It’s the Petr Cech derby: the Europa League final between the retiring goalkeeper’s past, present and future employers. But Arsenal vs Chelsea, the derby with a difference in Baku, is also the Olivier Giroud reunion. A man who could never quite score enough goals to make the Gunners champions could cost them a place in the Champions League.
For the second successive summer, Giroud could secure silverware in the old Soviet Union – but with a difference.
Some 110 players scored at the right end in the World Cup, but he wasn’t one of them. A total of 323 footballers have found the right net in this season’s Europa League and Giroud, along with the eliminated Luka Jovic, tops the leaderboard on 10. It’s far from his greatest distinction but, unless overhauled by Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, he is set to become the first player from a London club to top-score in this competition since QPR’s Gary Bannister in 1985.
All of which may be a roundabout way of asking how good Giroud is. He might be the best target man in the world, according to Eden Hazard in September, but he’s also been a regular substitute at two London clubs in the last two seasons. The Belgian appreciates his selfless sidekick’s deft touches; the way a physical presence can facilitate quick one-twos around the box.
Giroud’s status as football’s best foil was apparent when Chelsea won the FA Cup last season. He encouraged improvement from Antoine Griezmann and Kylian Mbappe in the World Cup by freeing up and teeing them up; the leader of the line who let others do the actual scoring.
He has been the great conundrum. There was the theory that he wasn't quite good enough for Arsenal to win the Premier League, but he did help France win the World Cup. Even now, a year on, determining Giroud’s place in the firmament is no simple task.
The one-year contract extension he signed last Tuesday felt triggered by Chelsea’s transfer ban. It seemed more an act of necessity than faith. Giroud’s status as the Europa League specialist has been something of a slight in itself. He has been Chelsea’s go-to man on Thursday nights while more expensive or more favoured players have tended to get the nod at weekends.
Yet over 18 months at Stamford Bridge, he has outperformed both Alvaro Morata and Gonzalo Higuain. A meagre return of five goals in 40 league games may not suggest so, but it’s notable that two-thirds of those appearances have come from the bench, and that Hazard can be at his most luminous when he has Giroud alongside him. If Antonio Conte was perceptive enough to promote Giroud ahead of Morata, then Maurizio Sarri has been too stubborn when he has persisted with Higuain. The danger is that Giroud is benched in Baku.
He wouldn’t get in the Arsenal team were he still at the Emirates Stadium, even though he keeps Alexandre Lacazette out of the France squad. It’s one of the paradoxes of Arsenal that as their team has gotten worse, their strikers have got better. It feels like the only real elite section of their side now.
Arsenal spent several summers looking for an upgrade on Giroud, whether Luis Suarez or Karim Benzema. They secured two within six months, in Lacazette and Aubameyang, and the latter’s January 2018 arrival was a factor in Giroud’s departure. They have scored a combined 50 goals this season.
And yet, while Lacazette’s 19 goals earned him Arsenal’s player-of-the-year award, Giroud got 19 once, and 22 and 24 in other years en route to a century in their colours. And yet never did he shake the impression that he was something of a stopgap, forever filling a spot until someone superior emerged.
But there are worse things to be than a World Cup-winning stopgap.
Then read…
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