The taking down of two nation-state endeavours proved too great a stretch for Arsenal in the end. And stretch they certainly did, blocking countless through balls, darts into the penalty area and blocks. Given the personnel they had and the shape of many of them, there may have been nothing more they could have given.
Through the pain, Mikel Arteta seemed to sense that. He knew what needed to change. Asked if his team needed to move towards the "fluidity and freedom" that PSG had shown on their route to the final — but arguably not for two hours in Budapest — he agreed. "The individual action that they have for sure" was something Arsenal need to replicate.
Without it, Arteta is not taking for granted that they get back to games like Saturday's. Over three years of second places in the Premier League, prolonged agony that ended in the most glorious fashion 11 days ago, this club proved they have the stomach for the most gruelling of fights. It is not the mentality Arsenal need to improve, as their manager seemed to acknowledge.
"You have to go through that pain, digest it and turn it into fuel and improve to reach a different level," said Arteta. "It will demand a different level with the quality around Europe.
"We'll start to make some very important decisions, we want to reach another level. We're going to have to show that ambition because they are more than capable of doing it but it's going to demand us to be very, very ambitious, very fast and very smart."
Arsenal fall one moment short of the defensive perfection that would have won them the Champions League James Benge
A need for that "individual action" has obsessed Arteta over recent months. Internally, he has taken to speaking about moments players far more than he did in the early years of the Arsenal rise.
It is easy to see why. So long as William Saliba, Gabriel and the rest are fit, that defense has proven itself capable of keeping the best attack in Europe to about as many non-penalty expected goals as a middling Premier League outfit. They have squeezed more juice from set pieces than any team on the planet. Their possession game is rock solid.
They just need those game-breaking attackers, the sort that only they can lock down. It's the same problem that has bedevilled Arteta since they broke through as real title contenders. The guys he has are all pretty good. He just needs one or two more great.
Arsenal's problem has not been one of conversion. In the past four Premier League seasons, they have 319 goals, a shade over two a game and a mark only bettered by Manchester City. No team has over-performed its xG by more in that time period. Leandro Trossard, in particular, and Declan Rice have given them more goals than the quality of chances would suggest.
Ultimately, the issue is less conversion than volume of chances created. Some of this is a function of Arsenal favoring a game where they take fewer shots but give up far fewer. With the right additions, they can still play in a way that gives their opposition nothing because the one thing every elite forward has in common is that they get their shots up and at volume.
In the last four seasons, only Gabriel Jesus has averaged over three non-penalty shots per 90 in the Premier League. Too many of Arteta's forwards hover at the two-and-a-half mark. Viktor Gyokeres, for whom it is fair to say Arsenal did not pay the price that one would normally expect to pay for a truly elite forward, just about scraped over two.
CBS Sports It is the same story when you combine non-penalty xG and expected assists (xA). The true hyper forwards across Europe — Lamine Yamal, Kylian Mbappe, the Bayern Munich triumvirate — might average over 0.8 npxG+xA per 90. In the more competitive Premier League, 0.6 is very good stuff. It is the sort of number that Bukayo Saka fell just short of in what was a down year for him.
No one else gets close. Gyokeres' 0.48 puts him a little ahead of Danny Welbeck and Dominic Calvert-Lewin. Trossard is the only other player to clear 0.4. Maybe the fact that Arsenal have four players in the league's top 50 for npxG+xA is partly a function of their more cautious style but it is not as if Arteta has them camping out in their own third for 90 minutes every week. At some point, it has to be said that this team is missing that little bit of magic, that one player who might have beaten a couple of men and smashed it into the top bins in that spell after the penalty and before the 80th minute, when Arsenal's batteries hadn't been fully drained.
Who's next?
Identifying the problem is the easy bit. Quantifying it, that's quite straightforward. Resolving it shouldn't be that much of a problem either. After all, the best attackers in the game tend not to hide their light under a bushel. Arsenal's dream target might be Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, but the winger, who got so little joy from Cristhian Mosquera for an hour until that penalty, is understood to be settled at PSG. His teammate Bradley Barcola is another that the Gunners have tracked and is often the one to miss out from Luis Enrique's XI in the biggest games. The European champions would, however, demand a high price for the 23-year-old and have held talks over extending his contract.
Julian Alvarez is, in spite of relatively middling league output, another option for Arsenal. The trouble is that he is also one for PSG and Barcelona, the latter's pursuit of him evidently spooking Atletico Madrid.
Beyond that, there are not a great many sure things. This is not an age of vintage forwards across the game and the best of the best are already locked up. How different might this team be if they had beaten Barcelona to the services of Raphinha in 2022? There was a player who was clearly extremely talented but where a record of 17 goals and 12 assists in 65 Premier League games might at least have you pausing for thought.
Arsenal might be on course for three-quarters of a billion in revenue this season but they are not a Manchester City or PSG. Their financial success is much more tied to their footballing performances. They need a high hit rate.
That is what they would have to think about when mulling players who might be the next Raphinha. Eli Junior Kroupi and Morgan Rogers would both welcome interest from north London, according to CBS Sports sources. Neither Bournemouth nor Aston Villa would want to lose key players but both will have to consider the Premier League and, in particular, UEFA's squad cost rules as they plan for next season. Both are young footballers of immense talent. Do they, however, move the needle in the here and now?
CBS Sports As a pure scorer, Kroupi looks like he might have what is needed. As would be expected of a player under Andoni Iraola, he presses a lot, 38.7 pressures per 90 to be precise. Does the rest of his game round out under Arteta's tutelage? There would be plenty of time for it to happen.
However, Arsenal have not always looked the easiest fit when they play with a center forward who can't function as an outball, who can't bring his teammates into play. When Gyokeres plays, they miss the link-up qualities of Kai Havertz. When Havertz plays, they sometimes find themselves lacking a pure penalty box killer.
Is Kroupi that now? He certainly looks like he will be in the future. It is like Josh Kroenke asking Per Mertesacker in 2019 where he might get a Virgil van Dijk for Arsenal. At that point, they needed the Van Dijk of the future and got it in William Saliba. Every club must have an eye on the future but when this squad has come this close to so much, they cannot not maximize their window.
Gradient Sports Rogers, meanwhile, is the sort of moments player that Arteta has been enamoured with lately. Here is a man whose scoring profile this season might reasonably have anyone questioning the applicability of xG when they can strike a ball as well as he can. Rogers could play off the left or centrally and such a tall, rangy 23-year-old might be the sort that could be moulded into a center forward if required.
Rogers excels in other categories that Arsenal would consider too. Across Europe's top five leagues, only seven players played more minutes in all competitions. In this season's Premier League, only four covered more distance than Rogers' 391 kilometres, according to Gradient Sports. He works hard off the ball, too.
CBS Sports Those factors matter. When you are as good without the ball as Arsenal, it is a team effort. Kvaratskhelia and Desire Doue didn't just struggle on Saturday night because Mosquera and Piero Hincapie had great games but because whenever they beat their fullback, they ran into their winger. It is hard to find elite wide talent that is prepared to track back as often as Saka is. Without it, there may be problems for Arsenal.
Will some have to go?
Hovering over this summer's recruitment is the ambitious expenditure of a year prior. Their eight senior additions have Arsenal the depth to fulfil the vision of former technical director Edu, who on his first day at the club, laid out plans for two starter-level players in each position. It is worth noting that none of the four midfielders and attackers signed in 2025 — Martin Zubimendi, Noni Madueke, Viktor Gyökeres and Eberechi Eze — started the final.
Improving their XI will require Arsenal to make room. They are expected to entertain offers for Gabriel Martinelli, Ben White and Ethan Nwaneri. They could do the same for Trossard. Several clubs in Brazil hope to bring Gabriel Jesus back to his homeland as he enters the final year of his contract.
With two years on their deals, there will inevitably be decisions to be made over the future of Havertz and club captain Martin Odegaard. Both are trusted lieutenants of Arteta but have struggled to stay fit in consecutive seasons. The manager has made clear in recent weeks that for him, availability is one of the most important abilities.
Odegaard, meanwhile, wants to stay. "There is nothing to say at the moment," he said after the Champions League final. "I am under contract here and really happy here and hopefully I can stay many years."
Will the upgrades be enough?
Arsenal's transfer business has been so successful in the six and a half years under Arteta that an overpaid, underworked mess of a squad came within perhaps one mistake of a Premier League and Champions League double. They have earned a presumption that they will get their business right.
Will that be enough? No matter who they sign in their pursuit of European supremacy, they will still be up against a rival in PSG that are backed by Qatar's sovereign wealth fund. Arsenal might have taken down Manchester City and they might only need the right breaks elsewhere in next season's Champions League to swerve the champions. However, overhauling Luis Enrique's side may just be as tough as downing City. PSG could end their season with Nuno Mendes and Marquinhos playing fewer minutes in Ligue 1 than the Champions League.
Even though Arsenal will be favorites to retain their English crown, the Premier League will surely take lumps out of them. The Gunners won the title because they were more reliable against the mid and bottom tiers than City were but goodness it was a slog to even beat West Ham or Wolves. The Premier League is a black hole of talent, maybe not drawing the brightest stars but pulling in everyone else it wants to be crushed under the weight of its schedule.
Keep doing that and the English game will only make it easier for the few clubs who can resist their financial power. There will be exceptional seasons but the current route of travel suggests it will only get easier for Bayern Munich, PSG, Real Madrid and Barcelona to run their leagues.
Meanwhile, the Premier League will keep taking lumps out of its champions, to say nothing of the rest. If Arsenal want to be Europe's finest, they'll have to get better and they'll have to do it the hard way. Then again, if the last four seasons have shown us anything, it is that Arteta and his players are perfectly prepared to keep hammering away at the diamond-encrusted ceiling. Eventually, it might break their way.
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