Arsenal can’t get through The Wall, fallout as Wolves Women blocked from promotion

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Hello! Aim for the top corner today. Especially if Gianluigi Donnarumma is in goal.

On the way:

The Wall: Arsenal can’t break through pure shot-stopper Donnarumma

In the pre-match huddle before last night’s Champions League semi-final, Arsenal dropped their guard and Declan Rice was overhead shouting: “If we don’t have the ball, we die.”

So it proved. Come minute four at the Emirates, Paris Saint-Germain had the ball and Ousmane Dembele was shooting in off the far post. The first leg turned 1-0 in their favour and resolutely stayed that way.

But while PSG feast on possession, there’s a reason they don’t sound the death rattle without it. Behind the wildfire of their interchangeable front three and the most balanced midfield in club football is the near two-metre-high wall of Gianluigi Donnarumma. They have ace cards at every turn.

PSG have grown to be so much more than technical fun and Donnarumma — notwithstanding some chronic blemishes — is so much more than a penalty-save merchant. He saw the club through a shootout at Liverpool in the last 16, true, but his spine held when PSG lost theirs collectively during the quarter-finals at Aston Villa, and he was big when it mattered (twice) against Arsenal.

Amazon Prime’s Clarence Seedorf tossed in a great line about how to nullify Donnarumma’s maddening reach: “A good idea? The top corner.”

A long road back

(Amazon Prime Sport)

Save one, from Gabriel Martinelli (top GIF), required a long arm and a strong hand. It might have been that Martinelli was offside (Amazon didn’t provide conclusive replays), but still. Leandro Trossard definitely wasn’t offside when Donnarumma fingertipped his shot wide after half-time (above). As goalkeeping gets increasingly more complex and adventurous, the fundamentals still have their place.

Arsenal paid for those small fractions because from then on, PSG ground the tie down beautifully. In fact, PSG had Arsenal on toast as time ran out. Bradley Barcola fluffed from close range. Goncalo Ramos struck the crossbar. Mikel Arteta was that close to season over.

Taking a deficit to Paris is nobody’s idea of a good time. And when Amazon’s cameras panned to the tunnel area, they reminded us just of how tied Arteta’s hands were. Kai Havertz was there with Thomas Partey and Riccardo Calafiori, all of them injured. Gabriel, with hamstring surgery behind him, knocked about like a spare part, too. Luis Enrique had cards to play, Arteta didn’t, and the road back from this 1-0 is longer than most.

• For semi-final two tonight, Barcelona versus Inter, Lamine Yamal made his press conference debut. More than 100 journalists crammed in to listen to the 17-year-old, who was guarded but spoke with a little swagger all the same. Pol Ballus gave his take on it and on Yamal’s anime-inspired hair dye. Dragon Ball Z is a new one on me.

News round-up

Welcome to Marseille: Champions League spot a close call at club where chaos is never far away

Only one French team has a Champions League on their record and it isn’t PSG. Marseille won the inaugural version in 1993, a rare and unrepeated gust of Gallic supremacy.

They retained that honour despite being caught up in a match-fixing scandal. Thirty years later, Marseille are still seemingly a club who exist on the edge of their next crisis.

Tom Williams’ feature on them and their head coach, Roberto De Zerbi, had me laughing at the intro, which explained how the squad recently tried to find seclusion and head space… by arranging a training camp in Rome during the very week the Pope died.

They sought some reflection time because their Champions League qualifying bid is wobbling. Marseille are second in Ligue 1, behind champions PSG, but are prone to combustion. This season, De Zerbi (in his own, on-brand fashion) randomly threatened to quit. It was reported that after a 3-1 defeat to Reims in March, he refused to turn up for a training session, driving a wedge between him and his players. It’s kind of how Marseille roll.

Like the Premier League, Ligue 1 is uber tight. PSG have run away with it, but behind them, six clubs vying for the other three Champions League spots are split by four points. Marseille’s place should be in the bag, but in their world, never say never.

‘Absolutely devastated’: Fallout at Wolves Women after club did not apply for promotion

(Jack Thomas – WWFC/Wolves via Getty Images)

Women’s football is a growth sport. Chelsea, who could secure the title tonight, value their Women’s Super League team at £200million ($268m). The latest domestic TV deal is worth £13m a year. It’s fertile commercial ground.

But not everybody is sold. There has been controversy at Wolverhampton Wanderers this week after it emerged the club didn’t bother to apply for promotion to the Women’s Championship in the event their team earned it. Worse still, the squad weren’t told of this until after the final game of the season.

Wolves missed out on the promotion slot in their division, but only by a fraction. Understandably, they’re furious. Their head of women’s football has quit. Other resignations might follow. Midfielder Beth Merrick called the intransigence “astonishing” and said the group of players are “absolutely devastated”.

Wolves are committed to maintaining a women’s squad, but only to a point and only on a part-time basis. Even though the cost in 2023-24 was just 0.2 per cent of their entire wage bill, the club’s owner is reluctant to divert more money in that direction. Participation is fine. Elite ambition is not. Each to their own, but there was surely a far classier way of handling this.

Around TAFC

• Liverpool’s season deserved a deep data dive. Reading ours, I was struck by how their counter-attacking dropped in quantity but increased in quality, while also involving Mohamed Salah more. Arne Slot got his tweaks bang on.
• Here’s a fantastic bit of nostalgia from Conor O’Neill on how Jose Mourinho and Inter knobbled Barca in the 2009-10 Champions League. Inter completed 74 passes in the second leg (lol), which has to go down as one of the most frustrating nights of Lionel Messi’s life.
• In Europe, promotion and relegation is the only system we know and the hitherto absence of it in the United States feels strange. But recently, Argentina and Mexico’s Liga MX have both suspended pro-rel for various reasons. So is the United Soccer League doing the right thing by embracing it?
• FIFA’s Club World Cup might be lucrative, but MLS players involved in it won’t be cashing in on big bonuses, owing to the league’s collective bargaining agreement. Paul Tenorio explains.
• Most clicked in yesterday’s TAFC: Premier League title predictions for next season. Yes, we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

Catch a match

(Selected games, times ET/UK)

Champions League semi-final first leg: Barcelona vs Inter, 3pm/8pm — CBS, Paramount+, Fubo/TNT Sports.

Women’s Super League: Manchester United vs Chelsea, 3.15pm/8.15pm — Sky Sports (UK only).

And finally…

(Sky Sports)

The Baller League, an indoor six-a-side franchise, was founded in Germany before spreading its wings to the U.S. and the United Kingdom. It’s an influencer’s playground and I don’t think I’m talking out of turn by saying that when we sent Stu James to take in a night of the British version, he felt every one of his 49 years.

To some, though, business is business. We’ve had ex-Watford captain and non-shrinking violet Troy Deeney elbowing a rival player in the face. We’ve seen one-time Premier League winner Micah Richards celebrate like a dope after a victory for a team he doesn’t even manage (above). Combine all that with some peculiar rules and my teeth are grinding. But as the saying goes: if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.

(Top photo: Aurelien Meunier — PSG/PSG via Getty Images)

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