Soccer Football - Champions League - Quarter Final - Second Leg - Real Madrid v Arsenal - Santiago Bernabeu, Madrid, Spain - April 16, 2025 Arsenal's Bukayo Saka scores their first goal Action Images via Reuters/Lee Smith
MADRID (Reuters) -Arsenal snuffed out any chance of a famous Real Madrid comeback to reach the Champions League semi-finals after a 2-1 victory in the Bernabeu Stadium completed a 5-1 aggregate win on Wednesday.
Holders and 15-times winners Real never looked like clawing back a 3-0 deficit from last week's quarter-final first leg and when Bukayo Saka scored for the visitors in the 65th minute their fate was effectively sealed.
Vinicius Junior seized on a rare defensive slip a couple of minutes later to rouse the home crowd, but it proved too little too late as Carlo Ancelotti's side exited in feeble fashion.
Arsenal's superiority over the two legs was underlined in stoppage time as Gabriel Martinelli burst through to score.
They will face Paris St Germain in their first Champions League semi-final since 2009.
"I think it's such a special night for this club, it's a historic night for this club," said Arsenal's Declan Rice, whose two sublime free kicks last week put his side in control.
"There was a lot of talk coming in about them coming back from the dead, they've done it so many times before. But we had so much belief and confidence from that first leg that we had enough to come here and win the game."
A cacophony of noise greeted kickoff with the home fans fuelled by the hope of witnessing what would have been one of the greatest Champions League comebacks.
But Real's knack of extricating themselves from difficult positions in a competition they won six times in the previous 11 seasons deserted them as they were comprehensively outplayed.
"Did we fall short of what we wanted in pure football terms? Perhaps," Real captain Lucas Vazquez said. "They really are terrifically organised defensively."
PENALTY MISS
Real needed a storming start and Mbappe had the ball in the Arsenal net in the opening minutes but was clearly offside when chesting in a Vinicius cross.
Arsenal were in no mood to simply sit and protect their lead though and Saka forced a great save from Courtois. They were handed the chance to kill off the tie when Raul Asencio needlessly hauled down Mikel Merino from a corner and referee Francois Letexier eventually awarded a penalty after checking a pitch-side VAR monitor.
Saka opted for a Panenka-style chipped penalty and Courtois clawed away the ball.
It looked like a potentially pivotal moment and when Letexier pointed to the penalty spot at the other end after Kylian Mbappe tumbled under minimal contact from Rice, Arsenal's night looked like taking a turn for the worse.
After five painstaking minutes, however, Letexier was again invited by VAR to view the monitor and to a chorus of whistles from the home fans, overturned his original decision.
That scare aside, Arsenal coped easily with Real Madrid's famed frontline who were given little to work with.
Arsenal keeper David Raya was not required to make a save before halftime as Real's predilection for hopeful crosses into the area proved easy pickings for the visiting defence.
Real's Mbappe barely had a sniff of a chance as Arsenal showed great control and Saka made up for his first-half miss with a clinical finish after being sent clear by Merino.
William Saliba gifted Real a lifeline when he was caught in possession on the edge of his area, allowing Vinicius to score, but there was never any sense of panic in the visiting ranks.
Martinelli put the icing on the cake in added time, again from a Merino assist, to send Arsenal's fans into raptures.
(Reporting by Martyn Herman; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)
