I write this chronicle while I return to London in Madrid and I find it honestly difficult to summarize exactly what I feel after last night events in Bernabeu.
He simply does not become bigger than what Arsenal did at the home of the 15 European Champions. They have become adult before our eyes. It was just very, very special to testify.
Declan Rice was phenomenal on both legs.
It was as a 180 -minute performance as you will see from a player on the biggest scene.
Obviously, he had a lot of praise after his free kicks in the first leg, and rightly so, but the performance he produced at the Bernabeu was as good as possible.
It was a colossus at the heart of the midfielder. I don’t think there is a single grass blade on this ground that he has not covered.
It was a tireless display. A performance for ages on the biggest stages of the man of 105 million pounds from Arsenal.
No matter who he was against it, no one could approach him.
It was just everywhere, to break Madrid’s attacks at one end to advance Arsenal to the other.
You can’t really give a thing about its performance and that’s what makes it so special. He simply encapsulated everything you need or want a midfielder.
The perfect display all around.
Jude Bellingham could not face Declan Rice – and it showed
You could see how Jude Bellingham was frustrated by all this. Like all the best players, Bellingham clearly has an ego, you can see that by the way he plays and to be fair, it is this arrogance that sees him standing out from most other players. He feeds on it.
But his ego was clearly bruised by the way Rice rides on both legs.
There was only one midfielder in England on the ground in the Emirates and the Bernabeu and it was certainly not Bellingham.
It was a difficult start to the season for rice. Like most of the players who had been in euros and went deep in the competition, he had trouble hitting his form higher in the first months of the campaign.
But he’s now and he has been doing it for a few months.
Very few large funds signatures are up to their price labels. Just look at the biggest transfers in the history of football to see this.
Price labels weigh heavily on most, but this is not the case on rice.
“Declan Rice, we had half price” is the song that Arsenal fans sing. It is very difficult to argue.
