As Arsenal’s remarkable run of success in the UEFA Champions League looks like coming to an end this season, what better time to take a look back at the highs and lows of their record breaking nineteen straight seasons in the competition.
The Gunners first qualified for the Champions League in the 1998-99 season, going out in the group stage. They repeated the pattern again the following year, this time going on to the final of the UEFA Cup – the Champions League consolation prize – scoring 21 goals in 9 matches along the way.
Since then, Arsenal have never failed to make it out of the group stage in 17 years of the tournament – a remarkable record dating all the way back to the 200-01 season. They have gone out at the second group stage twice, made the last 16 nine times, the quarter finals four times, the semifinals one, and famously made it all the way to the Champions League Final in 2006.
Perhaps more remarkably, in nineteen straight seasons in the competition, they have never posted a negative goal difference, with five seasons showing a goal difference of plus ten or more.
Arsenal’s best season by far was the 2005-06 campaign, when keeper Jens Lehmann, set a new tournament record with ten clean sheets in a row, and the Arsenal defense went a full 995 minutes without conceding a goal. This incredible run included a rare away win at the Bernabeu, Real Madrid’s first home defeat in the Champions League in 18 matches.
Sadly, Lehmann went from hero to villain in the 2006 Champions League Final, when he was sent off for a professional foul on Samuel Eto’o with just 18 minutes of the match played. Despite losing their goal keeper, Arsenal still went on to take the lead in the 37th minute, before two late goals in 15 minutes from Barcelona snatched the trophy from under their noses.
With almost two decades in the Champions League, there are plenty of other highlights to choose from along the way. For example, in their match against Hamburg in September 2006, Arsenal showed their cosmopolitan credentials by being the first team to field a side in which every player was from a different country. They were also the first British side to beat Real Madrid and Juventus at their own grounds, and the first to beat both Milan teams, Internazionale and Milan, at the famously intimidating San Siro.
Other highlights include Gilberto Silva’s record breaking goal in 2002. Away to PSV Eindhoven, he put Arsenal ahead after just 20.07 seconds in a game they went on to win 4-0. Their 7-0 thrashing of Slavia Prague on 23rd October 2007 was also a game to savor, as their biggest margin of victory in the competition.
Unfortunately, the Gunners’ incredible run may have come to an end with a record defeat. One of the favorites to win the Champions League, after topping Group A, Arsenal lost 5-1 in both legs of their Round of 16 tie against Bayern Munich, delivering a wilting aggregate score of 10-2. It is little consolation that Bayern Munich makes a habit of doing this, having dispatched Sporting Lisbon 12-1 on aggregate in 2009.
All in all, it has been one helluva ride over the last two decades, but it looks like Arsenal have a mountain to climb if they are to qualify for the Champions League for a twentieth year in a row.
Longtime manager, Arsene Wenger, was once quoted by French newspaper L’Equipe in 2002 as saying: “I can’t imagine finishing my life without winning the European Cup”. But with his future at Arsenal looking as unsure as the club’s future in the Champions League, he may just find out what that feels like.