October feels like quite a long time ago. Both in terms of actual time but also the narrative arc of Gianluigi Donnarumma’s Champions League season.
Paris Saint-Germain faced Arsenal back then, as they did on Tuesday night. That time, in the league phase, Luis Enrique’s side were beaten 2-0, both goals eminently preventable: for the first, Donnarumma flapped at a cross as Kai Havertz headed home and for the second, he allowed a Bukayo Saka crossed free kick to slip through his grasp.
That defeat was nearly costly. PSG qualified for the knockout stages of the tournament in the final game of the league stage, and even then it was only for the play-offs. Now they look favourites to win the tournament: back then, they could have gone out in the first round.
As PSG go, so does Donnarumma. For the first half an hour or so of their 1-0 win at the Emirates Stadium, they were phenomenal, implausibly fast, shifting the ball at inhuman speed, suffocating Arsenal on the rare occasions that they fashioned anything approaching an attack.
They scored in the fourth minute through Ousmane Dembele, combining with the relentless Kvicha Kvaratskhelia in a fashion that made you think, from an Arsenal perspective: ‘uh oh’. This could have got very ugly for the north Londoners, very quickly.
Vitinha conducted things brilliantly from the base of midfield. Dembele buzzed around pretty much wherever he wanted. Achraf Hakimi powered down the right time and again. Desire Doue’s feet were a blur.
But, as it turned out, PSG didn’t convert their dominance into goals, a problem that has tripped them up a few times this season, not least when they lost to Nice in Ligue 1 last weekend, giving up their chance of going undefeated in their domestic season.
And gradually, Arsenal got back into it. They found space behind Hakimi a few times, which is how they nearly scored either side of half-time, through first Gabriel Martinelli and then Leandro Trossard, their defence expertly sliced by passes from Myles Lewis-Skelly and Declan Rice respectively.
But that’s where they were saved, in a literal and a figurative sense, by Donnarumma. Martinelli opened his body and tried the old Thierry Henry finish with his right foot…
Trossard went with his left, low and hard across the keeper…
But both times, they were thwarted, repelled by the firmest of hands.
He celebrated both as if he’d scored himself, particularly the second, throwing his fist in an uppercut of aggressive joy and screaming into the London air. And with good reason: those saves were as good as goals for PSG.
It’s quite a turnaround for the Italian, who is still, implausibly, only 26. It seems ludicrous that he’s so young, given how long he’s been around, but that’s what being a regular starter for AC Milan at 16 will do to your sense of time.
But over the years, he hasn’t always felt like the safest of keepers. It’s not just the previous game against Arsenal: he has sometimes looked an absolute liability. Errors against Barcelona last season almost cost PSG a place in the semi-final. His kicking has been a problem this season. He was also responsible for the farcical goal Italy conceded against Germany in the Nations League in March, Joshua Kimmich and Jamal Musiala combining to score into an empty net from a corner, as Donnarumma squabbled with his team-mates and the officials.
In this season’s Champions League knockout stages though, he has done a convincing impression of peak Gigi Buffon. And all against English teams.
He saved penalties from Curtis Jones and Darwin Nunez in the shootout against Liverpool, securing PSG’s passage to the quarter-finals. Then, in the second leg against Aston Villa, when Unai Emery’s side came close to a roaring comeback when all seemed lost, in their way was Donnarumma. A flying stop from a Marcus Rashford shot that was bound for the top corner; a last gasp paw from a looping Youri Tielemans header; a save with his feet when his on-loan team-mate Marco Asensio was clean through.
And then these two colossal stops against Arsenal. He was good in the more mundane aspects of his game, too. He was calm with the ball at his feet, notably early in the game when Vitinha absolutely fizzed a pass back to him. He was commanding in the air, although admittedly he might have got away with one when Mikel Merino’s header early in the second half was disallowed.
After the game, Mikel Arteta spoke of small margins, and how Donnarumma was responsible for them. “Their keeper made the difference,” he said. “He made the saves, as he did against Liverpool and Aston Villa. That is the margin and the level for this semi-final.”
Vitinha was named as the official UEFA player of the match but he knew who really deserved it. He posted a picture with Donnarumma, having given his trophy to the keeper, with the caption “Le vrai MVP.” Even L’Equipe’s famously stingy player ratings awarded him 8/10, calling him “magical again”.
Le vrai MVP ✊🏻❤️💙 https://t.co/fgDGXvLZRV pic.twitter.com/7xySfxuM0V
— Vítor Ferreira (@vitinha) April 29, 2025
Singling out the goalkeeper in this thrilling PSG side feels a bit like going for a Michelin-starred nine-course tasting menu and enthusing about the bread rolls. But hey, sometimes you need that bread as ballast, the hearty base that allows you to appreciate the flavour of the rest of the meal without worrying about going home hungry.
After the game, when invited to single out Donnarumma for praise, Luis Enrique tried to share out the credit. “I really want to underline the work of 14 or 15 players,” he said. “We wouldn’t have got this result without them all.”
But even he had to recognise, amid PSG’s remarkable attacking talent and their dizzying and intense style of play, which of their players won this game.
“When you’re playing away against a rival who are so good at set pieces, you need a titan in goal.”
(Top photo: Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)