The most reliable shooter usually takes the final penalty. Arsenal shocked everyone by letting Gabriel take the last shot against PSG. This decision ultimately cost the Gunners the Champions League title. Manager Mikel Arteta has explained why that happened.
Mikel Arteta, Arsenal’s manager, explained his decision during the postgame press conference. “Gabriel wanted to take the last penalty. We trained for that moment.” Gabriel ended up missing it the penalty and granted PSG the Champions League title.
Arteta also explained that usually, the penalty takers are Bukayo Saka, Martin Odegaard, and Kai Havertz. All three of them were subbed off by Arteta even before the 90 minutes of regulation against PSG had been played in full.
Arteta blamed the circumstances of the game as cause of Gabriel’s miss
As Arteta recalls, Gabriel didn’t miss a single penalty during training sessions. “Then you have to do these moments, it’s unfortunate not to have the same precision and they (PSG) had, and that’s the reason we haven’t won it (Champions League).”
Basically, the atmosphere, the high-stakes moment, and the tension got the best of Gabriel according to Arteta. However, Arteta himself must be criticized, as even if Gabriel was doing great in training, this was not the scenario or the space to put him in as this was the first penalty Gabriel had ever taken for the team.
Gabriel wasn’t the only one to miss the target during the penalty shootout
While all the blame is going towards Gabriel as it was the decisive penalty, he wasn’t the only one to miss his shot. In fact, there’s an argument to say Eberechi Eze’s missed penalty was even worse.
Eze took a slow, long run-in, then almost paused, made a quick jump and shot. However, PSG’s goalkeeper Matvey Safonov didn’t buy all the shenanigans and stayed focused, without giving away anything. That caused Eze to panic and make his shot almost unbalanced. He missed it wide. While Arteta said Arsenal practiced, missing the goal on two penalties is quite unacceptable.
