A Real Pain: Madrid's Folly Laid Bare by Capitulation

On the way out of the Emirates Stadium, someone asked Kylian Mbappé whether Real Madrid could still do this. "Course we can," he replied, three words and then he was gone.

- Sid Lowe

On the way out of the Emirates Stadium, someone asked Kylian Mbappé whether Real Madrid could still do this. "Course we can," he replied, three words and then he was gone. In front of him, Vinícius Júnior left in silence. Rodrygo passed by unnoticed again. Luka Modric didn't talk, nor did Fede Valverde. Lucas Vázquez and Raúl Asencio did, then Thibaut Courtois and Jude Bellingham.

"We weren't good," Vázquez said. Courtois said: "We forgot to play well." Asencio said: "It's not what we expected," but it wasn't unexpected either, which is why it was the description Bellingham didn't use which said it best. Asked whether he was shocked, Bellingham said: "I don't know if 'shocked' is the right word."

No one who has watched them all year could have truly been shocked by this, except that they're Real Madrid and Real Madrid always seem to find a way. "There is nothing we can draw from external excuses or anything like that; we have to look at ourselves," Bellingham said. "These are similar sets of themes to when we have dropped points all season. It's happened again on a larger scale."

Courtois wondered whether he might have put an extra man in the wall, but that was such a tiny failing alongside those of the team that it felt slightly absurd. By the end of the 3-0 defeat, it wasn't even that Madrid were bad exactly, a catalogue of identifiable errors, a long list of mistakes and men to blame, although there are always some of those; it was more that they just, well, weren't. The goals had been superb and Bellingham spoke of how well Arsenal had played, which they had, but Madrid had been, well, nothing really: a void, 11 empty grey shirts.