In that moment of abrupt defeat that penalty shoot-outs deliver, Mikel Arteta looked bewildered by the outcome – as if the world had presented him with the wrong verdict, which said much about the faith he had in his plan to come good.

The Arsenal manager had designed his team to thwart, contain and repel. To go long when it suited them, and to counter this great Paris St-Germain team when the chance arose. A penalty shoot-out? No bad outcome for a team with 25 per cent possession in a Champions League final to have it reduced to that: a test of nerve which has played with the minds of even the most talented players. So much of this night had worked as Arteta might have envisaged, and then finally it did not.

The miss from Gabriel Magalhães, his defensive rock, and set-piece tussler-in-chief, was one for the ages. Not even close as he lifted the last penalty of 10 into the Parisian end to seal PSG’s second successive Champions League title. Arsenal had survived a miss earlier in the run of spot kicks when Eberechi Eze, so preoccupied with the movement of the goalkeeper Matvei Safonov, had neglected to keep his shot inside the left-hand post. David Raya’s save from Nuno Mendes had offered a reprieve. Then came Gabriel and the biggest club in Europe never to have been European champions threw their chance away.

The better team won the game – but it did not have to be like that. Arsenal had not wanted the ball, but they had demonstrated a fine sense of discipline as they embarked on the epic task of defending a lead established in the sixth minute. It was given to them by a startling Kai Havertz run and finish on the breakaway – a chance from a ricochet which was just the stroke of luck that the Arteta plan required. Yet it was indicative of the problems Arsenal faced that Havertz’s performance outside of that goal was largely poor, and he was not alone.

The stars of the show were the central defenders, Gabriel and William Saliba, although there were moments later in the 90 minutes when the latter found himself out-sprinted by PSG substitute Bradley Barcola. There was a fine performance from left-back Piero Hincapié, who played through an injury for much of extra time because all six Arsenal substitutes had been used by the start of that 30 minutes. He was in sufficient discomfort that he was substituted before the shoot-out, removing any obligation on him to take a penalty.

The teenager Myles Lewis-Skelly, starting in midfield, acquitted himself well. Declan Rice dragged another evening’s football from his legs. But the problems were clear, too. This kind of low-block, possession-light football requires forwards who can hold the ball and make something from nothing.

After his goal Havertz did none of that and later Viktor Gyokeres, a replacement for Martin Odegaard, did even less. This was not a good night for the Swedish forward – one successful spot kick aside – and with a manager as impatient as Arteta, one suspects that it will be a hard road back. He was not the only one. Bukayo Saka had a poor evening and his substitution after 82 minutes was overdue.

There was a bit of complaining later from Arteta about a penalty not given after Noni Madueke, Saka’s replacement, and Nuno Mendes became entangled in the PSG area in the first period of extra time. But the focus for Arteta’s post-match analysis was the gulf between his players and those of PSG, with more than one reference to the relative quality. Like the true obsessive he is, Arteta could not help but lay it on the line to the club who have spent £268m on transfer fees alone in the current financial year.

There was an urgency, he said, for Arsenal “to make some important decisions if we are going to reach another level”. He wanted the club to be “very ambitious, very quickly, and very smart”. Arsenal will parade the Premier League trophy in Islington on Sunday, but already the future is unfolding rapidly. This team cannot feed forever on set-pieces and low-possession counters against the best teams in Europe. There is just one year remaining on Arteta’s contract. Players must be traded. The Kroenkes, Josh and patriarch Stan, will be asked again to be ambitious.

They may well feel they have been ambitious enough for now. Certainly, there will have to be an active summer of sales at a club who have never been particularly successful at that part of the game.

Havertz’s goal was the ideal start – a shot that climbed at a steep trajectory past Safonov, whose gloves were down anticipating a drive. The second of his three touches before that felt heavy, the third corrected it and yet closed the angle. The shot was a well-aimed smash past Safonov. The chance had come from Leandro Trossard blocking a clearance from Marquinhos.

Against a PSG side with such a grip on possession, those are the chances that must be taken, but by the end of extra time that was still the single attempt on target that Arsenal had mustered.

Cristhian Mosquera, selected at right-back, had a fine first half, but that was about to change after the break. He was booked for time-wasting and it was about to get much worse. Permanently on the back foot, Arsenal were vulnerable. In the 62nd minute Khvicha Kvaratskhelia slowed down and then when he took off again after Ousmane Dembélé’s flick into the inside left channel, Mosquera was on his heels. He tried to retrieve the situation, tripped the PSG winger and was lucky not to get his second yellow. Dembélé dispatched the penalty.

PSG are LEVEL in the UEFA Champions League final!

Ousmane Dembélé beats David Raya from the spot 👊

📺 TNT Sports & HBO Max pic.twitter.com/318apl8uAM

— Football on TNT Sports (@footballontnt) May 30, 2026

Mosquera was substituted soon after. So too Odegaard as Arteta switched to a long-ball game entirely. It was a version of 4-4-2 with Gyokeres the most advanced and Havertz close behind.

By the start of extra time, Arteta had made all his substitutions. Arsenal had Jurrien Timber on for Mosquera, playing his first minutes since mid-March. Eze, Madueke, Gabriel Martinelli and Martín Zubimendi all came on but could not create a chance between them. As Luis Enrique was forced to make changes too, with the likes of Dembélé and Kvaratskhelia exhausted, there was an opportunity. Arsenal never looked like taking it. No more attempts on PSG’s goal. No set-pieces that cut through. They were heading for penalties and those two misses that finally brought the end.

Mikel Arteta told his Arsenal players to use the “pain” of their agonising Champions League final defeat as fuel to “reach a different level” next season.

The Arsenal manager also challenged the club to be “very ambitious, very fast and very smart” in their decision-making during the summer transfer window.

Arsenal fell to defeat in cruel circumstances after a spirited defensive performance took Paris St-Germain, the reigning European champions, to a penalty shoot-out.

Gabriel Magalhães missed the decisive spot kick in Budapest to end Arsenal’s hopes of adding a first Champions League triumph to their Premier League trophy.

Arteta and his players were devastated following Gabriel’s effort, which flew over the crossbar, but they will still be celebrating their league title in Sunday’s parade in north London.

“Pain, that’s it,” Arteta said. “When you are a few penalty kicks away from winning the biggest football club competition, that is the way you feel. First of all you have to go through that pain, digest it and turn it into fuel, to improve and to reach a different level. Because it will demand a different level with the quality that is around Europe.

“I want to congratulate PSG, and Luis Enrique in particular, because in my opinion they are the best team in the world. What they are able to do with the ball, with individual actions, I have not seen it [before].”

Arsenal have been planning their summer transfer window and are keen to strengthen their squad again. Arteta made it clear in Budapest that he wants the club to be adventurous in their summer activity.

Asked what he will do over the next few days, the Arsenal manager said: “First of all I will take a few days with my family and they will start the process to review what we’ve done.

“We [must] start to make some very important decisions if we want to reach another level. And we’re going to have to show that ambition because we are more than capable of doing it, but it’s going to demand to be very, very ambitious, very fast and very smart.”

Arteta, who again cited the “individual action” of the PSG stars, also suggested that Arsenal must improve their ability to manage the physical condition of their players over the course of a campaign.

“You have to get into the competition with all the squad available in the best moment, each player,” Arteta said. “And we’ve had more players, many more players than last season, but not all of them in that condition, for different reasons. And that’s something that we have to improve as well.”

Arsenal’s pain was made worse by the frustration that Noni Madueke was not awarded a second-half penalty when he was seemingly brought down by PSG full-back Nuno Mendes.

Arsenal had taken an early lead through Kai Havertz but PSG had equalised with a penalty of their own, scored by Ousmane Dembélé after Khvicha Kvaratskhelia had been brought down by Cristhian Mosquera.

On the Madueke penalty claim, Arteta said: “I watched all the penalties in the competition in the last 72 hours to understand what a penalty is and what is not, and that easily can be a penalty.

“We have had an incredible competition. We haven’t lost a single match in the competition, but the reality is that when something had to go our way, especially in the boxes with the penalty that was given against Mosquera and then a penalty to Madueke, and the penalty kicks, those margins didn’t go for us.”

Declan Rice, the Arsenal midfielder, said he believed during the game that it was a foul on Madueke.

“At first glance on the pitch I think he’s ahead of Nuno Mendes,” Rice said. “I was gutted at the time because I thought the ref would go and have a look, but obviously it was not clear enough to be a penalty. I thought it was and so did our staff.”

Rice also insisted this was “only the start” for this Arsenal team. “We’ve come really far as a group this year. We got over the line in the Premier League, which was a dream come true. This would have been one step further that wasn’t meant to be but we keep building. We keep going, we keep staying positive. That’s one thing about this group, it won’t define us.”

Luis Enrique said he had no interest in whether his third Champions League trophy as a manager makes him a “legendary” coaching figure.

“I’m mixed: excitement, fatigue,” he said. “Everything. But this is the best moment of the season. We are still champions, two in a row, it’s amazing. It was very tough and difficult. Congratulations to Arsenal, it was very tough. They played great. They try to take the match into phases [in which] they are strong. We tried to control the ball and press. We have won the title.”

Europe’s perennial under-performers

Arsenal remain the most underperforming club from one of the top five leagues in the 71-year history of the European Cup.

The north Londoners have yet to win the biggest prize in European club football despite appearing in the tournament 24 times.

By contrast, Premier League rivals Liverpool have six European Cups having appeared in the tournament 29 times (one trophy every 4.83 campaign participations). Manchester United have three European Cups in their trophy cabinet having featured in the competition 31 times (one every 10.33 campaigns); Chelsea have a slightly better return with a Champions League title (two) every 10 campaigns across 20 seasons. Just one other English club – Manchester City – have played in the tournament more than 10 times and they have one European Cup.

Two other English clubs, of course, have also won the European Cup. Nottingham Forest may have only been in the competition three times, but they have two replicas of old “Big Ears” on show at City Ground. Aston Villa, meanwhile, won the competition on their 1981-82 debut and have subsequently featured just two more times. In all three of their campaigns, Villa reached the last four of the tournament.

Across Europe’s top leagues – La Liga, Serie A, Bundesliga and Ligue 1 – only Atlético Madrid have appeared in the tournament 20 times and failed to lift the European Cup.

Lyon have reached two semi-finals in their 17 appearances. Roma made their only final in 1984 when they lost to Liverpool. The Italians also lost their only other semi-final, in 2018 – again to Liverpool – and remain potless having featured in the tournament 13 times.

Since English clubs’ first involvement in the competition in 1956-57, with an average of 1.809 points-per-game from every game played, including qualifiers, group games, knock-out ties and two finals, Arsenal are eighth in a table of 16. Leicester City, Derby County and Tottenham Hotspur sit just below Arsenal, though admittedly with much smaller sample sizes.

In a bizarre statistical quirk, Ipswich Town top the table with an average of 2.25 points-per-game after winning three and losing one in their only campaign in 1962-63. Evidence, one imagines, that Mikel Arteta and Arsenal would legitimately point to in order to highlight the absurdity of such a table.

The fact remains, however, that the only statistic that matters – the number of European Cups in the trophy cabinet – shows Arsenal at the bottom of the pile with a big fat zero.