Was Arsenal's Win Over Barcelona The Biggest Champions League Upset Ever?
On this week's Full Time Review, The Athletic's Art de Roche and Laia Cervello join the podcast to discuss how Arsenal stunned Barcelona to win the 2024-25 UEFA Women's Champions League. Was it the biggest upset in a final the competition has ever seen? How did Arsenal honor their rich history while creating a new legacy? Who were the key players and top performers? And, what was behind Barcelona's collapse in Lisbon?
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Welcome to The Briefing, where every Monday during this season, The Athletic will discuss three of the biggest questions to arise from the weekend's football in England. This was the weekend when the Premier League's 2025-26 campaign began with wins for the usual title-challenging suspects — that will be Liverpool, Manchester City and Arsenal — and saw Sunderland make a raucous return to the top flight with an emphatic 3-0 victory over West Ham United. Advertisement Here, we will evaluate Arsenal's largely unheralded victory over Manchester United at Old Trafford, try to make sense of Pep Guardiola's too-many-players conundrum at Manchester City and reflect on a dispiriting start for three clubs who might already be afflicted by early-season feelings of dread. There was something striking about Mikel Arteta in the build-up to the new season. 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The more serious questions last term were about whether a more attritional approach had come at the expense of creativity; for all the talk of needing a striker to put away all those missed chances, deeper analysis of those games where points were dropped highlighted a frequent struggle to create openings. As such, victory over United was not revelatory. Even Gyokeres' first hour in the Premier League brought no great surprises — good or bad — about a player who was known to be a faster, more aggressive, more direct attacking focal point than Kai Havertz or Gabriel Jesus but far less refined when it comes to build-up play. As Arteta suggested afterwards, it is a compliment to his team that, after years of misery at Old Trafford in the not-too-distant past, 'now we come here and win and we're still not satisfied'. 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Advertisement To take Brentford first, Thomas Frank is such a hard act to follow at a club that surpassed every expectation — again — by finishing 10th last season. For his successor Keith Andrews, perhaps the most worrying aspect of their 3-1 defeat at Nottingham Forest was how insipid — how unlike the modern Brentford — they looked in conceding three goals in the first half. It doesn't help at all that three key players (Mark Flekken, Christian Norgaard and Bryan Mbeumo) have been sold, a fourth (centre-forward Yoanne Wissa) is agitating for a transfer and a fifth (Mikkel Damsgaard) was absent after his wife gave birth. But Andrews called their performance 'naive', which is troubling because it is not a word you would often use of Frank's Brentford. West Ham's 3-0 defeat at the Stadium of Light was even more alarming, a competent first-half performance followed by a feeble reaction to falling behind to a Sunderland team enjoying their top-flight return to the full. 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It might yet happen again, but if Burnley, Leeds or Sunderland are to survive, then Brentford, West Ham and Wolves are the ones who look most vulnerable — not simply because of what happened at the weekend but because, if anything, those results compounded certain doubts. There were moments during Manchester City's opening game against Wolves at Molineux when Pep Guardiola, on the bench, looked so much happier and more relaxed than last season. An emphatic 4-0 victory will do that for a coach, particularly with new signing Tijjani Reijnders making such a positive impact and Oscar Bobb so lively as he looks to put last season's injury behind him. But afterwards Guardiola highlighted an ongoing concern about the size of his squad: not the usual managerial gripe about 'needing more bodies' but, on the contrary, a genuine sense of angst about 'too many people'. 'It's not healthy,' the City manager said. 'You cannot create a good vibe or atmosphere to compete. 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There isn't the desperation that Chelsea faced with so many unwanted players as last summer's transfer deadline approached, but there is certainly a pressure to make sales or at least loans in addition to the departures of Kyle Walker (to Burnley), Maximo Perrone (to Como), Jack Grealish (to Everton on loan) and James McAtee (to Nottingham Forest). Unusually these days, the greatest pressure comes from the coach rather than the need to satisfy PSR's requirements. Guardiola is clear City need to move players on before September 1, but, beyond Stefan Ortega and Kalvin Phillips, it is still not clear which of them he would be wiling to let go. There are logical 'for the right price' candidates, such as Manuel Akanji or Mateo Kovacic, given the fact that City have reinforced in their positions, but their ages (30 and 31 respectively) might make it difficult to find buyers. If trimming the squad is to be a matter of high priority for Guardiola, there might be some difficult decisions ahead. Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Play today's puzzle
