Follow Arsenal to the northwest, the Midlands and even west London over the past few decades and there is one familiar refrain you will hear again and again. “Champions of Europe, you’ll never sing that”. Mikel Arteta’s side can rock up at Aston Villa, Nottingham Forest, Liverpool, Chelsea; it doesn’t matter how many points clear they might find themselves in the Premier League, they still won’t have that European Cup that half a dozen of their rivals do.

Making mirth at Arsenal’s European expense is not even limited to the cadre of true European champions. West Ham and Tottenham have delighted in celebrating their more minor baubles in such terms and it is one of those chants that tends not to get much of a witty rejoinder. “Champions of Europe, you weren’t even born”? Doesn’t matter lads. It’s still theirs to celebrate.

It should be a cause of shame for Arsenal that the Emirates Stadium trophy room does not yet have the grandest prize in continental club football. There is not much of a case to be made against the argument that they are the biggest club not to have won it. Maybe Rangers would have a case given their sheer weight of titles in a nation that has delivered a European champion. Perhaps too Ferencvaros, though Hungary’s golden generation had hit many of its highest points before the European Cup was launched in 1956. 

Neither of those have spent the last 30 years or more as one of the dozen richest clubs in the world either. Atletico Madrid are a bit nearer Arsenal in financial terms but still a way back and they have fewer league titles than the Gunners’ 14. That is a number that no team in Europe’s top five leagues has won without also winning at least one Champions League. No team has accrued a better points total than Arsenal and only Dynamo Kyiv have played more games in the competition without winning it than the Gunners, who will reach the 240 mark against Paris Saint-Germain on Saturday.

If all that makes it seem like the pursuit of European glory should be existential for Arsenal, well, it was for a time. It often felt like Arsene Wenger described fourth place as a trophy was because it gave him a chance to take a swing at the Champions League again. The scars of defeat in his homeland in 2006 never really faded; years later, he was still placing the blame for defeat squarely at the feet of referee Terje Hauge, whose sending off of Jens Lehmann so warped the defeat at Barcelona’s hands.

In the post-Wenger years, though, something changed. Partly that was because even getting back into the Champions League seemed such a schlep away from where Arsenal were. Then, their relevance on the European stage restored, it was the Premier League that became the fanbase’s grail quest. It makes sense both on an emotive and objective level. When their club has been the butt of so many jokes from their near neighbors, when there have been three straight second-place finishes, of course, the Premier League starts to mean more.

It is worth saying too that the best team in Europe sometimes does not win the Champions League. Such is the way with knockout football. Sometimes Paris Saint-Germain get drawn on the side of the bracket with Bayern Munich and their final opponent only has to navigate Bayer Leverkusen, Sporting and Atletico Madrid. Rarely is it the case that a team worthy of being considered the best does not win the Premier League.

Those emotional and practical underpinnings go some way to explaining why the Premier League was so totemic for Arsenal supporters. Their players felt it too. A great many of their best performances this season have come on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, that Champions League anthem a sign to Arteta’s squad that the sky need not fall in tonight, whatever the result. No wonder they cut loose, averaging more expected goals per game in the Champions League than PSG.

Does that pressure begin to weigh on Arsenal come Saturday, when it must surely dawn on them that they might be the squad who can be the first in 70 years to lift the European Cup? To hear Noni Madueke tell it, the expectations will be there but only this squad places the, on itself. “Okay, the pressure of the Champions League is there, but pressure is with us all the time. This is Arsenal Football Club. One of the biggest teams in England. The Champions League is, of course, the big one.”

Bigger than the Premier League? It doesn’t matter. What matters is that Arsenal have one of the two. Imagine that Manchester City had somehow pipped them on the final week. Then the Champions League would carry an even more existential significance than it did for Wenger. Four years of contention and the risk of not a single trophy to show for it. Arteta has already admitted that doubts had been gnawing away at him, leaving him questioning whether he was the reason why this team could not get over the line. If the team he has now dubbed “champions of life” could not get it done this season, would he have had the strength to carry on?

Instead, externally this Champions League final looks about as close to a free hit as it can be for a zero-time European champion. Whatever the players do, hundreds of thousands of supporters will still line the streets of Islington on Sunday afternoon.

Unsurprisingly, there is not the same sense of diffidence among Arteta’s squad. As they lined up for their pre-Champions League media commitments on Thursday of last week, it was apparent how many had switched into next game mode. “Everyone wants to know about the celebrations,” joked Madueke, “don’t you want to talk about the Champions League?” He even partially pushed back at the idea that going into the final with Premier League winners’ medals in their back pocket would matter all that much.

“It is definitely better that we won the Premier League, for sure, before we go into the Champions League final. I just don’t know if we will be thinking about that. We will be thinking about getting another one. I think the Premier League will be irrelevant on that night. It will be full focus on the Champions League, just giving our all and trying to make sure we bring that to the final as well.”

The attitude inside the camp was summed up by William Saliba. When you’ve just had the dopamine hit of a domestic crown, you are going to chase that high again. “We have started with the Premier League,” he said. “It is my first one, so I am happy. But I am not full. I want more.”

And of course, the same is true of supporters. For most of this season, the Premier League might have been the obsession but they’ve got that now. While 2025-26 will be a triumph no matter what, who wouldn’t now be asking themselves how much sweeter this season would be if the 22-year wait for a Premier League title was soon followed by a night where the eternally empty space in the trophy cabinet was finally filled?