Our stirring 4-1 victory over Bayer Leverkusen at Highbury on February 27, 2002 was perhaps the main highlight of our Champions League second group stage, especially as the German side went on to reach the final, where they were defeated by Real Madrid.
Arsene Wenger’s team had finished runners-up during the first group stage, finishing behind Panathinaikos, and in those days the tournament reassigned the 16 qualifiers into four new groups for another six-game schedule, packed with tough opposition before the knockout stages.
In our opening match, we came unstuck against 2001 La Liga runners-up Deportivo La Coruna, losing 2-0, but a fortnight later we rallied quite superbly against Juventus, winning 3-1 in N5. When the Champions League resumed in February, Wenger’s outfit faced back-to-back matches against Leverkusen.
They’d finish runners-up in the Bundesliga in 2002, pipped to the title by Borussia Dortmund by a single point. Under coach Klaus Toppmoller, they were a well-drilled and organised unit, with the highly rated Michael Ballack in midfield, and a young Dimitar Berbatov breaking into the first team. In Germany, Ulf Kirsten’s last-gasp equaliser cancelled out Robert Pires’s 56th-minute strike to share the points, meaning if we were to have any realistic hope of progressing, we simply had to defeat Leverkusen at Highbury.
The players set about their task with gusto. After just five minutes, Pires burst forward from inside his own half, cut past a defender, and slammed his team into the lead. Two minutes later, Dennis Bergkamp nudged the ball to his right, and from Sylvain Wiltord’s low cross, Thierry Henry swept the ball home to score a sublime goal.
Patrick Vieira’s diving header from an Henry free-kick put the home side 3-0 up just after half-time, but Bergkamp saved the best until last, lobbing the goalkeeper quite delightfully from the edge of the penalty area. There was still time for winger Zoltan Sebescen to thunder home an unstoppable volley, but it was barely a consolation for the dejected visitors.
Sadly, we couldn’t build on the Leverkusen victory and finished third in their group after losing at home to Deportivo and away to Juventus, who were also eliminated. Both sides finished on seven points, while Leverkusen and Deportivo progressed, leading the way on 10 points.
With just domestic issues left to focus on, the ruthless Gunners made no mistake, romping to the domestic Double in May in magnificent style. However in a season of mainly highlights, the Leverkusen match burns brightly in the memory for those who were present at Highbury that night, with Wenger insisting it was “one of the most complete European performances I saw from us at Highbury.”
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