🚨A Message From Legend Wenger To The Family.
My dear Arsenal family,
🗣️Football can be the most beautiful thing in the world, and also the cruellest. Yesterday we saw both.
🗣️I watched our players give everything on that pitch in Budapest their hearts, their souls, their intelligence. They played with the spirit that has defined this club for so long: courage, technical quality, and a refusal to give up even when the moments became difficult. Kai’s early goal, the way we controlled large parts of the game… we were so close again. So very close.
🗣️I know how much this hurts. I felt it myself in 2006. That pain is real because the love is real. When you care as deeply as we do at Arsenal, defeat in a final cuts to the bone. But please, do not let this moment define the season or the progress we have made. This team has brought the club back to the very highest level. They have consistency, they have character, and they have shown they belong among Europe’s elite.
🗣️To the players: hold your heads high. You have made us proud. To Mikel and the staff: you have built something special keep believing, keep building. To the fans who travelled and those watching everywhere: your support was magnificent, as always. You are the soul of this club.
🗣️I had so hoped to be with you on the streets of north London for the parade, to see the smiles, the flags, the pride in every face. But sadly I won’t be able to attend. Travel and health make it difficult at this time. Still, know that my heart will be right there with every single one of you, cheering, singing, and remembering how far we have come together.
🗣️The trophy is still missing from the Emirates, yes. But the journey to get there has been magnificent, and the story is not finished. We have come so far. Pain today, but hope and pride forever.
We will rise again. Because that is who we are.
Thank you, and I love this club with all my heart.
Arsène Wenger ❤️
Emmanuel Petit on Premier League clubs mocking Arsenal after the final defeat:
🗣️ “I have to say, I found it embarrassing.
The second Arsenal lost, some Premier League clubs couldn't wait to jump on social media and remind everyone about their European trophies.
That tells you everything.
Instead of supporting an English club representing the league on the biggest stage in club football, they were busy celebrating Arsenal's pain.
For me, that's not rivalry. That's insecurity.
Arsenal were 90 minutes away from doing something special, and rather than show respect, people were desperately searching through the history books for old trophies to post online.
Why? Because they were terrified of seeing Arsenal join that club.
Let's be honest, some of these clubs spent the entire season watching Arsenal compete at a level they couldn't reach.
The jealousy was obvious.
The moment Arsenal fell short, they treated it like they had won something themselves.
That's the mentality of people who would rather see Arsenal fail than focus on their own success.
The trophy may have slipped away, but the reaction from some rivals showed exactly how much Arsenal still live rent-free in their heads.”
🚨🎙️Thierry Henry on why Arsenal didn’t lose the Champions League Final to PSG, they lost it to inconsistency from the officials:
“People are talking about PSG winning the Champions League. Fine. But let’s tell the truth: Arsenal were not beaten by PSG, Arsenal were beaten by inconsistency.
You cannot tell me Kvaratskhelia gets a penalty for contact in one box and then Noni Madueke gets clipped by Nuno Mendes in extra time and suddenly we’re told to play on. Football does not have two different rulebooks. Either contact that impedes an attacker is a foul, or it isn’t.
The Madueke incident is the one that will haunt Arsenal supporters for years. He gets in front, Mendes makes contact, Madueke goes down, the referee says no penalty, VAR says no penalty. If that happens in midfield, it’s a foul every single time. But because it’s in the penalty area in a Champions League Final, everyone becomes brave and wants to ‘let the game flow.’
Then people wonder why fans get frustrated.
And don’t tell me it was one isolated incident. Arsenal had a corner taken away before half-time. Every 50-50 challenge in the second half seemed to go PSG’s way. Arsenal were accused of time-wasting and suddenly every decision felt like a punishment.
What Arsenal fans are asking for isn’t favoritism. It’s consistency.
If PSG’s penalty is a penalty, then Madueke’s is a penalty. You cannot spend all season telling players to get in front of defenders, win the position, draw contact, and then in the biggest game in club football decide the rules have changed.
The sad part is that we’ll spend years talking about PSG lifting the trophy when the real talking point should be why Arsenal were denied the opportunity to win it themselves.
For me, PSG didn’t prove they were the better team. The officials made sure we would never find out.”
🚨 Mesut Özil Slams Referee After Arsenal's Controversial Champions League Final Defeat
🗣️: "I have watched football for many years, and I understand that referees can make mistakes. Nobody expects perfection. But tonight, it genuinely felt like Arsenal were fighting against more than just PSG.
The incident involving Madueke was a clear penalty for me. In any other game, anywhere else on the pitch, that contact is given as a foul immediately. I struggle to understand how the referee saw it and decided there was nothing there. Even more surprising was the lack of intervention. Moments like that can completely change a final.
What frustrated me most was the consistency. Every important decision seemed to go against Arsenal. Small fouls were given one way but not the other. Challenges that deserved bookings were ignored. Every 50-50 call appeared to favour PSG. As a player, that is incredibly difficult because you begin to feel that no matter what you do, the decisions are not going your way.
A Champions League final should be decided by the players, the coaches and the football itself, not by controversial refereeing decisions. Arsenal may not have played their best game, but they still deserved a fair opportunity to compete. When such a clear penalty is not awarded, people are always going to ask questions.
I feel sorry for the players because they worked all season to reach this stage. You can accept losing when the better team wins fairly, but it is much harder to accept when major decisions leave a cloud over the result. For me, Arsenal deserved that penalty on Madueke, and they deserved much better from the officials tonight."
Arsene Wenger after the game:
We reached the final and gave everything we had, but I cannot help feeling that the game was influenced by more than just the football. There were decisions that went against Arsenal at crucial moments, and from where I stand, two penalty incidents deserved much closer attention, especially the challenge on Saka in the second half.
I am proud of this team. They showed courage, quality, character and the fighting spirit that Arsenal supporters expect. When you lose a Champions League final, it is painful. When key moments leave you with questions, the disappointment is even greater.
Congratulations to PSG on winning the trophy. But I believe Arsenal deserved the opportunity to compete on equal terms until the very end.
To the players: keep your heads high. Great teams are built through moments like this. Use the pain, learn from it, and come back stronger.
COYG ❤️
#PSGARS #UCLFinal
🚨🎙️Wayne Rooney: “Arsenal have been robbed tonight” 🤯
Rooney 🗣️ “I’ll be completely honest, Arsenal were absolutely robbed tonight, there is no other way to put it. You look at that foul on Noni Madueke in the box; it’s a stonewall, 100% clear penalty. How the referee or VAR hasn't given that is beyond me, and it completely changes the dynamic of a Champions League final.
But for me, the moment that truly gave it away the moment you knew exactly what the referee was doing was that halftime whistle. To blow the whistle right as Arsenal are literally standing there about to take a corner? I’ve played this game a long time, and you rarely see that unless there’s a blatant bias. It was shocking, and it set the tone for everything that followed.
In the second half, it became a totally different game, and not because of the football. The referee made absolutely sure that every single 50/50 call, every little nudge, and every major decision went straight to PSG. It completely killed Arsenal’s momentum. But to be fair, I’m not even surprised. We saw the exact same story when they played Bayern Munich earlier in the tournament. The officiating was heavily skewed then, and it’s happened again on the biggest stage.
PSG might be lifting the trophy, but they cannot honestly look at themselves in the mirror and be proud of the way they’ve won this final. To win the biggest prize in club football like that? It leaves a horrible taste. Arsenal deserved so much more tonight.”
To set the record straight, when Arsenal won the European Cup Winners Cup in 1994 it 𝗪𝗔𝗦 a UEFA sanctioned competition. It became the UEFA Cup in 2000 and transformed into the 𝗨𝗘𝗙𝗔 𝗘𝘂𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗮 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗴𝘂𝗲 in 2009.
It was Arsenal’s second European trophy.
But we’ve never called ourselves “𝐶ℎ𝑎𝑚𝑝𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝐸𝑢𝑟𝑜𝑝𝑒“ because that would be stupid.