Before Arsenal’s Champions League semi-final first leg against Paris Saint-Germain, Mikel Arteta stressed how important the home crowd could be.
“I’m not exaggerating when I say bring your boots, bring your shorts, bring your T-shirts and let’s play every ball together,” he told his pre-match press conference. “We want to do something special, that place has to be something special, something that we haven’t seen.”
On matchday, Arsenal even released a video on social media with Arteta addressing supporters to say, “I count on you. Let’s make it happen.”
But television coverage of the 1-0 defeat to Paris Saint-Germain was critical of the stadium’s atmosphere, with Wayne Rooney telling TNT, “(I was) disappointed with the fans… I thought tonight they were a bit subdued… almost like an anti-climax because Arsenal beat Real Madrid, that they are going to walk into the final (and) win the competition.”
There has also been some social media criticism of the steps Arsenal took to augment the atmosphere, with the cannon tifo draped from the roof of the North Bank the subject of some barbed comments.
Arsenal turned down the fans tifo design request to produce this monstrosity. Champions League semi-final and this was the best they could come up with? So disappointed. pic.twitter.com/6WBPKqXUS5
— Connor Humm (@TikiTakaConnor) April 29, 2025
The Athletic’s James McNicholas, Art de Roché and Kaya Kaynak were all in attendance on Tuesday night and discussed their thoughts on the atmosphere at the Emirates Stadium.
James McNicholas: The atmosphere was absolutely electric for the first leg against Real Madrid. How do you think this compared?
Kaya Kaynak: Prior to the game, the atmosphere was really good. In the concourses, people were singing, which wasn’t the case against Real Madrid. Everyone seemed to be in their seat nice and early. The pre-match choruses of “allez, allez, allez” were just as good as the Madrid match.
Art de Roché: I wasn’t at the Real Madrid game, but ahead of kick-off I felt like this was the loudest I had experienced the Emirates pre-match. I even asked James just before the game if it was this loud for Madrid and posted a video because it felt different.
Great noise ahead of kick off pic.twitter.com/PhCyDj1TBi
— Art de Roché (@ArtdeRoche) April 29, 2025
Kaynak: I think a combination of the awkwardly-timed minute’s silence for Pope Francis, PSG’s early goal and Arsenal’s jittery start poured cold water over any flames of atmosphere that were building up.
McNicholas: That minute of silence happened, and of course, it dampened everything down. I understand that Pope Francis is a much-loved figure, but as a fan, you just want to keep that cauldron of noise at boiling point. The same thing happened in the Bernabeu when they had a period of silence for Leo Beenhakker and Mario Vargas Llosa — it took the sting out of it, and that helped Arsenal.
Kaynak: The fact that the players weren’t ready for it and that the referee seemed confused as to when to blow the whistle really didn’t help either. It was tricky to get back up to the levels that had been built so perfectly when the players walked out. It might have made more sense to do the minute’s silence before the Crystal Palace game.
De Roché: It took ages for the majority of the stadium to fall into silence, and even then, patches of the ground couldn’t hold in their noise for long.
Kaynak: This may seem minor, but Arsenal switched up their pre-match routine slightly. Normally, the players’ names will be read out by the stadium announcer once the players have walked out on the pitch and after the Champions League anthem has been played. It keeps fans engaged as the players do the pre-match rituals like the squad photo and coin toss, and usually builds a pretty nice atmosphere as fans cheer the players.
This time, though, they were read out before the players had even walked out. I think it left people sort of milling about on the terraces in that weird gap between when the players walk out and when the game actually kicks off. Like I say, small fry in the grand scheme of things, but something that felt a bit out of kilter.
McNicholas: That’s interesting. I think UEFA matchdays have their own rhythm, and Arsenal also had to accommodate the silence. What did you make of Arteta’s pre-match rallying cry?
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De Roché: That was not too surprising. Arsenal have used Arteta in similar types of videos ahead of big matches for years, so it made sense for another to come for arguably the biggest game in the Emirates era. Particularly after his pre-match press conference, it felt like Arteta was making possibly his biggest effort yet to generate an energy with fans who would be at the stadium. To be fair to him, it seemed to have worked early on.
Kaynak: To be honest, I’m not sure how much of a difference it makes. Arteta had been talking about fans bringing the atmosphere in his press conferences since the Crystal Palace game, so this video felt a bit like overkill. The fact that the videos are so widely shared on social media beforehand means that they don’t have that much of an effect when they’re played in the stadium just before kick-off too. Everyone has seen them by that point already, so the novelty kind of wears off.
McNicholas: And what of the tifos? I must admit, I was pretty excited by the talk of a huge tifo being hung from the roof of the North Bank. In reality, however, it was pretty underwhelming: it looked a bit limp, and the design felt quite corporate as compared to some of the tifos you’ll see across Europe.
Kaynak: With all the wiring in the stadium, there was a lot of hype before the match about what it would be, but when the flag was unfurled, it was a bit of a damp squib. Arsenal have done things like putting plastic bags on seats for fans to hold up as the players walk out in the recent past, and they’ve made for stunning visuals. But this was nowhere near that.
McNicholas: Those bags worked brilliantly for the Real Madrid game, creating that red-and-white mosaic effect that stretched all the way around the ground.
Kaynak: There were some suggestions for alternative tifo designs doing the rounds on social media that were supposedly rejected by the club, and, to be honest, I get why. Arsenal didn’t want to give PSG any extra impetus. But in what was probably the biggest game since the club moved to the Emirates, there was surely a balance to be struck.
Arsenal only needed to look to the last away game PSG played in the Champions League, where Aston Villa stayed comfortably on the right side of the thin line between intimidation and offence with a beautiful tifo that celebrated the heritage of Villa Park. They could have done the same, but this half-hearted effort just ended up feeling pretty sterile.
De Roché: I thought the “Make it Happen” tifo fit the occasion, but the cannon one missed the mark. Ahead of the Real Madrid game, a tifo of Thierry Henry’s celebration from 2006 was shown — that’s another example of getting it right. That tifo wasn’t massive, but it was emotive in many ways and got a clear message across.
The cannon was a bit lacklustre after seeing the strings up in preparation the day before. Arsenal have tried using tifos before but, as Kaya has said, I think there are many better examples of how to get it right in the Premier League. Other than Aston Villa’s pre-PSG, Crystal Palace’s are probably the standout tifos in England. The makeup of their stadiums may help, but that does still feel like an area for Arsenal to improve in.
McNicholas: I know Arsenal have engaged with fan groups about the tifos. It’s such a difficult balance to strike between taking active steps to improve the atmosphere, and that tipping over into feeling corporate or inauthentic. I actually think Arsenal have trodden that line really well in recent years, and there’s been a significant benefit in terms of atmosphere. The club, as well as fan groups, deserve credit for helping to foster that. Maybe the execution was a bit off this time, but I can be sympathetic to that. It’s good that they’re prepared to try new things.
Changing subject slightly, there’s an ongoing debate among Arsenal fans about ticket access and the ballot system. Art and I were sitting in the press box — did the ground feel like it was full of authentic, passionate supporters?
Kaynak: There was a bit of a split. Where I sit, there are a bunch of regulars who come to every game. To my right, all the usual people were there, but to my left it was mostly strangers. If I’m being honest, though, that was similar at the Real Madrid game. I think there are some serious flaws with the ballot system that Arsenal use, but I have my reservations over how much that really impacted the atmosphere on the night against PSG.
McNicholas: So, what did impact the atmosphere? A goal for PSG within the first four minutes certainly didn’t help!
Kaynak: Yeah, that was a real sucker punch. Since Covid, pretty much whenever Arsenal have conceded at the Emirates, fans have reacted with an encouraging roar to try and get the team going again, but it didn’t really happen here. I think, from that point on, the atmosphere turned quite anxious, particularly with how well PSG were pressing, and I think that translated onto the pitch where usually cool customers like William Saliba, Jurrien Timber and David Raya looked quite nervous.
De Roché: Other than the minute’s silence and early goal, I think PSG keeping the ball as well as they did in the first 10-15 minutes had an impact too. One of Arsenal’s biggest improvements in recent years has been how they perform away from home, and a big part of that is how they keep the ball to take the energy out of a home crowd before taking the game where they want it to go. It was unfortunate they had that happen to them, as their noise seemed to come in flashes after what appeared to be a promising build-up.
McNicholas: I think in that first half an hour, there was a bit of a collective reassessment as the home fans recognised and came to terms with the scale of the task. I haven’t seen Arsenal dominated like that at home for a long time.
Kaynak: I do wonder if all the pre-match fervour created a bit of mental fatigue in the second half as well. After Merino’s goal was disallowed, Arsenal looked shattered, and given they’ve had a week off, physical tiredness can’t really be an excuse. When there was nothing dynamic happening off the pitch, it was hard to build an atmosphere in the stands.
The stop-start nature of the game didn’t help either. The officials seemed to really sweat the small stuff, like where players were standing on throw-ins, and when that happens, it’s really hard to build any momentum.
McNicholas: I think that’s the key word: momentum. The momentum of team and crowd was derailed by that early PSG goal, and I don’t think the atmosphere fully recovered. Had Arsenal scored first, it would undoubtedly have been a different story.
It’d also be remiss not to mention the PSG fans, who certainly played their part on the night. I wonder if the fact that their chanting was so audible on television has played into the subsequent discourse around the fans and the atmosphere. I can’t remember many noisier sets of travelling supporters. Hopefully, the Arsenal fans can match their efforts in Paris next week.
(Top photo: Michael Steele/Getty Images)
