PSV is suffering greatest European defeat ever against elusive Arsenal: 1-7

He sits in his red chair, the eyes empty, the mouth slightly opened. Peter Bosz looks ahead and very slowly shakes his head, as if he doesn't know it anymore. Only three minutes ago he was in the dressing room with his players from PSV and shelled a glimmer of hope. Perhaps, despite the 1-3 deficit, something was still possible after the break, with another battle plan.

Now the desperation can be read from his face, Bosz looks as if all the energy has just left the body through his feet. Because after two more goals in just a minute, he knows that it is over. Even though PSV still has one and a half match to play, a 5-1 deficit against a team like Arsenal even finds the biggest dreamer unbelievable.

It gets even worse when there are another two hits in the last fifteen minutes. And that is still considered outside the two rejected goals of the British visitors. After the surprising victory over Liverpool, the blood-curdling conclusion against Red Star Belgrade and Sjachtar Donetsk and the spectacular change against Juventus, a new stunt is never in the eighth finals of the Champions League (1-7).

Change of position

They were warned in advance. No team in Europe is so deadly efficient in standard situations as Arsenal. They already scored eighteen times this season, free kicks and especially corners. While PSV has been unusually vulnerable at corner kicks in the last few weeks, figures from the Statspleform data agency. This year, sixteen goals were already from dead game moments, against three in the entire previous season.

But it is not the standard situations that PSV must fear, it soon becomes apparent, but the continuous changes in Arsenal. The left winger that suddenly pops up on the right with the ball on his foot. The striker who collapses so deeply that he is just before his own defenders. The rear right that is sometimes deeper than the three vanguard players in attacks.

At times it seems that at Arsenal nobody is in his position, except the goalkeeper. PSV has trouble dealing with that. Do the attacking midfielders have to hunt for left-back MyLes Lewis-Skelly if he pops up like a sort of inspector for his own defense? Or does right winger have to follow Ivan Perisic the very young Londoner? The result is often that neither does it.

Yet there is a little hope for another brutal evening as two weeks ago against Juventus. It arises when Perisic starts back from the right and pops up through combinations with his fellow players left front. His pass ends up at the feet of Ismael Saibari, who shoots hard at the intersection. In the second instance, the ball goes just wide.

A minute later, that bravado disappeared, when Lewis-Skelly wanderes to two PSV players in midfield and Leandro Trossard will respond. He finds, between two men, left -wing Declan Rice, who roams the penalty area like a striker. His high cross is headed in by Right Jurriën Timber.

It takes thirteen minutes, and then the game is actually decided. First Ethan Nwaneri, the front right, who pops up on the left and shoots a pass from Lewis-Skelly hard. Shortly thereafter, the 3-0, when Timber, is struggling by three PSV people into the penalty area, after which striker Mikel Merino finishes. The 1-3 falls just before half-time from a penalty kick, taken by Noa Lang.

Greatest European defeat ever

On this last day of carnival, on which entire groups of fans appear in costumes in the stadium, PSV will collect his greatest European defeat ever. It is a jet black end of a week in which the reigning national champion was first eliminated in the Dutch cup and after a defeat in the competition also seems to have definitively lost the title. The only thing that remains is to defend second place, and a new chance in the Champions League next season.

If, after half time, Martin Ødegaard and Trossard also score in a short time, the question is how painfully ends the evening. The fact that only two goals fall in the last forty minutes (Ødegaard and Riccardo Calafiori) is almost a windfall, given the ease with which Arsenal exposes the vulnerabilities in PSV's defense.

To share





Mail the editors