The rain stopped over Munich around noon, and the sky, for the first time in three days, opened blue over the Allianz Arena pitch. The sprinklers were still running when the buses pulled in, one behind the other, and the staff at the perimeter gates already had the walkie-talkies to their ears. By Tuesday evening, the last pieces of a Champions League final were falling into place, the ones that mattered most: who starts, and who is fit enough to let them.
Arsenal’s travelling party landed in Munich on Monday night with a full 23-man squad, and by Tuesday afternoon, Mikel Arteta’s preferred XI had filtered out through the usual channels. David Raya in goal. Ben White, William Saliba, Gabriel Magalhães, and Jurriën Timber across the back. Declan Rice anchoring midfield alongside Thomas Partey, with Martin Ødegaard in the advanced role he has made his own since October’s return from an ankle ligament injury that, at one point, threatened the season itself. Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Martinelli wide, Kai Havertz through the centre. No surprises, then, but no compromises either; this is the side that beat Real Madrid in the semi-final second leg, and Arteta has not wavered since.T2, The Athletic
The one development that mattered on Tuesday came from the other camp. Ousmane Dembélé, who limped out of PSG’s semi-final second leg against Barcelona with a hamstring complaint and spent ten days in treatment, trained fully on Tuesday morning. Luis Enrique named him in the starting XI without hesitation. Bradley Barcola and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia flank him in a front three that has, by the roundtable reckoning of The Athletic’s writers this week, “the pace to punish Arsenal’s high line if the press breaks.”T2, The Athletic Achraf Hakimi at right-back, Marquinhos and Willian Pacho central, Nuno Mendes left. Vitinha and Fabián Ruiz in midfield. Gianluigi Donnarumma in goal.
The Athletic’s roundtable identified one thread that ran through every expert’s answer: the first fifteen minutes. If Arsenal’s press lands, if Ødegaard can find Rice in the half-spaces before PSG’s wingers stretch the pitch, the match tilts. If Dembélé and Barcola isolate Timber and White early, if the transitions are quick enough, the advantage shifts south. Both managers know it. Both will say, in the final press conference on Tuesday evening, that they control what they control. Only one of them will be right.
The Allianz Arena floodlights came on at half past six, testing the pitch one last time. The sky, by then, had turned the colour of wet slate.
