Arsenal benefited greatly after Man City's slip-up against Bournemouth, thereby helping the "Gunners" win the Premier League 1 round early. The time gap between the final match in the Premier League (against Crystal Palace) and the Champions League final (against PSG) is only 6 days. If The Gunners still have to strain themselves at Selhurst Park last weekend, they will face a great disadvantage in terms of fitness because they have to move from England to Hungary immediately afterwards.
However, the early championship helped Mikel Arteta's team have just enough rest to fully recover their fitness. In the match against Palace, Arsenal had up to 9 changes in the starting lineup, the most in the past 5 years. In 4 consecutive seasons of winning the Premier League title, for the first time Arsenal was so relaxed both physically and mentally in the final rounds.
However, in terms of physical recovery, PSG is considered to have much better preparation than Arsenal. Ligue 1 only has 34 rounds, 4 rounds less than the Premier League, so in the national championship arena alone, PSG played 4 fewer matches than their opponent. Not only that, the domestic arena for Luis Enrique's team is not heavy and they solved it with the championship 1 week earlier than Arsenal.
If talking about squad rotation, until winning the championship 1 round early, Mikel Arteta was so strong to keep key players. As for Luis Enrique, in all 34 matches in Ligue 1 this season, he has always had at least 2 substitutions in the starting lineup. Right from the beginning of the season, the Spanish strategist has considered always maintaining the maximum physical foundation for his players.
Moderate rest is an extremely important factor when we always have to face difficult matches throughout the season. It is an indispensable process in preparing for top matches" - Luis Enrique shared.
According to calculations from The Athletic, PSG is the 3rd most stable team in Europe in terms of personnel. This calculation is based on the rotation of starting and reserve players, helping Luis Enrique's squad always be balanced. Meanwhile, having to compete very fiercely with Man City and Liverpool for 4 consecutive seasons makes Arsenal almost never achieve such balance.
Mikel Arteta always longs for Arsenal to be relaxed so they can play dedicated matches. This is what the Spanish strategist desires after witnessing PSG and Bayern Munich create a dream first leg semi-final with 9 goals. That is also why they easily dominate domestic leagues such as France and Germany.
According to calculations from The Athletic, Arsenal players are much more vất vả than PSG based on the number of minutes played in the national championship and Champions League. Temporarily calling this index X, with the larger X, the higher the number of minutes played in the two arenas for each player. The average number for an Arsenal player is 0.76, while for PSG it is only 0.28. Statistically, PSG players are "rảnh" more than Arsenal nearly 3 times.
Among the 11 PSG players who played more than 50% of their minutes in the Champions League, only 4 did the same in Ligue 1. Arteta relied on a more stable framework, with 7 Arsenal players surpassing that threshold in both leagues.
After PSG defeated Nantes 3-0 last month, Luis Enrique jokingly said that Khvicha Kvaratskhelia "perhaps thought it was a Champions League match" after the Georgian midfielder scored a double. PSG's famous attacking trio including Kvaratskhelia, Desire Doue and Ousmane Dembele always performed best in the European arena. In particular, none of them were in the starting lineup most used in Ligue 1, based on the number of minutes played by position. This shows that Enrique has calculated so carefully that the schedule and breaks of each player. A good person like Kvara is also free to unleash his strength against a weak opponent like Nantes.
That is the story in the attack, the defense line is also arranged by Enrique with a very scientific schedule. Center-back Illia Zabarnyi is used a lot this season to preserve the fitness for 32-year-old captain Marquinhos. That is also the reason why the Brazilian star always plays well every time he plays in the Champions League. Zabarnyi has participated in 78% of PSG's minutes of play in Ligue 1, this statistic is only behind midfielder Warren Zaire-Emery. However, the 23-year-old Ukrainian center-back only played 14% of the total time in the Champions League and all of it took place in the qualifying round.
There have been many opinions about why Mikel Arteta does not arrange his players more evenly in the Premier League? This is almost impossible because the quality of the league is too high, any mid-table team can create a coup against the championship race group. According to Opta's calculations, there are up to 9 teams in Ligue 1 ranked lower than Burnley, the team ranked 19th in the Premier League.
