Why history offers hope for Arsenal after Champions League near miss – and one nagging concern

“Back to back” read the message projected on to Budapest’s elegantly historic main train station, Keleti palyaudvar. It was in English, though perhaps it should have been in French, with the faces of Ousmane Dembele and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia beneath the words. It is Paris Saint-Germain who have gone back to back.

With a couple of different penalties, it could have been Martin Odegaard and Declan Rice’s images there. Instead, after Arsenal’s Champions League final defeat, their faces were seen only in the bowels of the Puskas Arena.

The ground is named after a man who scored four times in a European Cup final, in a team who got seven goals, which is not something that Arsenal, as a team, threatened to do. They only mustered seven shots. But it still took spot kicks to beat them. “Small margins,” rued the captain Odegaard, powerless to take part in the shootout after being substituted. “You want to win it so bad and to end up with nothing is brutal.”

Rice finished with the armband, converted his penalty and then delivered the rallying cry. It was underpinned by both realism and optimism. “The overriding emotion is that we are devastated,” he said. “But congratulations to PSG. Over the last couple of seasons, they have been the best team in Europe.”

It felt a significant admission; unlike Mikel Arteta, Rice did not plead misfortune about Noni Madueke’s rejected penalty appeal when the winger grappled with Nuno Mendes. Paris Saint-Germain have beaten Arsenal both years they have won the trophy; 3-1 in the semi-final in 2025, now only on spot kicks in 2026. Arsenal finished far above them in the league phase both times. Ultimately, though, they were not the best team in Europe.

But they are getting closer. “Ever since I have come to this club we have been going on an upwards trajectory,” said Rice. That is true in the Champions League: after losing in the quarter-final, semi-final and now final, there is only one step left to take. But it is the hardest step. Arsenal made it in the Premier League, from second to first. Making the equivalent leap in Europe may be harder still.

“To win the Premier League after 22 years was a dream and getting to this final was also a dream come true but it wasn’t meant to be,” Rice added. “It doesn’t define us. We are going to use this moment to add fuel to the upcoming seasons. Speaking to the players and the manager, there is no reason why we are stopping here.

“We’re gutted but we move on. There’s been so many top players who have taken so many years to win their first Champions League. This is the way it is. Seeing that trophy, seeing them lift it: we want that, we want that success.”

Rice may take heart from PSG, who have shed their status as Champions League nearly men to go back to back, as Budapest station declared. Or not, given the sense that Luis Enrique has forged a new team, untainted by past failures. There were outstanding PSG players, such as Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Edinson Cavani, who never won the Champions League or, in the case of Thiago Silva, only did after he left.

A couple of Premier League precedents can offer encouragement. Chelsea eventually prevailed in 2012, consigning heartbreak and near-misses to their past. Manchester City’s long-awaited triumph came in 2023 and with a core of the players who had come close before, though not the generation of Sergio Aguero, David Silva, Vincent Kompany and Fernandinho.

The age profile of Arteta’s squad, with Leandro Trossard the only outfielder over 28 to take the field in Budapest, suggests few need to be pensioned off, though there is a case they could benefit from attacking upgrades. Arsenal scored four goals in five European games from the quarter-final onwards this season; over three campaigns, they have 12 goals in 11 such matches.

There is also the problem that there is a history of sides who come close but never scale the highest peaks. A decade ago, Diego Simeone’s Atletico Madrid and Massimiliano Allegri’s Juventus both reached two Champions League finals in three seasons, won neither and could not get there again. More recently, Internazionale, under Simone Inzaghi, have done likewise. The manager has gone. Some of those players will never win the Champions League.

Rewind two decades and Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal were the best side of their era never to become European champions; one of the best of any era, perhaps. That side had more elan than this, but Arteta’s more efficient methods almost succeeded where the Invincibles could not.

This summer, Rice can test his theory that persistence will eventually pay off. He has been part of an England side who have reached two finals, and taken one to a penalty shootout. For Rice, England and Arsenal, the upwards trajectory may continue. The danger is it may not. But at least he and Arsenal have hit top spot in the Premier League.