Football: Arsenal - Chapter 21: The Champions League Aftershock Sends the Football World into a Frenzy (Patreon)

While Arsenal's staff worked through the lineup and tactics for their next match, the rest of the football world was still reeling from what had happened in the Champions League.

Supporters who had followed the competition without watching Arsenal play woke the next morning, checked the official goalscorer graphic, and stared in disbelief.

73' | Juventus: Pirlo, assisted by Bonucci.

76' | Arsenal: Kieran, assisted by Arteta.

80' | Arsenal: Kieran, assisted by Cazorla.

82' | Arsenal: Kieran, assisted by Szczęsny.

85' | Arsenal: Kieran, assisted by Podolski.

89' | Arsenal: Kieran, assisted by Ramsey.

Wait. Five goals in thirteen minutes?

Had UEFA made a mistake? Were the people updating the results still half asleep?

They rubbed their eyes and looked again. Nothing changed.

The scorer's name appeared so many times that the graphic almost looked glitched. The players providing the assists, on the other hand, came from all over Arsenal's lineup.

Wasn't that even more frightening?

Did that mean Kieran could turn a pass from practically any Arsenal player into a goal?

He'd even scored from an assist by goalkeeper Szczęsny!

What sort of goal machine could finish absolutely anything served up to him?

Supporters everywhere were stunned. The newspapers, meanwhile, were having the time of their lives.

Italy's La Gazzetta dello Sport was among the first to join the frenzy. With its ties to AC Milan, the paper couldn't resist taking a swipe at fellow Serie A giants Juventus before praising Kieran's extraordinary performance.

Then it gave the comeback a name.

[An unprecedented miracle! Congratulations to Arsenal! Five goals in thirteen minutes, a comeback from the brink, and a new legend: the 135 Miracle!]

The message beneath the celebration was hardly subtle. Would everyone please stop bringing up the Miracle of Istanbul? Milan hadn't exactly opened the champagne at halftime. They'd merely suffered an unfortunate comeback, that was all!

And now there was a result even more outrageous than Liverpool's recovery from 3–0 down in the 2005 final. Arsenal's five goals hadn't even been shared among several players. One teenager had scored every single one of them!

How could that not qualify as a miracle?

Juventus-friendly Tuttosport was not amused.

Come on. They were both great Italian clubs. Did Milan really have to play games like that?

Tuttosport promptly revised its planned coverage, filling far more space with the details of Milan's Champions League final against Liverpool.

Its conclusion was pointed.

[A Champions League final and a round-of-16 match carry different weight. We respect Arsenal's refusal to give up, but the Miracle of Istanbul remains the more iconic occasion.]

And just like that, two of Italy's major sports newspapers were arguing in public. Some readers followed the dispute with delight, while others cheerfully stirred it up. Serie A was suddenly attracting another wave of attention.

Elsewhere in Europe, the coverage was no less enthusiastic.

Spain's El País offered a serious endorsement of Kieran. Marca and AS, both closely associated with Real Madrid, called him the most exciting prospect to emerge after Cristiano Ronaldo.

Barcelona's favored papers had a different benchmark. Mundo Deportivo and Sport declared that Kieran was the most promising young player since Messi.

Well, wasn't that a curious kind of agreement between two bitter rivals?

German outlets took a more analytical approach. Kicker, one of the country's leading football magazines, broke down the match using ratings and detailed performance statistics.

Kieran was the obvious Man of the Match, earning a score close to perfect. The magazine also examined how he moved with the ball and how he ran into space without it.

It even coined a term for his distinctive movement: “hurdling runs.”

Few footballers could leap over a sliding challenge and still retain their acceleration and explosive pace. That sort of movement demanded extensive practice.

Players spent their childhoods refining technique. They worked on long-distance running and sprints, too, but almost nobody devoted serious training time to clearing obstacles at speed. It simply wasn't part of the usual football routine.

Kicker could only conclude that Kieran had practiced those movements diligently and possessed exceptional natural speed.

Of course, the writers had no idea he'd been a hurdler in his previous life. That would have explained quite a lot.

France's press approached the story differently. L'Équipe published a lengthy profile tracing Kieran's family background, his life at Arsenal, and the path that had led him into football.

French supporters devoured it. After his explosive first appearance, plenty of them found themselves taking a sudden interest in a youngster playing across the Channel.

Some even urged Ligue 1 clubs to open their wallets and bring him to France.

What about Paris Saint-Germain? Qatari investors had acquired a stake in the club in 2011, after all.

Go on, PSG! Put that money to work!

What was that? Arsenal might refuse to sell him?

Try offering two hundred million euros. Let's see whether Arsenal's executives can stay on their feet after that!

The amusing part was that PSG really was interested.

With the Qatari investment still relatively recent, the club wanted a spectacular transfer to announce itself to the world.

In the end, though, Kieran didn't make its immediate recruitment plans. Money was hardly the problem. Why not let him develop at Arsenal and buy the finished superstar later?

Wouldn't he cost even more by then?

Ha! For a club with money to spare, a higher price was practically a selling point. It might even scare away the competition!

And would that break Wenger's heart?

PSG had nothing to say about that. It could always let its money do the talking.

As coverage poured in from Serie A, La Liga, the Bundesliga, and Ligue 1, the Premier League was hardly going to remain silent.

The FA led the way, heaping praise on a sixteen-year-old Arsenal player who also held English citizenship.

What did Kieran's emergence mean for English football?

The Premier League was famous for its physical intensity, yet one of its clubs had developed a teenager capable of scoring five times and reversing a seemingly hopeless match almost single-handedly.

This wasn't the intricate technical football associated with Spain and Portugal, the defensive traditions of Italy and Germany, or the flair of Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay.

This was England, a country so often mocked for producing players with more physical grit than elegant technique!

Add Kieran's obvious commercial potential, and it was little wonder the FA was eager to see how he developed.

British newspapers joined in. The Guardian, the more conservative Times, and even the tabloid Sun were united in their praise.

Some publications seemed determined to find a new superlative for every sentence.

A few of the smaller tabloids went further, calling Kieran “the future of English football.”

Declaring anyone the future after a single match was absurd, but it showed just how astonishing his numbers were. It also said something about how badly the Three Lions needed fresh talent.

The excitement reached supporters much farther away, too. In China, where Kieran's family background gave his achievements a particular resonance, football fans were just as thrilled by his debut.

The country's football establishment was less straightforward. There were uneasy undercurrents and no clear consensus about what his rise might mean.

The leading sports outlets, however, had no hesitation in celebrating him.

On Thursday, Sports Weekly released its issue a day early, devoting an entire spread to Kieran and the Champions League comeback. That gave readers a chance to discover what their compatriot had achieved on the other side of the world.

A major sports broadcaster produced an additional episode of its football program, concentrating on the final twenty-two minutes of the match and Kieran's role in them.

Replays of all five goals ran again and again.

The same highlights spread through football forums and other online communities.

For supporters who had followed the sport for years, it was a celebration. For many others, it was their first introduction to both football and Kieran.

Even in 2013, when online video and social platforms hadn't become as ubiquitous as they would later be, the story had broken far beyond the usual football audience.

There was one question that produced decidedly mixed feelings: which national team would Kieran eventually represent?

Many fans dreamed of seeing him transform their own national side. Yet they knew its problems all too well.

Years of controversy and scandals had left supporters deeply disappointed, and few believed that one gifted youngster could fix everything overnight.

Besides, the team had already been eliminated from World Cup qualifying. Bringing him into the squad now wouldn't give him a qualifying match to play, much less a place at the tournament.

England, by contrast, had World Cup qualifiers approaching on March 22. Surely its national-team staff couldn't have failed to notice him.

Most supporters could be passionate and realistic at the same time. They were proud of Kieran, but they also understood that flourishing on the international stage might be better for his career, and ultimately for the football community that admired him.

A few people called for him to join the Chinese national team, of course. That was hardly the dominant view, though. Far more conversations revolved around the match itself, those five extraordinary goals, and the teenager who had scored them.

Across the football world, the praise was almost unanimous.

Almost.

In Britain, the Daily Mail had chosen a very different angle.

Eager for a sensational headline, the paper published Neil's account of the press conference. He embellished the questions he'd asked, mixed in his own interpretations, and filled the piece with ominous language suggesting that Kieran's future was already under a cloud.

Even The Sun seemed taken aback by his audacity.

There were plenty of football hooligans in Britain, and Neil had effectively declared that the young player many Arsenal supporters already called their king might have a tragically short career.

In Europe, people sometimes treated football as warfare without the weapons. For the most fervent supporters, attacking a beloved player was almost like insulting someone's faith.

Other newspapers could only wish Neil and the Daily Mail the best of luck.

Predictably, the backlash came quickly.

A group of extreme supporters descended on the Daily Mail's offices that very afternoon. They set off fireworks toward the building, plastered threatening slogans around it, and made so much noise that work inside became almost impossible.

There were too many people for the security staff to control. The crowd might not have had a formal organizer, but it was remarkably persistent.

And what did those guards earn in a day? Certainly not enough to risk their lives taking on a mob of furious football supporters.

Management repeatedly called the police, yet the disturbance continued. Eventually, the paper removed Neil's article and promised the protesters it wouldn't publish another attack on Kieran.

That finally took some of the heat out of the confrontation.

Others went further and tracked down Neil's home, splashing paint over its exterior walls and leaving words like “devil” and “scum” in enormous letters.

The supporters had already been wound up by everything that had happened. Their players had been exhausted after the match, leaving little room for another prolonged celebration. Now those frustrations had found a target.

Neil had spent years stirring up trouble from behind a keyboard, spreading accusations that others then had to struggle to disprove. This time, his own tactics had come back to bite him.

He hurried to Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms to post an apology video and admit his mistakes.

The episode drew spectators from across Europe.

Remarkably, for all the shouting, fireworks, and vandalism, there were no reports of anyone being injured.

The Arsenal supporters had apparently stopped short of that.

Or perhaps the real reason was simpler. The approaching North London derby had finally given them something much more important to think about.