Despite having made 405 senior appearances for club and country/countries, Declan Rice had never scored with a direct free-kick before the match between Arsenal and Real Madrid at the Emirates Stadium. Indeed, not only had the Arsenal midfielder never scored from a direct free-kick, he had not even provided the slightest shred of evidence that he might be a mite handy over any dead ball that wasn’t placed near the corner flag, ready to be arced with precision on to the head of one of his teammates. So when Rice channelled his inner Roberto Carlos and defied both his instructions from the bench and the laws of physics to curl the first of two free-kicks around the four-man defensive wall and centimetres inside the upright, it seemed fitting that the Brazilian he’d just emulated was in the stadium to see his thunder(bolt) stolen by a 26-year-old Londoner playing in one of the biggest games of his career.
It’s just funny for my mum because she left Poland to come to England and make a life; I left England to go to Poland to start my journey” – Maxi Oyedele gets his chat on with Will Unwin about his life at Manchester United, a tough loan spell at Forest Green and finding his feet at Legia Warsaw, who play Chelsea on Thursday.
Top marks to The Guardian for its behind-the-scenes exposé of Real Madrid’s preparations on Monday, complete with a photo that told its own story. The Spaniards’ pre-game worries about dealing with Arsenal’s set-piece prowess were certainly realized in spectacular fashion last night, if not from the expected quarter. However, preparing Thibaut Courtois by having him make saves in a drastically reduced goal seems to have been a bad error of judgment, in retrospect” – Justin Kavanagh.
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