Had it not been for very fine margins, Los Blancos' two leading men might have both been plying plying their trade at Emirates Stadium right now
Arsenal will have to pull off an upset for the ages to reach the Champions League semi-finals. After thrashing PSV 9-3 on aggregate in the round of 16, Mikel Arteta's side were handed the worst possible last-eight draw against holders Real Madrid, who progressed after ruthlessly dismantling Pep Guardiola's declining Manchester City.
Real were deserving winners last season, but look even stronger now, not least because of the summer addition of Kylian Mbappe. Indeed, Carlo Ancelotti's men are still in the hunt for a historic treble, while in stark contrast, Arsenal have fallen way behind Liverpool in the Premier League title race, and the Champions League is the only trophy left for them to play for.
Arsenal have enough quality to cause Real plenty of problems at the back – just as Valencia did in La Liga at the weekend – but won't have any hope of winning the quarter-final tie if they can't keep Mbappe, and his right-hand man Jude Bellingham, quiet across the two legs. They wouldn't be the first team to fail in that regard, and certainly not the last.
After a slow start to life at Real, Mbappe has re-emerged as one of the most deadly strikers in the business and a firm contender for the Ballon d'Or again. However, he may face stiff competition for the 2025 Golden Ball from Bellingham, who at just 21 already looks like a complete midfielder – and a future Real captain.
Their presence gives Real an advantage in any game, but in an alternate universe, it would have been Arsenal benefitting heading into this blockbuster clash. That's because the Gunners came agonisingly close to signing Mbappe Bellingham when they were teenagers, with one bargain deal falling through at the last minute and the other leaving legendary former manager Arsene Wenger heartbroken…
GettyCompensation gaffe
Bellingham enjoyed a meteoric rise to prominence at Birmingham City, becoming the youngest player in the club's entire history when making his debut at 16 years and 38 days old against Portsmouth in a 2019 Carabao Cup tie. That was the first of 44 appearances Bellingham would make in what turned out to be his only full season in the Blues senior team, as Borussia Dortmund swooped to secure the midfielder's services for £25 million ($32m) in the summer of 2020.
It was a huge coup for the German giants, who reportedly fended off competition from Manchester United, Chelsea, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich. But Bellingham could actually have been playing for Arsenal years before then had circumstances not conspired against them.
According to , the Gunners made a formal approach for Bellingham when he was in Birmingham's U14s squad. Arsenal were willing to pay the £500,000 compensation required to bring the teenager to Emirates Stadium, but an 'unforeseen delay' of 48 hours on signing off that fee allowed the Blues to beat them to the punch.
Bellingham signed a contract with Birmingham instead, leaving Arsenal red-faced. That was not, however, the end of the club's pursuit of the English prodigy.
AdvertisementGetty ImagesBellingham deal was 'kind of done'
Tony Adams has claimed that Arsenal were also in pole position to sign Bellingham after his stunning breakthrough campaign at Birmingham. "He was spotted very early on, not by me, by the Arsenal recruitment office. The chief scout [Steve Morrow] was absolutely bowled over by him and the great prospect that he is. He had more or less done the deal," the Gunners icon told in November 2020.
On that occasion, though, a change in the boardroom led to the deal falling by the wayside, as Adams added: "At that moment the new sporting director Edu came in from Brazil and had no European experience and no UK experience. I think it got lost in the transition, Edu didn't know anything about this player. Unfortunately, the chief scout had the deal kind of done – we missed that one unfortunately. They are the type of players we need to get hold of at the Arsenal if we’re ever going to develop. These kind of players we need to tie up, get them to the Arsenal and build a phenomenal league team."
To this day, it's not clear whether Adams' story was 100 percent accurate – it seems unlikely that Edu would have neglected to push through a transfer for one of English football's most promising talents – but he's certainly right that Arsenal dropped the ball. Bellingham's subsequent success at Dortmund, and later Madrid, suggests he might have been able to push Arsenal over the line in their pursuit of a first Premier League title since 2003-04, and they only have themselves to blame for missing out, having failed to act quickly enough to capitalise on the groundwork put in by the scouting department.
Getty ImagesMbappe 'wanted to sign'
Arsenal's interest in Mbappe can be traced even further back, all the way to the start of 2013. At that stage, the Frenchman was working his way through the academy ranks at AS Bondy, and former Gunners defender Gilles Grimandi was one of the scouts who had recognised his potential.
A then-14-year-old Mbappe held formal talks with Arsenal, but ultimately stayed in his homeland and joined Monaco, which Grimandi believes was a sporting decision rather than a financial one. "We just could not convince him," he admitted to . "He was out of contract in June 2013 and we met him in February. If we could have convinced him to join, he would have changed the club – but he then decided on Monaco. Arsenal were not always playing their best so it was quite complicated.
"At first it was easy, as soon as we talked to a player he wanted to sign. However, if you are not getting results it is difficult to bring top players to help the team. That’s why it is important to stay at the top for as long as possible. It is so much easier."
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Getty ImagesWenger meeting
Mbappe graduated from the Monaco academy just two years later, and broke Thierry Henry's record as the club's youngest debutant when lining up in a Ligue 1 clash against Caen aged 16 years and 347 days. By the start of the 2016, Mbappe boasted a seemingly endless list of potential suitors as the most revered young prospect on the continent.
Arsenal were on it, and Wenger put in the legwork to make the transfer happen. "I went to his parents and tried to convince them," the former Gunners boss told French broadcaster last June. "At the time, he was a little shy, people were starting to ask him for his first autographs in Monaco."
Once again, though the Gunners' efforts proved fruitless. Mbappe opted to sign his first professional contract at Monaco in May of that year, committing his future to the club until 2019, but surprisingly, Wenger held no bitterness. "At the beginning of your career, you don't have too much pressure at the start and they managed to persuade him to extend it by promising him that he would play more easily at Monaco than at Arsenal, Liverpool or Real Madrid," he explained. "We can say that his parents advised him well and that he made the right decision."
Grimaldi, who had also been part of the team that tried to persuade Mbappe to choose Arsenal, added to : "We met his parents in London who came to the training ground and alongside Arsene and Richard Law [then transfer chief] we travelled to meet Kylian in the South of France. We tried, and I really don't think we were far from getting him, but he declined the project and signed a new deal with Monaco. I'd say it is probably the biggest disappointment in my 15 years as an Arsenal scout."