God Of football

Chapter 1005: German Domination Machine!

”Another record in the books,” Drury’s voice came back again as the broadcast cameras swept wide across the Emirates, catching everything.

From the exasperated expressions of the away club to the ecstasy that the home crowd were feeling, it didn’t take long for that to translate.

”Izan, your Izan, my Izannnnn!”

”Izan! Izan! Sent from above!”

”Break every record! Written in love!”

Up in the stands, the red and white packed sections had already found their next song, and it was Izan’s name filling every corner of the ground again, bouncing off the roof and rolling down toward the pitch in waves.

The boy had given them something to sing about, and they were not going to let it go quietly.

”I used to pray for times like this,” an old man seated beside what looked like his son and grandson said with an almost teary expression while glancing down on the pitch where the Arsenal players made their way back toward their own half, still pointing at each other with the kind of animated joy that doesn’t need words.

Izan himself drifted back toward the centre circle, and this time with an almost too calm expression, as if scoring goals of that quality was simply the next item on a list he’d been working through all evening.

And then Peter Drury’s voice settled over it all.

”You may have heard stories,” he said, ”about a season in Barcelona when THE Argentine scored ninety-one goals, and the football world simply ran out of ways to describe what it was witnessing. The numbers became the only language left. Well, look around you. Listen to this crowd. They are not merely celebrating a goal. They are reliving something. It is like watching the painting of the Mona Lisa all over again.”

Bayern, for their part, moved back to their positions with an almost unsettling composure.

There was no visible panic in how they reorganised, no frantic gesturing between the defenders, no manager screaming instructions from the touchline in desperation.

They simply moved forward, settled in their respective positions and looked at each other with the quiet assurance of men who had been in this situation before and knew, with complete certainty, what came next.

The whistle blew after that, and what came next was immediate.

It was as if someone had turned a dial somewhere deep inside Bayern Munich’s engine room, one that had been sitting at a comfortable hum and was now, without warning, pushed all the way to the right.

The players moved differently.

There was a synchrony to it that felt almost choreographed, like a company of dancers who had rehearsed this particular sequence a thousand times and were now performing it at full tempo for the first time.

Every run had a purpose.

Every pass had a destination, and every press came half a second earlier than before.

From the gantry, Peter Drury saw it all unfold and judged.

”And here they come,” he said, his voice carrying that familiar, almost reverential weight and tone that had made him one of the best to ever do it in the gantry.

”Bayern Munich, the great German machine, shifting into a gear the rest of Europe has learned, over decades, to dread. They are not rattled. They are not wounded. They are activated. Every blade of grass on this pitch is about to become contested territory.”

Arsenal held.

That much had to be said.

They held with the kind of disciplined, organised resistance that spoke to everything Mikel Arteta had built at this club.

The defensive shape was intact, with the midfield pressing intelligently and the backline staying compact and communicating.

When Bayern found the pockets, Arsenal closed them.

When the crosses came in, the headers were won.

It was hard, physical, concentrated defending.

But defending at that level was exhausting.

And Bayern had no intention of stopping.

They continued with the barrage until what gives finally gave in.

”Arsenal aren’t having it easy, but Bayern aren’t having it all too well at the moment. Almost every chance has been thwarted by an astute piece of defending. But this may be the one,” Drury rained from the gantry as Serge Gnabry drove at the Arsenal left flank with pace and close control.

Jurrien Timber, who had had to stay switched on all night, saw the Bayern menace coming and stepped up, but the moment he did, space opened behind and in went Lennart Karl, energetic, relentless and a constant irritant for Arsenal that game.

Seeing the 17-year-old attacking midfielder worming his way into space, Zubimendi fretted and quickly moved to close down space, but that was the whole point of Bayern’s attack.

Because the second Zubimendi left his post, Pavlovic, with Izan chasing from behind, moved to settle and quickly sent the ball from Serge Gnabry to the right flank.

There, a certain Frenchman took hold of the ball and began driving at the Arsenal left-back, Myles Lewis Skelly, with a maddening elegance so clean that it only took another touch to escape from the Hale End graduate.

In the next second, Olise unpicked the lock, with a pass so precise it felt almost cruel, threading through the smallest gap in the Arsenal defensive line to find Harry Kane arriving in exactly the right place at exactly the right moment.

When the English skipper got onto the end of the ball, it was almost like a sentencing because there was no obstacle, and Kane didn’t hesitate.

He didn’t adjust his footing or set himself.

He simply took it on his weaker foot and hit it clean, low, into the corner, before the goalkeeper had even finished the thought of diving.

Then the Bayern end erupted.

”It’s In. The leveller and who better than Harry Kane,” Drury bellowed with a hint of recognition.

”It is what great strikers understand that the rest of us are still learning, that the perfect position is worth more than the perfect foot. He asked no questions. He offered no doubts. He simply finished. And Bayern are back in the game.”

The Bayern players came from everywhere.

Gnabry first, arms wide, then Kahl, then the fullbacks arriving from deep, and then the whole white-shirted collective converging on Kane in the corner as the away end behind the goal turned into pure, releasing noise.

”Arsenal’s work, so carefully constructed, so brilliantly executed, has been undone,” Drury continued.

”And that is the nature of the beast they face tonight. Bayern Munich do not lie down. They do not accept the narrative being written for them. They have been here before, trailing, searching, doubted, and they have come through it. The German domination machine is not going quietly. It has never known how.”