win a European trophy with Arsenal

For what it's worth, I think the best team over two legs lost.

It was a brief, occasionally curt press conference, but none the less devastating for that. As Arsene Wenger reflected on his last, lost chance at salvaging a trophy from the final days of his Arsenal reign, there was a moistness and a redness to his eyes: the look of a man who had been crying, or was about to do so, and was doing his damnedest not to do it now, in front of hundreds of strangers with laptops.

“I am, like the team, very sad and very disappointed,” he said after Arsenal’s 1-0 defeat to Atletico Madrid that eliminated them from the Europa League at the semi-final stage. “Even very frustrated, as well, because when you go out of a competition and you had the performances over 180 minutes that we had, it is very difficult to take.

“For the club, there is now some time to think about what to do for next season,” he said. “I think there are some good ingredients in our team, and they will bounce back. These players have quality, and with the right additions in the summer, the team will compete next year.” And it the moment at which he dared to glimpse into the future – a future in which after 22 years, he and Arsenal are separate entities – that Wenger became most emotional.