Bukayo Saka missed from a near-unmissable position and Arsenal missed out again.
A 2-1 loss to Paris Saint-Germain on Wednesday ended Arsenal’s hopes of winning the Champions League and halting a barren trophy run that now stretches five years.
PSG won the two-legged semifinal 3-1 on aggregate and will play Inter Milan in the final in Munich on May 31.
Arsenal will wonder how another season of promise has ended up empty-handed.
“We have to learn from this. We did a lot of good things, but it’s not enough,” captain Martin Odegaard said after the match in Paris.
It might have been different had Saka not fired over the bar with an open net to aim at in the 79th — but Arsenal had already given itself a mountain to climb at that point, having gone 2-0 down. Saka reduced the deficit and could have leveled the score on the night if not for his wayward finish.
“Inside the boxes, over the two games, we weren’t good enough,” Odegaard said.
A top class center forward is likely top of Mikel Arteta’s wanted list when the transfer window opens — and his failure to strengthen his forward line in January has undermined Arsenal’s campaign.
A challenge for the Premier League title fizzled out and it is only Arsenal’s form in Europe that has disguised its failings since the turn of the year.
Arteta’s team has won only three of its last 10 league games and just one of the last five. Blowing the lead against Bournemouth last weekend was the fourth time in five league games that it has dropped points from a winning position.
Arsenal has saved its biggest performances for the Champions League — beating holder Real Madrid home and away in the quarterfinals. But its hopes of a first final appearance since 2006 were ended by a PSG team that finally looks ready to conquer Europe after more than decade of lavish spending from its Qatari backers.
What next for Arsenal after this latest near miss?
Injuries to forwards Kai Havertz and Gabriel Jesus have not helped, but Arsenal’s trophy wait goes on.
Arteta’s only major trophy with the club was in his first year when they won the FA Cup in 2020.
Since then he has restored Arsenal to one of the biggest forces in English soccer and returned it to the Champions League.
There were back-to-back runner-up spots in the Premier League over the past two seasons and it is currently second to champion Liverpool this year.
A Champions League quarterfinal last year was followed by a semifinal this time around. But still no trophy.
There have been two Community Shields since the FA Cup triumph, but they are not widely considered major trophies, rather a curtain raiser to the season that is often described as a glorified friendly match.
“Sometimes you have to lose a few in order to win and you have to overcome some of these setbacks and mentally grow as a person and as a player and as a group,” Arsenal midfielder Declan Rice said. “We’re going through that at the moment, a few losses, in terms of losing out in the league and coming close in the Champions League in back-to-back years.
“PSG have gone through tonight and we’re absolutely gutted but this doesn’t define us for sure.”
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James Robson is at https://twitter.com/jamesalanrobson
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AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
