese team on penalties. This feels like a kind of hazing ritual, some brutal rite of passage, like running up a frozen Munro with a bag full of bricks on your back just to make it more special.

For a side that has been accused, by those who like to accuse, of not being ready to win, of being callow and excitable, there was something perfectly paced about the stodginess of this Champions League last-16 second leg.

To recreate the experience of watching this game, simply hire 17 men dressed in red, blue and white to stage an unceasing 17‑man group wrestle on a bouncy castle, as occasionally a man in black peeps a whistle, someone falls over, a bout of cramp happens, members of the home crowd leap up and shout angry disconnected phrases.

Porto were tough, leathery, gnarled, refusing to bend or tear. There is just something magnificent about their ability to stop football happening. There was instant pop-up time-wasting, four minutes gone, fussicking over a throw. There was a lovely moment as Pepe, who is 41 and has to date played almost 900 games of professional football, twirled away from two Arsenal players like a teenaged ice dancing champion then hurled himself to the turf in search of a way out, only to be waved up by the referee via a furious levitational gesture.

At the end of 90 minutes with the tie all square this still felt like a Porto timeline, a Porto happy place. Socks rolled down. Opponents cramping. Huddles, urgent team talks, broken rhythms, everyone thinking already about penalties, triumph, disaster, moments of nerve and fragility. Come into our place. We’ve been expecting you.

At which point, something else happened. Even the moment of victory felt cathartic. Declan Rice had the key kick, Arsenal’s fourth, already one miss to the good. He ran in with such verve it looked for a moment like he was going to charge the keeper. Galeno didn’t stand a chance. David Raya saved his kick.

Declan Rice powers his his penalty, Arsenal’s fourth, into the back of the net. Photograph: Neil Hall/EPA

And this is in many ways a perfect moment for this team as they contemplate an 18-day break. Victory takes the heat out of Arsenal’s season. It makes trying to win the league feel lighter, less of a weight, another step rather than an all or nothing leap. The winter sun holiday seems to have sprinkled a kind of magic dust over what was a tiring group, the spectacle of Mikel Arteta being fed over-seasoned meat by the great Salt Bae in an Abu Dhabi restaurant acting as a kind of breath of life, a re-baptism. Since that moment, the sprinkle, the proffered skewer, the snatch of the jaws, Arsenal have won eight league games in a row and made it to the Champions League quarter‑finals for the first time in 15 years.

Whatever happens from here, this is progress. Arsenal are better than last year. Players are improving. Revenue is up. There is a style. Goals are being scored.

Arteta has turned out to be exceptional at reconfiguring players. Ben White, Declan Rice, Kai Havertz have all found new gears. There are footballers in this team who are overachieving, and not just young players, where the project is linear, clear, less complex. Is Jorginho supposed to be the key transformative component in a title-challenging midfield in 2024? Maybe, but it’s not essential that this had to happen.

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There was also time for a moment of beauty here. Still 1-0 down in the tie as half‑time approached Arsenal really needed one of their big‑ticket players to step up. It was Martin Ødegaard who took the moment. It was an amazing piece of skill to make the only goal of the game, Ødegaard taking four touches in the space of a second and a half, one with his right, three with his left, all of them different angles and weights, different parts of his foot.

In the middle of all the mud and fury, two hours into a tie in which Arsenal had yet to score, this felt a bit like watching Ødegaard brain whirr in real time, moving the maths around the board, carrying over, switching an x for a y, and also taking time out while the cogs whirred, half a beat, just enough to allow Leandro Trossard to begin his run, dragging the ball out just enough space with his third touch, to allow for the fourth, the perfect pass into Trossard’s path. The finish was a thing of beauty too, the ball eased into the far corner through the legs of Pepe.

Ødegaard kept on twirling and feinting about in those bruising spaces between the lines, worrying away, checking back, always looking for angles and lines of sight. Still the same things kept happening, the same patterns playing themselves out, an entire second half that felt like being fed through a heavy gravity chamber.

Arsenal were expected to win here. Porto are broke. They lost £40m last year. This isn’t even a good Porto. They’re third in the league, haven’t been able to win away from home. But they produced a show of wonderful resilience, spikiness and spoiling defence.