It was a gutless display, but nobody was surprised.
On Wednesday, Arsenal was thrashed 5-1 at the Allianz Arena for the second time in two visits, putting the Gunners on the verge of exiting the Champions League in the Round of 16 for the seventh year running. Arsene Wenger’s side was torn apart by Bayern Munich in the second half, conceding three goals in a 10-minute assault and exhibiting its lack of heart and spine.
Seasoned supporters of Arsenal were injected with a disheartening sense of deja vu, as the four-goal loss matched the Gunners’ worst defeat in European competition and echoed their recent escapades in the Champions League.
Here are two of Arsenal’s other vulnerable nights in European football:
Bayern Munich 5-1 Arsenal, November 2015
In a trip to the Allianz Arena that looked just like Wednesday’s, Arsenal felt the full force of Bayern during the 2014-15 Champions League’s group stage. The Gunners travelled with a harsh injury list, as Laurent Koscielny was unable to play due to a bothersome hip and Hector Bellerin had an ailment of his own. But the wounds were no excuse for such an emphatic deficit.
Bayern scored three times in the first half, playing irresistible football to make Petr Cech’s night a living hell. Robert Lewandowski, Thomas Muller, and David Alaba all found the back of the net before the interval, and the drubbing only got worse from there.
Since Arsenal was taking on Bayern in the group stage, however, the beating didn’t eliminate the Gunners or put them on the brink of elimination. Instead, it meant Wenger’s side had to win its final two matches and hope Olympiacos lost its two games in order to progress. And that’s exactly what happened.
AC Milan 4-0 Arsenal, February 2012
Prior to kick-off, Arsenal’s supporters piled litter in front of the Duomo di Milano in Milan, Italy. The Gunners’ players then piled garbage on the pitch at the San Siro.
In the 2011-12 Champions League’s Round of 16, Arsenal was hammered 4-0 by AC Milan and lucky not to lose by six, seven, or more. The Rossoneri were excellent, but the Gunners’ performance came under immense criticism. After Koscielny was lost in the 44th minute due to a knee injury, the back four of Bacary Sagna, Thomas Vermaelen, Johan Djourou, and Kieran Gibbs couldn’t hold a line and gifted Massimiliano Allegri’s side with acres of space.
By the final whistle, Kevin-Prince Boateng, Robinho, and Zlatan Ibrahimovic had put the tie out of reach. A 3-0 victory for Arsenal in the second leg just felt cruel.
Chad Kelly was not among 330 prospects invited to the NFL combine in a list released Wednesday, but the agents for the former Ole Miss Rebels quarterback said the NFL has not provided a reason for why Kelly’s invitation was rescinded and that Kelly might still travel to Indianapolis later this month.
“We have an official invite to come to the combine, we got a flight booked,” one of Kelly’s representatives, Vance McAllister, told “The Tim Graham Show” on 1270 The Fan in Buffalo on Wednesday. “He has a jersey number there waiting on him, and until we get a written disinvite or whatever you want to call it from the league, we’ll be in Indy. We’ll show up and they’ll have to tell Chad ‘no’ then because they’re obviously not wiling to put it in writing to tell Chad ‘no’ now.”
Kelly’s representatives, McAllister and Duray Oubre, said the NFL combine sent Kelly an invite Jan. 6 and arranged travel for him. The agents received a call from combine director Jeff Foster last Thursday informing Kelly that the NFL rescinded his invitation.
“The only response that we’ve been able to get in voicemails from [NFL vice president of football operations Troy Vincent] is that he will not discuss the details of it,” McAllister said.
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This is the second year the NFL will not permit players in which a background check has revealed “either a felony or misdemeanor conviction” for domestic violence, sexual assault or weapons charges, or if a player refuses a background check.
Kelly was charged with resisting arrest, menacing and several other counts following an altercation outside a Buffalo nightclub in Dec. 2014. He later agreed to 50 hours of community service as part of the noncriminal charges, which Kelly’s agents said is not equal to a criminal or misdemeanor conviction.
“It seems like this is one of those cases where the NFL and Troy Vincent have decided again to not gather all the facts and make a decision, shoot from the hip, and we cannot get a clarification as to why,” McAllister said. “Chad is being singled out and being made example of, for what? It definitely ain’t domestic abuse and it definitely ain’t violent crime.”
Kelly’s agents said his uncle, Hall of Fame and former Bills quarterback Jim Kelly, reached out Wednesday to the NFL to seek answers about his nephew’s status for the combine.
“We don’t know this for sure, but it could be marketing strategy,” Oubre said. “The NFL is a billion-dollar brand. We’ve become more concerned with making sure that we have the proper dressing in relation to producing a good [product] or advertising a good [product]. If they feel like a player like Chad Kelly will be there, and they don’t want certain things to be told or be heard or discussed because for whatever reason they feel like that doesn’t add to the brand of the NFL, then they could take preventative measure against him and discriminate against him.”
“La faccia tosta.” It is a common Italian phrase with no direct English equivalent. The words translate literally to “the hard face,” but most dictionaries would give you something more like “chutzpah”.
To truly get the sense of it, you need to put it into a sentence. To approach a situation with “la faccia tosta” is to do so with a certain brazen audacity. An Italian who exclaims “Che faccia tosta!” is effectively saying: “What nerve!”
It is exactly what the Napoli manager, Maurizio Sarri, wanted to see from his players at the Santiago Bernabeu. “It’s indispensable,” he told reporters at his Tuesday press conference. “To play a fearful game for us would be counterproductive. We need to have a faccia that is as tosta as is possible. We need to have the foolishness to come here and play our own game.”
Who better to reinforce that message than Diego Maradona? Sarri expressed the hope that Napoli’s greatest icon might offer his team a pre-game pep talk, and that is exactly what happened – the Argentinian stopping by their locker room shortly before kick-off.
Related – Look: Maradona delivers pre-match talk to Napoli ahead of Real Madrid tie
And who better to receive that message than Lorenzo Insigne? The lone Neapolitan in Napoli’s starting XI, he is too young to have seen Maradona playing in the flesh, but grew up with a keen awareness of what this man meant to his city. Their personalities are in many ways different, but la faccia tosta is a trait they most certainly both share.
Insigne showed his to the world in the eighth minute on Wednesday. Receiving a pass from Marek Hamsik some 30 yards from goal, he did not even look up before shooting first-time towards the bottom right corner of the Madrid goal. He had already checked on Keylor Navas’ position a moment earlier, and knew that the goalkeeper was poorly placed – too far advanced and drifting towards the opposite post.
The ball nestled in the back of the net, and the less than 4,000 Napoli fans – well, that was the official count, anyway – at the Bernabeu roared loud enough to make you believe that they were the majority present. In that moment, it seemed as though Sarri had been vindicated. A team whose annual revenues is barely one-fifth those of Madrid really could come here and win by playing its own game.
It was a thrilling thought. And also, a totally misleading one.
Madrid was level by half-time and would already have been ahead if not for poor finishing. Karim Benzema headed his team level in the 18th minute but then side-footed wide in the 42nd with the goal gaping. In-between those two efforts, Cristiano Ronaldo scooped a shot over from 12 yards.
Perhaps Sarri should have heeded this warning. He had an opportunity to change things up at half-time, to encourage his team to show a little more caution. Instead, Napoli conceded twice within 10 minutes of returning from the interval.
Toni Kroos was permitted far too much space for the strike which put Madrid in front. Madrid’s third – and let’s be clear here, we’re taking nothing away from Casemiro or his extraordinary finish – was preceded by Pepe Reina putting his team in trouble with a Cruyff turn on the edge of his own six-yard box, when a simple clearance might have sufficed.
Related – Watch: Casemiro uncorks thunderous volley for rampant Real Madrid
Napoli avoided a knock-out blow. The Italian side prevented Madrid from scoring again, and at times threatened to grab another of its own. Dries Mertens blew the best chance, firing over after a brilliant combination from Amadou Diawara and Jose Callejon had delivered the ball to his feet just beside the Madrid penalty spot.
In isolated moments, Napoli could still be spell-binding. Diawara, a 19-year- old Guinean making his third-ever start in this competition, strode through midfield with the confidence of a man who owns this stage – not one who was playing for San Marino’s club side as recently as 2015. In one stand-out passage, he navigated past tackles from Benzema, Kroos and Casemiro using a sum total of four touches.
It is not enough, though, to flash brilliance at this level. You need to be able to sustain it. The only question by the end of Wednesday’s game was whether Madrid ought to have won by a wider margin.
Sarri might argue that this outcome was the best his team could have hoped for. There is no guarantee that a more cautious approach would have yielded a better result against an opponent whose resources are greater.
As he put it so eloquently in that same Tuesday press conference, “there is no antidote against talent.”
Equally, though, it would be patronising to give Sarri a free pass. There is a tendency, still, to focus on his back story, the romantic tale of the bank worker who became a full-time coach, even though he has had Napoli competing at the top end of Serie A for two years now. He has beaten a Juventus side who would not perceive itself as unworthy of standing toe-to- toe with Madrid.
It is at least reasonable to ask, then, whether he could have done with an extra body in midfield, where Madrid seemed to win so many 50-50s, or whether it would have made sense to have his overmatched defence sit a little deeper. And why wait until the 75th minute to make a first substitution, at least throwing some fresh legs into a game where some players seemed to be struggling with the intensity?
These were questions touched on by the Napoli owner, Aurelio De Laurentiis, who expressed frustration in a post-game interview with Mediaset. “You cannot always play with a high line,” he said. “And you can change your tactics every now and then.”
What we can say with a certainty is that the task before Napoli now is a daunting one. It will take a lot more than a little audacity, nerve or chutzpah to turn around this deficit at the Stadio San Paolo.
Covered the Philadelphia Eagles for Philadelphia Magazine and Philly.com from 2008 to 2015.
Covered the Baltimore Ravens and the NFL for BaltimoreSun.com from 2006 to 2008.
The Seattle Seahawks signed kicker Blair Walsh to a one-year deal last week, and the details of his contract make it clear that Walsh will have to perform well to earn his spot on the 53-man roster.
The deal can net Walsh up to $1.1 million, but it contains no guaranteed money. Walsh is set to receive $800,000 in base salary in 2017 and can earn an additional $300,000 in bonuses.
The first bonus is for $150,000 and kicks in if Walsh is on the 53-man roster for the first game of the season.
Additionally, Walsh can earn $9,375 for each game he is on the 53-man roster.
This is a low-risk deal for the Seahawks. Steven Hauschka is scheduled to be a free agent, and the Walsh signing suggests that Seattle is preparing for Hauschka to sign elsewhere. But it does not mean that the Seahawks are sold on Walsh being their kicker in 2017.
They will almost certainly bring in a rookie kicker to compete with him in the spring. And if a rookie performs well, he will be a less expensive option than Walsh.
The Seahawks don’t want to go into next season with a question mark at kicker, but Hauschka will likely want to be paid like a top-10 player at his position, and that could mean a salary of at least $3 million per year. They’ll save money and cap space by going with Walsh or a rookie instead.
Walsh made the Pro Bowl in 2012 but struggled when the Minnesota Vikings played outdoors. In the wild-card round of the 2015 playoffs, he missed a potential game-winning field goal from 27 yards out against the Seahawks and was never able to bounce back last season. The Vikings released Walsh after he struggled through nine games.
The Seahawks will see if Walsh can find his footing this spring and summer. If he does, Walsh will be well-positioned to earn his money in 2017.
