There are barely hours left to find out who will be the new champion of the Champions League. He Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal will try to snatch Luis Enrique’s PSG which would be his second consecutive ‘orejona’.
The set Gunnerhowever, has a clear handicap compared to the Parisian team. The toughness of the calendar has completely squeezed the London team, which He will play his 63rd game of the course this Saturday. A figure that contrasts with the 56 that the French team will now play at the Puskas Arena in Budapest.
The high number of matches played gives a good example of the great season that the team has had Gunner, Premier League champion 22 years later and finalist in both the Carabao Cup and the Champions League. That’s also where the number of matches played in the English league (38), which is far from Ligue 1 (34).
Arsenal players celebrate the league title
The result of this load of encounters translates into a data that can be decisive Looking ahead to this Saturday’s matchup: Arsenal’s starting eleven in the final surpasses Luis Enrique’s eleven in more than 8,000 minutes played.
He PSGchampion in France despite the competitiveness that Lens has imposed, He has sung the alirón even giving rest to many of his best players on a day-to-day basis. The most egregious case is that of Dembele’s. The PSG star He has only played 1,063 minutes in the league, something unusual for a player of the size and relevance that the former culé player has in the Parisian team.
An aspect that has raised a lot of controversy this season has been the different postponements of PSG matches in Ligue 1in order to rest the French team facing the European qualifiers. “When I look at the amount of minutes and the freshness of those players, then it doesn’t surprise me“said Arteta in reference to the high pace imposed by both PSG and Bayern in the first leg of the Champions League semi-finals. “It’s positive. We seek not only to represent our club, our city of Paris, but also France“Alleged Luis Enrique regarding this controversy after the postponement of his team’s confrontation against Nantes.
An abysmal difference
If we attend to the minutes that the supposed eleven Arsenal players have played in the Premier League who will start the clash against PSG, the figure is a total of 23,467 minutes. Declan Rice, with 3,099 minutes, is the field player with the most minutes on the team Gunner in Premier League. In it In the case of PSG, this figure reaches 15,376 minuteswith Zaïre Emery being the player most used by Luis Enrique (2,454 minutes). That is, there is a distance of more than 8,000 minutes played between the Arsenal eleven compared to that of Paris Saint-Germain.
On the left Zaïre Emery (PSG); on the right, Declan Rice (Arsenal)
Added to this are other aspects of the calendar. He PSG will arrive in Budapest with one more week of rest regarding Arteta’s team. Luis Enrique’s men played their last match on May 17, in the last league match against Paris FC. For its part, Arsenal had to wait another week to do the same despite Arteta fielding a very alternative eleven on the last day of the Premier League against Crystal Palace.
It is clear that, once the ball starts rolling in the Puskas Arena, strength and previous rest will remain something totally secondary. Still, it will be a factor to take into account If the crash reaches the final stage evenly. And there Luis Enrique does have the game won.
