NY TIMES
In a tie stacked with nearly one-third of this year’s Ballon d’Or shortlist, one player stood out above the rest in Arsenal’s Champions League tie with Real Madrid.
Sit down, Kylian Mbappe. Don’t get up, Vinicius Junior. Step aside for a moment, Jude Bellingham — Declan Rice wants a word.
In the second Champions League quarter-final of his career, Rice put in back-to-back man-of-the-match performances to help Arsenal to the final four of the competition for the first time since 2009.
Many will point to Rice’s two world-class free kicks in the first leg clash as the key reason why he was lauded individually, but there was so much more to his wider performance that was the catalyst for Arsenal’s success across both games.