Is qualification for the Champions League as good as a trophy? Maybe, maybe not.
It’s better than the Community Shield, obviously — and not quite on a par with the Premier League title. But, when you do it 16 years in a row, it’s worth celebrating. So hats off to Arsene Wenger.
He has made Arsenal part of the Champions League furniture. If sport is not so much about winning as taking part, Wenger’s Arsenal have a rich European history indeed, even if only once they have got close to becoming champions. Let’s not forget how close it was.
In 2006, back in the days when Arsenal had to budget for silver polish (they had rather luckily beaten Manchester United in the FA Cup Final in Cardiff a year earlier), they took on Barcelona in Paris and were soon reduced to 10 men when Jens Lehmann was sent off for upending Samuel Eto’o.
Despite this they took the lead through a Sol Campbell header and had only a quarter of an hour to survive when a substitution confounded them, Henrik Larsson setting up Eto’o for the equaliser and Juliano Belletti (has everyone played for Chelsea at some stage of his career?) for the winner.
It was a glorious defeat. Also worth remembering is that Wenger had become the first manager to take a London team to the European Final.
That Roberto di Matteo went a step further is another chapter, but for Arsenal to be in the draw yet again is a mark of the dogged competitiveness Wenger always shared with Sir Alex Ferguson.
When the going gets tough — and Wenger’s performance in the transfer market has conspired in making it so — the tough keep going.
