By Myles Palmer
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In December 20O0, Arsenal met Bayern for the first time.
You may remember the match vividly.
I recall the Kanu goal being slightly different to the way I describe it here :
ARSENAL 2 BAYERN MUNICH 2
Arsenal had never previously met Bayern Munich in European competition, so the game on 5 December was a massive opportunity for them, an open door which, should they drive through it, would put the club one giant step up the stairway to heaven.
A team which beats Lazio is noticed, but a team which beats Bayern Munich is respected. Bayern, like Real Madrid, are the establishment.
Wenger knew that his rival, Ottmar Hitzfeld, would want a tight game, because in an open game Bayern might get slaughtered. The Germans had won only two of their last eight games in the Bundesliga and had been lucky to scramble a 1-0 win against Lyon, so their results were better than their performances.
Wenger brought Ashley Cole in for the injured Silvinho, showing that he trusted the youngster at left-back, while Luzhny kept his place at right-back. Henry had not scored for six games, and in seven Champions League games so far he had not scored either.
Bayern started by playing some solid keep-ball, but then Vieira won the ball cleverly from right-back Willie Sagnol, spun and passed to Pires, who moved forward on the left side and pushed a crossfield pass towards the penalty area. Henry dummied, Kanu played him in with a disguised pass and Henry swept his shot past Kahn. Arsenal had scored with their first attack.
Usually a laid-back player, one of the coolest dudes in football boots, even when he scores, Thierry Henry now raced away to the corner flag like a demented man, screaming his head off, releasing the tension, so much tension, so much frustration.
He had obviously been wound up as tight as a spring and now, after this perfectly executed goal, he let it all hang out. His eyes were bulging and he pummelled invisible enemies with both fists as he ran. He was more pumped up than we had ever seen him. Manic? Just a little bit!
Arsenal had taken 42 minutes to score against Lazio (Ljungberg) and seven minutes against Shakhtar Donetsk (Lauren), but now they had breached the defence of the big boys inside four minutes with a stylish goal that must have given immense technical satisfaction to Wenger. The geometry of the move was exquisite, the speed stunning.
Amazingly, after conceding that early goal, Bayern carried on playing negatively as if nothing had happened, refusing to respond by trying to get the goal back, as a British side would do. Their one promising moment came five minutes before half-time when Effenberg produced a moment of EffenVision, launching a stupendous seventy-yard pass from the left-back position.
The ball sailed just beyond Keown’s attempt to intercept, Adams could not reach it, Cole was sucked infield to cover Adams, and Elber prodded the ball back to Scholl, whose shot swerved a yard wide of Manninger’s post. It was their first shot of the game.
At half-time Hitzfeld took off Sagnol, moved Salahamidzic to right-back and brought on Paulo Sergio against Ashley Cole, who had played confidently for 45 minutes. Bayern started the second half at a higher tempo, but on 55 minutes Henry zoomed down the left and set up an awkward half-chance on the edge of the box for Kanu, who guided his low shot towards the far bottom corner.
Kahn dived and managed to touch the ball, but it went in. Another excellent goal, another big step towards the quarter-finals, another moment of sublime satisfaction for Wenger.
This was how he wanted his team to play. This was the football he loved. Goals of such quality were a vindication of his ideas, his faith in pace, his confidence in slick, explosive moves between sprinting strikers. Kanu and Henry had been rested at Southampton three days before and now both had scored – and they had made each other’s goals. Rotation had worked at last.
In his twentieth Champions League game as Arsenal manager, Wenger was now beating the big boys. He had just gone 2-0 up against Bayern Munich and his team looked capable of beating anybody, but just as he was starting to enjoy his most exhilarating European night so far, Salahamidzic raced down the touchline, collided with Pires and fell over.
It was a debatable foul, but Effenberg quickly took the free-kick from the right touchline. Vieira, jogging back, turned to find himself slightly out of position, jumped knowing he could not reach the ball, obscuring the view of Luzhny, who was standing behind him. Elber laid the ball back to Tarnat and his shot rifled into the bottom corner for 2-1.
Arsenal had broken one of the most basic rules of professional football by conceding a goal just after scoring. Wenger now had to suffer the agony of watching his team fall apart. For the next ten minutes they were unable to string even two passes together. The whole season seemed to be trembling in the balance.
When Jeremies tanked down the left wing and crossed blind, Keown headed the ball out and Sforza volleyed it forward to Elber, then ran for a flick-on which he could not reach.
As he went Sforza brushed Ljungberg and tumbled just outside the box, claiming a shirt-tug. It was one of the most blatant dives of the season so far. Italian referee Stefano Braschi should have waved play on – the replay showed only minimal contact between Ljungberg’s hand and Sforza’s elbow – but he gave a free-kick.
The wall lined up, Scholl dummied, Ljungberg encroached, Scholl appealed and Tarnat smacked his shot into the wall. Braschi booked Ljungberg and ordered a retake.
Unfortunately, Manninger did not read Scholl’s intent, for it was he, not Tarnat, who replaced the ball, and everyone knows that the player who places the ball is usually the one who takes the free-kick. Scholl whipped it over the wall and into the corner of the net for 2-2.
After that, Wenger must have been thinking, `If we had scored the second goal before half-time, or if we had passed the ball around just for ten minutes at 2-0, we would have won.’
Near the end Wenger lost his temper with the fourth official, who refused to allow him to shout a message to his players. So the big night turned out to be a roller-coaster ride of thrilling success and dramatic failure, a game which promised everything and delivered, in the end, a bitter lesson: Arsenal and referee Braschi had been mugged by crafty diving.
The events of that evening took a lot out of Wenger, who rolls with the punches better than most managers. When he came into the press conference he looked weary and sounded drained. His voice lacked its usual energy.
`It’s very disappointing and very frustrating,’ he said, `because I felt we’d done the most important thing in getting a 2-0 lead. But at that level you know you can’t lose concentration. I felt straight away after the second goal, we lost a little bit, subconsciously, concentration – and were punished straight away. I’m especially angry at the first goal because I think it’s unbelievable, how we gave a goal away. You could see straight away, the way we cleared the ball, the way we were positioned, that we could concede a goal.’
This was an unusual thing to say, especially given his low-angle view of a free-kick taken on the opposite side of the field, so reporters asked him to elaborate.
It was collective bad defending?
`Yes.’
You could actually see from the touchline, before they took the free-kick, that you were in trouble?
`Yes,’ he replied. But he would not name individuals. He merely went on to say, `That of course gave mental strength to Bayern and we lost confidence. On the free-kick I think we were unlucky. They miss the first free-kick and he gives it again. Then Scholl took it well.’
Brian Woolnough asked, `Do you think you can still go through?’
`I think we can still go through, yes, because Lyon beat Spartak Moscow tonight. That shows that everybody still has chances. It was, of course, important to win tonight, but crucial not to lose. And in the end we got a point. It looks as if everybody can beat everybody in this group. The most disappointing thing tonight is that we should have won. We got a goal early on, and if you look at how many saves Alex Manninger has made tonight, you will be surprised. I can’t remember a real difficult save for him.’
Brian Glanville then asked Wenger if he thought his team had looked demoralised after conceding the first goal.
`It looks a little bit like that. The team has lost confidence straight away. We were still in the goal we scored, instead of being conscious that it was important in the next five minutes not to concede a goal.’
After Wenger was asked a question in German, which he answered in German, Woolnough wanted to know what he had been gesticulating about near the end of the game.
`We had two free-kicks with one minute and thirty seconds to go. We had everybody up in the box and we played a short ball. That is difficult to understand. I just wanted to tell the players to put the ball in the box because in the last minute they can panic and make a mistake and you have a chance, when you have twenty players in the box, to score a goal. And that’s all. The fourth official didn’t let me do it. It was a little bit ridiculous.’
`You were much better than them until the first goal you conceded,’ Woolnough observed.
`Yes. That was the turning point.’
Another reporter said he could not remember the last time Wenger looked so angry and disappointed. Was it getting him down?
`No, I’m not down at all. I just feel that when you see your team giving everything you want them to be rewarded. And it’s frustrating when you feel that your players gave everything and got only a point. If you can find a manager in the world who leads 2-0 at that level and is happy when he comes out with a 2-2, I would like to be introduced to him.’
That was his exit line, and in the circumstances it was a good one. Wenger must have known his team were still on a learning curve, and that with a few more tight Champions League games under their belts they might not have contrived to snatch this draw from the jaws of victory.
He also knew that Arsenal had been the better side on the night. They had scored two excellent goals in open play, had hit the post and twice had viable penalty shouts in the same attack, for a push on Keown and a clear handball by Sforza, who admitted handling the following day.
The best side does not always win, however, and Wenger, a coach for nearly twenty years, had been through many, many games where he had told himself, `We should have won!’ Every footballer and every fan has said those same words. Nevertheless, he was probably seething when he studied the video, which showed how clever and systematic Bayern’s gamesmanship had been.
They created nothing in open play. They had a few shots wide, but Manninger did not have to make a real save all night. Tony Adams conceded only one foul in the whole game and that was a bad call near the end by Braschi, after Elber had backed into Adams.
Adams was furious, tried to pick Elber up, and almost ripped his shirt off. Quite simply, Bayern played for free-kicks throughout the game. But nobody said much about it, which proves that you can fool most of the people all of the time.
Overall, Arsenal’s 2-2 draw with Bayern Munich was a night when the performances of each team reflected the personalities and priorities of their respective managers. Hitzfeld was 51 and a pragmatic tactician who was in the results business, not the entertainment business; Wenger, also 51 but nine months younger, was more idealistic, in love with the beautiful game, dreaming of the perfect attacking performance backed by defensive concentration.
Hitzfeld must have left Highbury a content man; Wenger, having seen his team lose their shape, focus and nerve, the weaknesses in his side suddenly becoming obvious, was savagely disappointed. In those ultra-tense final seconds he was as furious as we had ever seen him.
In all their European games Arsenal had never really been outplayed, except by Kiev and Galatasaray, and they had chances to win those games.
In most of those games there had been a very fine line between success and failure. Wenger knew that Bayern Munich could be beaten, he knew how they could be beaten, and a win at Highbury would have been deeply satisfying.
But the year 2000 was about to end and that big victory, that night of satisfaction, was still proving elusive, still hovering just out of reach.
Arsenal were now bottom of Group C with one point from their first two games, but their Champions League fate was still in their own hands.
They could still beat Lyon twice and they could also take three points from the Spartak Moscow match at Highbury. But the next match was not until February, so it was time to focus again on the Premiership.
Arsenal got straight back into the groove by thrashing Newcastle 5-0 on 9 December.
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THAT was how I describe the 2-2 game in The Professor – Arsene Wenger at Arsenal.
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