Roll on Paris, as super Jens brings tears to our eyes

STANDING on a small corner of foreign terracing that was destined to become forever Arsenal, as dusk fell on a balmy spring evening, there were big fat Gooners taking the wrappers off proportionately sized cigars.

Intermingled with the aromatic cigar smoke, one caught the occasional fragrant whiff of ‘whacky baccy’, as many of the travelling faithful found their own individual means of marking such a special occasion. If only I’d set aside my own Cuban corona to celebrate the birth of a child, I’d have definitely tucked it into a pocket to take to Spain. It was that sort of night! After schlepping all over the Continent this past decade or so, we all deserved to be standing there, sucking on a ‘Romeo y Julieta’, lapping up the semi-final high, awaiting the start of the 90 minutes of football which might at long last affirm the top table status of Arsène Wenger and his team.

Prior to such a pitifully uninspiring performance, the cigar lighting might’ve been somewhat premature. Nevertheless despite several heart-stopping incidents and the dramatic 90th minute denouement, when with Germanic reliability, our crash cart keeper revived this Champions League baby with his enormous paddles, it all came good in the end. It’s a tired cliché but I can’t imagine any other similar deliveries bringing genuine tears to the eyes of so many Gooner grown men.